Suburbicon

This is an odd duck - a Coen Brothers screenplay that they decided not to make, "improved" by George Clooney and his writing partner Grant Herslov in the filming. The bones of the Coen script are reasonably apparent - it's one of their riffs on genere pics, in particular wandering close to James M. Cain. But Clooney's adaptation seems to serve to lessen the film, ironically by trying to make it do more than it's really designed to bear. 

For a start, as a director Clooney has far more of a mixed record than may be immediately apparent - his "Good Night and Good Luck" is a great film, certainly, but his adaptation of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" is lesser work and similarly, his attempts to play light with "Leatherheads" and "Monuments Men" mostly have sputtered. The necessary lightness required to do this kinda suburban satire seems missing, and, particularly in the setup, there's awkward gear shifting between the murderous family deceptions with Julianne Moore and Matt Damon which feel very Coen-ish and the accelerating intimidation of a recently-arrived black family (which feels utterly imposed on the script and weirdly under-served - the black family basically exist entirely to be persecuted). By the middle when it has become apparent what everybody's agenda is, the Damon/Moore plotline accelerates (also gaining particularly when Oscar Isaac as an insurance investigator shows up), but the segregation plotline resolutely fails to mean very much or get us very invested on either side of the divide. 

So this is a disappointment - there really was enough there with the noir-thriller aspects without trying to "improve" it by trying to bring in hamfisted social satire.