Ocean's 8 Marks The Return Of The Great Glam Caper

THE BIG SELLING POINT OF OCEAN’S 8, a riff on the Ocean’s Eleven guys-pulling-off-heists series, is its all-women cast. In the trailer, Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock cook up a jewel heist while striding along a New York City sidewalk, looking as if they own not just the sidewalk but the whole city.

- Stephanie Zacharek

Their pockets may be empty, for now, but they’ve got the million-dollar look. Bullock wears a drapey trench coat that’s the color of money, Blanchett a tailored cheetah-print wrapper, whose every blurry black dot whispers class. But what’s most striking about this movie isn’t that it stars a bunch of women— among them Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling and Rihanna—in the types of cool-crook roles that would normally go to men. It’s how unapologetically glamorous the whole thing looks. And though we may cling to the illusion that today’s movies are filled with glamour, we’re actually slogging through a serious cashmere shortage, moviewise. Why can’t we have more champagne and châteaus in our movies? Will Ocean’s 8 be the movie that revives the glam caper?

Fantasy is a multibillion-dollar business in Hollywood, but much of that money is poured into—and, eventually, flows out of—movies based on comic books. Meanwhile, fantasies of luxury, escape and intrigue, with stories for grownups that feature attractive individuals getting away with preposterous crimes, have become as rare as a flawless emerald.