Suburbicon (2017)
Directed by George Clooney
In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.
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3 films that influenced Suburbicon
What critics say influenced Suburbicon
The Suburbicon of Suburbicon is one of those Norman Rockwell facsimiles of small-town America, just a hair left of Pleasantville on the unreality spectrum.
"Suburbicon" is a grotesque Frankenstein's monster stitched together from parts of "Pleasantville," "Fargo," "Far From Heaven" and "The Informant!," which are all great films, but this meaningless pastiche has no idea what it actually wants to say.
From canonical classics like Mike Nichols ’s The Graduate and Sam Mendes’s American Beauty to genre-bending comedies like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Gary Ross’s Pleasantville , the suburban satire is nothing short of a cinematic staple.
The first few minutes of this film had me thinking it was a remake of the brilliant 1998 comedy, Pleasantville .
The people of Suburbicon are less intrigued after a home invasion sees Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon, The Great Wall), his sister-in-law Margaret (Julianne Moore, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) and son Nicky (Noah Jupe, TV’s Houdini and Doyle) have their lives fundamentally changed.
Kevin Costner in Hidden Figures, Brad Pitt in 12 Years A Slave, all the way back to Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird this trick is so tired I don’t have the energy to break down why it needs to end.
This year in particular, the American dream of the 1950s – so modern and gleaming from the outside – is being recast as built on foundations of racism, abuse and greed, whether that’s the rotten core of fast food in The Founder, the ignored black mathematicians of the space race in Hidden Figures , or the suburban family dream of writers Joel and Ethan Coen’s darkly comic S uburbicon , brought to the screen by director/co-writer George Clooney and his partner Grant Heslov.