You could say director/co-writer George Clooney blew the lid off the darkness beneath superficial suburban placidity, if David Lynch hadn’t been doing it for 30 years. Set in a 1959 American town actually named Suburbicon, it mostly follows the aftermath of a crime, as the Lodge family—patriarch Gardner (Matt Damon), his wife Rose (Julianne Moore), Rose’s sister Margaret (also Moore) and Gardner and Rose’s son Nicky (Noah Jupe)—are held hostage in their home. That aftermath mostly involves the disintegration of a carefully-laid plan, and knowing that part of the script was created by Joel and Ethan Coen makes the echoes of the far superior Fargo all the more evident. But Clooney also awkwardly pastes on the story of the neighborhood’s reaction to the African-American Mayers family moving in, including heavy-elbowed radio and TV interviews with residents who just want their peaceful community to stay the same, ha ha ha. It’s borderline offensive that the Mayers family being terrorized becomes background noise to the chaos in the Lodge household, even as Oscar Isaac provides a welcome spark when he appears. Hypocritical white people aren’t as funny, or surprising, as they used to be. By Scott Renshaw