Intro
Full Frontal (2002)
Full Frontal is a very weird movie. It's one of those movies where Soderbergh is clearly experimenting with the process of filmmaking. As such, I don't like it! He shoots most of the movie on videotape and by god does it look awful.
Another one of the warning signs with Full Frontal is that it's a comedy, and Soderbergh is not especially good at making comedies. Having humor in his movie sure. But making a movie that can be called a comedy? Not so much.
Unlike his other experimental movies, this one actually features name actors. Ton of them in fact. Julia Roberts plays a reporter who interviews Blair Underwood, who is a famous actor. And in the middle of this interview at one point, cut is yelled, Julia Roberts takes off her wig, and is a famous actress not named Julia Roberts. So Blair and Julia are operating in a fictional movie where most of what we see is that movie, but they're actually acting.
Confused? I'll make things more confusing for you. In whatever universe the movie operates in, Blair is an actor who acts alongside Brad Pitt being directed by David Fincher. So she's interviewing him behind the scenes of a movie, and then the movie stops, and lets us know that both Julia Roberts and Blair Underwood are acting in a different movie we see the behind the scenes of.
There's also Linda, played by Mary McCormack, who has never dated someone for longer three months and is looking for love. There's Catherine Keener, who's married to David Hyde Pierce, and they are clearly on their way to a divorce, as Keener cheats on Pierce's character, who knows it. Pierce rambles on aimlessly to many different women in this movie.
There's Enrico Colotani, who plays a playwright, and he directs Nicky Katt, who plays Hitler in some sort of comical take on Hitler that is never really funny. And then there's David Duchovny, who plays a guy who invites everyone to a party, which kind of ends up going nowhere. The movie sets up the party as if it's going be this big endgame, but the plot deflates.
So what you have here is seemingly pointless script where the movie tries its hand at satire and I get the feeling you almost have to be in the movie business to understand that wavelength. Like imagine The Player, but incomprehensibly aimless. The Player had a plot for all its winking nods to Hollywood few of the people watching understand. This doesn't.
And then you have Soderbergh filming most of it on grainy videotape for some reason. I imagine he has a reason for it, I just don't understand it. Even when I've disagreed with the method for how he shoots, I understand the intention. This one? I don't. Basically nothing in this movie works, except that every actor is a professional and does their job. But good actors can only do so much with an empty script and ugly visuals.
1/4 stars
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 23
Intro
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
I am in the weird position of having seen the TV series that was inspired by this movie, also called The Girlfriend Experience, but not the movie itself. And in looking at the TV series, I find out it's still airing and will air a new season relatively soon. Huh. The TV series does not involve Steven Soderbergh or as far as I'm aware, the writers of this particular movie.
I couldn't tell you how I would feel if I had seen the movie first, but the TV series is a hell of a lot better at doing what it wants to do than the movie. There's a similar tone, at least in the first season, of the drudgery and day-to-day aspect of sex work. They are kind of going for a similar message, which is I imagine why the TV series happened: they saw the movie, saw TV potential out of it, and made it happen.
I feel like I would be less hard on Sasha Grey, the former porn actress turned actual actress, if I had never seen the TV show. The TV show features someone who can actually act while Sasha Grey can't really, but her acting range fit nicely into what was required of the movie. She is monotone and emotionless and look at that, the movie requires that.
Riley Keough (star of the first season) can actually act though and while she's by design very similar to Grey in performance, you can really tell the nuances required of acting if you compare their performances side by side. Yes, she has more time and more to do in terms of displaying acting range, but even the emotionless, monotone version of her just works better.
The Girlfriend Experience features my least favorite side of Steven Soderbergh - the side that employs non-actors to make it feel more natural. There's of course Sasha Grey, who is basically stunt casting. There's her live-in boyfriend, who was someone who had also never acted before. And the IMDB page is littered with absolutely nobody you've heard of, except for maybe one film critic. (Who I had never heard of so probably not on that count either.)
This premise works way better as a TV show than it does a movie. Now again maybe I wouldn't think that if I hadn't actually seen it successfully work in a TV show, but this is a pretty boring movie. Not a lot happens. It's thankfully short. I'm not sure if it would work better with a better actress than Grey, but she's in nearly every scene and is just not that compelling to watch.
And for what it's worth, in the interest of providing a different perspective, a perspective I typically visit, Roger Ebert gave this 4 stars. Which is inexplicable to me, but he also loved Bubble, so he clearly loves Soderbergh doing the mundane, improvisational approach both movies take. Which I might be on board with if like Keegan Michael Key was the one improvising, not people who've never improvised or even acted.
So this one kind of landed as a dud for me, but I'll also admit that I think knowing the TV show works way better impacted by opinion. I don't know that I would have liked it anyway, but it definitely didn't stand a chance by being the second Girlfriend Experience that I watched.
1.5/4 stars
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
I am in the weird position of having seen the TV series that was inspired by this movie, also called The Girlfriend Experience, but not the movie itself. And in looking at the TV series, I find out it's still airing and will air a new season relatively soon. Huh. The TV series does not involve Steven Soderbergh or as far as I'm aware, the writers of this particular movie.
I couldn't tell you how I would feel if I had seen the movie first, but the TV series is a hell of a lot better at doing what it wants to do than the movie. There's a similar tone, at least in the first season, of the drudgery and day-to-day aspect of sex work. They are kind of going for a similar message, which is I imagine why the TV series happened: they saw the movie, saw TV potential out of it, and made it happen.
I feel like I would be less hard on Sasha Grey, the former porn actress turned actual actress, if I had never seen the TV show. The TV show features someone who can actually act while Sasha Grey can't really, but her acting range fit nicely into what was required of the movie. She is monotone and emotionless and look at that, the movie requires that.
Riley Keough (star of the first season) can actually act though and while she's by design very similar to Grey in performance, you can really tell the nuances required of acting if you compare their performances side by side. Yes, she has more time and more to do in terms of displaying acting range, but even the emotionless, monotone version of her just works better.
The Girlfriend Experience features my least favorite side of Steven Soderbergh - the side that employs non-actors to make it feel more natural. There's of course Sasha Grey, who is basically stunt casting. There's her live-in boyfriend, who was someone who had also never acted before. And the IMDB page is littered with absolutely nobody you've heard of, except for maybe one film critic. (Who I had never heard of so probably not on that count either.)
This premise works way better as a TV show than it does a movie. Now again maybe I wouldn't think that if I hadn't actually seen it successfully work in a TV show, but this is a pretty boring movie. Not a lot happens. It's thankfully short. I'm not sure if it would work better with a better actress than Grey, but she's in nearly every scene and is just not that compelling to watch.
And for what it's worth, in the interest of providing a different perspective, a perspective I typically visit, Roger Ebert gave this 4 stars. Which is inexplicable to me, but he also loved Bubble, so he clearly loves Soderbergh doing the mundane, improvisational approach both movies take. Which I might be on board with if like Keegan Michael Key was the one improvising, not people who've never improvised or even acted.
So this one kind of landed as a dud for me, but I'll also admit that I think knowing the TV show works way better impacted by opinion. I don't know that I would have liked it anyway, but it definitely didn't stand a chance by being the second Girlfriend Experience that I watched.
1.5/4 stars
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 22
Intro
Today I'll be reviewing two movies that could be called comedies. Steven Soderbergh does not appear interested in making a traditional comedy, so both of these movies are not really what you think of when you think of comedy.
The Laundromat (2019)
The title of this movie is enormously unhelpful in figuring out what the movie is, and so is the face of Meryl Streep on the promotional tools of the movie. Because Meryl Streep is not really the main character and it's about money laundering which is not exactly the first thing that pops to mind when I see "The Laundromat."
This movie is really about the Panama Papers, and the subsequent release of the Panama Papers. I don't know if that would have been a better title, because it would suggest a more serious movie than what's provided on screen. It's based on a true story, but it's told in a fourth wall breaking way. It's a very confusing movie to try and describe to be honest.
There's no real protagonist - it follows three separate stories. The first is the story of the two guys who got busted as a result of the leak of Panama Papers. They narrate the story in a fourth wall breaking kind of way and are played by Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman. Oldman does a weird and goofy accent. Between the accent and the fourth wall narration, well you figure out the tone of the movie pretty quickly.
There's a second story that focuses on a billionaire and his daughter catching him in an affair with her friend, which shows basically the absurdity of the system. Then the third story is based on the real life death of Neil Haywood, who was an intermediary trying to funnel money abroad for wealthy Chinese.
It's a very short movie, and it doesn't necessarily work well as a movie. It works well as a message. The message effectively being "Boy this capitalistic system we have sure is fucked up" so I guess if you want some sort of history lesson on one specific fucked up-ness of this system, this wouldn't be a bad guide.
I appreciate it more than I liked it. The humor is more of the absurd variety than laugh out loud and like I said, it's mainly there to drive home the point that we have a fucked up system.
2/4 stars
Schizopolis
Well this is easily the weirdest fucking movie Soderbergh has ever made. It's called "an experimental comedy" and boy does it earn that label. I combined these two movies because 1) there's not much to say about either 2) both are ostensibly comedies without really being funny and 3) both don't follow traditional narrative structure.
In the case of Schizopolis, this is way farther out than The Laundromat. This isn't told in a linear fashion, it features actors who were willing to work essentially for free for nine months and be ready at a moment's notice in Baton Rouge, which essentially means it features mostly non-actors, including Soderbergh himself.
The "employing non-actors" portion of Soderbergh is not my favorite version of him. It in theory lends authenticity to scenes, but really leads to a lot of what seems like bad improvisation. And Soderbergh supposedly didn't write the scenes until right before he was about to shoot them and allowed for some improvisation. Admittedly, of the three movies I've seen where he employs mostly non-actors, this feels the least like bad improv and stilted line readings, so its' got that going for it.
But it's just so weird. There are a couple of funny parts actually, like when the characters supposedly speak to each other, but the dialogue is just them expressing their true emotions. The exterminator sleeping with everyone's wives, got to say, I don't really understand that plot point. That is in fact not made up by me, even though it absolutely sounds like it is.
Soderbergh probably could have been a working actor if he wanted to, as he's reasonably good in this. He cast himself, his ex-wife, and people who lived in Baton Rouge. And his ex-wife was his ex-wife at the time, which I guess they divorced on good terms.
Anyway, this is an extremely weird movie whose wavelength I was not on, and apparently the beginning and ending scenes of what I saw were added because of a poor reaction at Cannes. Well, it didn't really come out any better for me. So let's call this one a misfire.
1/4 stars
Today I'll be reviewing two movies that could be called comedies. Steven Soderbergh does not appear interested in making a traditional comedy, so both of these movies are not really what you think of when you think of comedy.
The Laundromat (2019)
The title of this movie is enormously unhelpful in figuring out what the movie is, and so is the face of Meryl Streep on the promotional tools of the movie. Because Meryl Streep is not really the main character and it's about money laundering which is not exactly the first thing that pops to mind when I see "The Laundromat."
This movie is really about the Panama Papers, and the subsequent release of the Panama Papers. I don't know if that would have been a better title, because it would suggest a more serious movie than what's provided on screen. It's based on a true story, but it's told in a fourth wall breaking way. It's a very confusing movie to try and describe to be honest.
There's no real protagonist - it follows three separate stories. The first is the story of the two guys who got busted as a result of the leak of Panama Papers. They narrate the story in a fourth wall breaking kind of way and are played by Antonio Banderas and Gary Oldman. Oldman does a weird and goofy accent. Between the accent and the fourth wall narration, well you figure out the tone of the movie pretty quickly.
There's a second story that focuses on a billionaire and his daughter catching him in an affair with her friend, which shows basically the absurdity of the system. Then the third story is based on the real life death of Neil Haywood, who was an intermediary trying to funnel money abroad for wealthy Chinese.
It's a very short movie, and it doesn't necessarily work well as a movie. It works well as a message. The message effectively being "Boy this capitalistic system we have sure is fucked up" so I guess if you want some sort of history lesson on one specific fucked up-ness of this system, this wouldn't be a bad guide.
I appreciate it more than I liked it. The humor is more of the absurd variety than laugh out loud and like I said, it's mainly there to drive home the point that we have a fucked up system.
2/4 stars
Schizopolis
Well this is easily the weirdest fucking movie Soderbergh has ever made. It's called "an experimental comedy" and boy does it earn that label. I combined these two movies because 1) there's not much to say about either 2) both are ostensibly comedies without really being funny and 3) both don't follow traditional narrative structure.
In the case of Schizopolis, this is way farther out than The Laundromat. This isn't told in a linear fashion, it features actors who were willing to work essentially for free for nine months and be ready at a moment's notice in Baton Rouge, which essentially means it features mostly non-actors, including Soderbergh himself.
The "employing non-actors" portion of Soderbergh is not my favorite version of him. It in theory lends authenticity to scenes, but really leads to a lot of what seems like bad improvisation. And Soderbergh supposedly didn't write the scenes until right before he was about to shoot them and allowed for some improvisation. Admittedly, of the three movies I've seen where he employs mostly non-actors, this feels the least like bad improv and stilted line readings, so its' got that going for it.
But it's just so weird. There are a couple of funny parts actually, like when the characters supposedly speak to each other, but the dialogue is just them expressing their true emotions. The exterminator sleeping with everyone's wives, got to say, I don't really understand that plot point. That is in fact not made up by me, even though it absolutely sounds like it is.
Soderbergh probably could have been a working actor if he wanted to, as he's reasonably good in this. He cast himself, his ex-wife, and people who lived in Baton Rouge. And his ex-wife was his ex-wife at the time, which I guess they divorced on good terms.
Anyway, this is an extremely weird movie whose wavelength I was not on, and apparently the beginning and ending scenes of what I saw were added because of a poor reaction at Cannes. Well, it didn't really come out any better for me. So let's call this one a misfire.
1/4 stars
Monday, July 20, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 21
Intro
Che (2008)
You ever watched a movie that you appreciated, that was well-made, that you maybe even sort of liked, but you knew instantly when it was over: I'm never going to watch this movie again. Of course you have. That's Che, which is technically two separate movies, but can also work as one very long movie.
Che is about the legendary and controversial Ernesto Che Guevara (obviously) and it's not so much a biography as a chronicle of two parts of his life. In the first part, there are three distinct timelines, from Fidel Castro convincing him to help with the Cuban Revolution in 1954, the actual Cuban Revolution, and then the last part is him getting interviewed by Lisa Howard in America and his impassioned speech against American imperialism in 1964.
The second part is laser-focused on the year-long and failed attempt at duplicating the success of the Cuban revolution in Bolivia. There is no distinct timelines in part two, just a chronological storyline following Che and the slowly demoralizing slog he and his troops experienced.
Oddly enough, both movies are pretty much exactly the same length, and if you describe the two movies to me beforehand, I'd be sure that part one is better. But it isn't. And yet if you just watched part two, I think you might not really appreciate that movie either. Soderbergh was really interested in the failed Bolivian revolution, but felt that viewers would have no context for that. He was right.
He's clearly less interested in the Cuban revolution than the latter. The two parts were based on diaries written by Che himself, and apparently the Cuban revolution diary was written in hindsight, so everything is written with the knowledge that they were successful. The latter diary was written as it happened, so you got all the gritty details. So you can kind of understand why the latter is more appealing, because it's more accurate to the day-to-day.
That's really the appeal of this movie. It's a strange kind of "slice of life" movie where you just follow Che and soldiers engage in guerrilla warfare. The latter experience is not a pleasant one, hence me not wanting to watch it again. It's just things just gradually getting worse for the soldiers. They get no help from villagers, which they did in Cuba. Some of the soldiers themselves seem less committed. According to this movie, this was doomed to fail even if the CIA didn't intervene.
So you have part one, which provides context for the second part of the movie, but it's simply not as engaging of a movie. It's less clear what he's trying to accomplish with their battles and daily grind until you see the second part, and you have the contrast of the two together.
It's here usually where I will make a note about the actors, but to be honest it's basically Benicio del Toro's show. The other actors don't necessarily make an impression, even though I recognize more than a few. This movie isn't for them. Oscar Isaac is the translator in America, but I'm not even sure he's on screen for that long. And he isn't in the second movie.
Is this worth four and a half hours of your time? This might fall under the "I wouldn't really recommend it, but I don't think you'd regret it if you know what you're getting into." I think both movies could have benefited from being shorter, even though the long slog of the latter movie is the point. There's some repetitiveness to the soldiers just doing daily stuff in both movies.
So I guess it depends on your interest in Che the person? Which honestly it's not like a real deep reflective look at the guy. But it is interesting to follow his two primary revolutions and why one seemed to succeed when the other didn't.
Che: Part One - 2.5 stars
Che: Part Two - 3 stars
Che (2008)
You ever watched a movie that you appreciated, that was well-made, that you maybe even sort of liked, but you knew instantly when it was over: I'm never going to watch this movie again. Of course you have. That's Che, which is technically two separate movies, but can also work as one very long movie.
Che is about the legendary and controversial Ernesto Che Guevara (obviously) and it's not so much a biography as a chronicle of two parts of his life. In the first part, there are three distinct timelines, from Fidel Castro convincing him to help with the Cuban Revolution in 1954, the actual Cuban Revolution, and then the last part is him getting interviewed by Lisa Howard in America and his impassioned speech against American imperialism in 1964.
The second part is laser-focused on the year-long and failed attempt at duplicating the success of the Cuban revolution in Bolivia. There is no distinct timelines in part two, just a chronological storyline following Che and the slowly demoralizing slog he and his troops experienced.
Oddly enough, both movies are pretty much exactly the same length, and if you describe the two movies to me beforehand, I'd be sure that part one is better. But it isn't. And yet if you just watched part two, I think you might not really appreciate that movie either. Soderbergh was really interested in the failed Bolivian revolution, but felt that viewers would have no context for that. He was right.
He's clearly less interested in the Cuban revolution than the latter. The two parts were based on diaries written by Che himself, and apparently the Cuban revolution diary was written in hindsight, so everything is written with the knowledge that they were successful. The latter diary was written as it happened, so you got all the gritty details. So you can kind of understand why the latter is more appealing, because it's more accurate to the day-to-day.
That's really the appeal of this movie. It's a strange kind of "slice of life" movie where you just follow Che and soldiers engage in guerrilla warfare. The latter experience is not a pleasant one, hence me not wanting to watch it again. It's just things just gradually getting worse for the soldiers. They get no help from villagers, which they did in Cuba. Some of the soldiers themselves seem less committed. According to this movie, this was doomed to fail even if the CIA didn't intervene.
So you have part one, which provides context for the second part of the movie, but it's simply not as engaging of a movie. It's less clear what he's trying to accomplish with their battles and daily grind until you see the second part, and you have the contrast of the two together.
It's here usually where I will make a note about the actors, but to be honest it's basically Benicio del Toro's show. The other actors don't necessarily make an impression, even though I recognize more than a few. This movie isn't for them. Oscar Isaac is the translator in America, but I'm not even sure he's on screen for that long. And he isn't in the second movie.
Is this worth four and a half hours of your time? This might fall under the "I wouldn't really recommend it, but I don't think you'd regret it if you know what you're getting into." I think both movies could have benefited from being shorter, even though the long slog of the latter movie is the point. There's some repetitiveness to the soldiers just doing daily stuff in both movies.
So I guess it depends on your interest in Che the person? Which honestly it's not like a real deep reflective look at the guy. But it is interesting to follow his two primary revolutions and why one seemed to succeed when the other didn't.
Che: Part One - 2.5 stars
Che: Part Two - 3 stars
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 20
Intro
Logan Lucky (2017)
In 2013, Steven Soderbergh announced that he was retiring from directing with his last feature being the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra. Pretty much nobody believed it was actually going to be his last film. For one thing, he was just 50-years-old. And lo and behold, four years later, his retirement was over.
It ended with Logan Lucky, and the story for how it got made and why this particular movie is what got him out of his retirement, well it's a good story. Apparently a script was sent to him with the intention of him giving it to somebody else to make, only he felt compelled to direct it himself. It was widely believed and I think it's since been confirmed that the writer who sent that script, who was a newcomer to film, was actually his wife, Rebbeca Blunt under the alias Jules Asner.
She kept her name as a pseudonym, because she didn't want the story to be that he was directing his wife's script, but since Soderbergh already uses pseudonyms to act as his own cinematographer (Peter Andrews) and editor (Mary Ann Bernard), well most people speculated that it was either him or his wife anyway.
Back to Logan Lucky, the reason why people basically knew it was his wife was that it was set in West Virginia, where she is from, and it features a lot of little touches that make you know it wasn't an outsider who wrote it. Like I'm pretty sure someone deeply familiar with the culture around NASCAR at Charlotte Motor Speedway could have written this movie.
What is Logan Lucky? It's a heist film. If you enjoyed Ocean's Eleven, or any of the Ocean's movies, you will 100 percent like this movie. The movie itself notes that it's Ocean's 7/11, because the principal robbers are not slick and cool, but poor, struggling for cash, and you're never sure how smart they are.
In that sense, they're easier to root for than the Ocean's guys, who while fun to watch, are clearly pricks in a real life context. Whereas these guys are more relatable, have more relatable motives, and have a greater relationship center than the Ocean's movies (father-daughter, whose importance is illustrated by being them sharing the first scene of the movie)
Is it better than Ocean's Eleven? Well, that's harder to say. It's honestly a little harder to follow. Heist movies by design require you to sit back, trust the movie will parcel out information when it wants you to know, and you just got to hope that it makes sense in the end. I do think the movie overplays the "holding back information" part though. The Ocean's movies mostly told you everything with one last trick that allowed them to get away with.
Logan Lucky doesn't really tell you any of the plan until it happens, which probably makes for good repeat viewings to be honest and I actually watched it for the second time, although the second time, I still felt like I was playing catch-up the whole time, like I missed an important scene even though I never left the room.
If you're into Daniel Craig doing an entertaining accent of questionable authenticity, and most of you have seen Knives Out so I know the answer is yes, then also this movie is fun as hell. It's just good actors doing West Virginia accents, or attempts at it, making an entertaining heist movie that you just will not regret watching. Just be prepared to feel "out of the loop" with what exactly is happening.
Although fair warning Seth MacFarlane does show up at some point. He's extremely too famous and not a good enough actor to blend into this movie. Sebastian Stan is in this movie for some reason too and his part could have literally been played by anybody which I guess he just really liked the script? Or wanted to work with Soderbergh.
Definitely watch Logan Lucky.
3/4 stars
Logan Lucky (2017)
In 2013, Steven Soderbergh announced that he was retiring from directing with his last feature being the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra. Pretty much nobody believed it was actually going to be his last film. For one thing, he was just 50-years-old. And lo and behold, four years later, his retirement was over.
It ended with Logan Lucky, and the story for how it got made and why this particular movie is what got him out of his retirement, well it's a good story. Apparently a script was sent to him with the intention of him giving it to somebody else to make, only he felt compelled to direct it himself. It was widely believed and I think it's since been confirmed that the writer who sent that script, who was a newcomer to film, was actually his wife, Rebbeca Blunt under the alias Jules Asner.
She kept her name as a pseudonym, because she didn't want the story to be that he was directing his wife's script, but since Soderbergh already uses pseudonyms to act as his own cinematographer (Peter Andrews) and editor (Mary Ann Bernard), well most people speculated that it was either him or his wife anyway.
Back to Logan Lucky, the reason why people basically knew it was his wife was that it was set in West Virginia, where she is from, and it features a lot of little touches that make you know it wasn't an outsider who wrote it. Like I'm pretty sure someone deeply familiar with the culture around NASCAR at Charlotte Motor Speedway could have written this movie.
What is Logan Lucky? It's a heist film. If you enjoyed Ocean's Eleven, or any of the Ocean's movies, you will 100 percent like this movie. The movie itself notes that it's Ocean's 7/11, because the principal robbers are not slick and cool, but poor, struggling for cash, and you're never sure how smart they are.
In that sense, they're easier to root for than the Ocean's guys, who while fun to watch, are clearly pricks in a real life context. Whereas these guys are more relatable, have more relatable motives, and have a greater relationship center than the Ocean's movies (father-daughter, whose importance is illustrated by being them sharing the first scene of the movie)
Is it better than Ocean's Eleven? Well, that's harder to say. It's honestly a little harder to follow. Heist movies by design require you to sit back, trust the movie will parcel out information when it wants you to know, and you just got to hope that it makes sense in the end. I do think the movie overplays the "holding back information" part though. The Ocean's movies mostly told you everything with one last trick that allowed them to get away with.
Logan Lucky doesn't really tell you any of the plan until it happens, which probably makes for good repeat viewings to be honest and I actually watched it for the second time, although the second time, I still felt like I was playing catch-up the whole time, like I missed an important scene even though I never left the room.
If you're into Daniel Craig doing an entertaining accent of questionable authenticity, and most of you have seen Knives Out so I know the answer is yes, then also this movie is fun as hell. It's just good actors doing West Virginia accents, or attempts at it, making an entertaining heist movie that you just will not regret watching. Just be prepared to feel "out of the loop" with what exactly is happening.
Although fair warning Seth MacFarlane does show up at some point. He's extremely too famous and not a good enough actor to blend into this movie. Sebastian Stan is in this movie for some reason too and his part could have literally been played by anybody which I guess he just really liked the script? Or wanted to work with Soderbergh.
Definitely watch Logan Lucky.
3/4 stars
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 19
Intro
High Flying Bird (2019)
To date, Steven Soderbergh has filmed two movies using an iPhone, with Unsane being filmed on an iPhone 7 and this one on an iPhone 8. Of the two movies, Unsane has the better justification for using an iPhone, but High Flying Bird is the better advertisement for the feasibility of filming a movie that way.
The movie follows Ray Burke, who is a high powered agent whose job is at stake due to a fictional NBA lockout that has been going on for a few months at the start of the movie. Burke and the agency he works for are running out of money. Players don't get paid, agents don't either.
On the players' side, he is helped by his "not his assistant" Sam, played by Zazie Beetz (Atlanta). He also frequently talks to the head of negotiations for the players, Myra (Sonja Sohn), and head of negotations for the NBA, David (Kyle MacLachlan). And while he presumably has more than a few clients, we really only see his top client, the future #1 pick of the NBA draft, Erick Scott (played by American Vandal's Melvin Gregg).
Without spoiling the movie, essentially what happens is with no prospect of future employment and no seeming rush on either side to get a deal done, Burke has to enact a plan to get both his agency and himself money, so as to avoid being let go. The movie has the makings of a heist movie despite no theft occurring. But the plot is revealed in a very similar way to a heist movie.
The clever thing about this movie, which is written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who conceived of the story for Best Picture winner Moonlight, is that the movie is about the Burke's plan while also being about something else. It's somewhat of a message picture - the fucked up nature of sports exploiting young black athletes specifically - without necessarily feeling like a message picture.
It illustrates the downfalls of modern sports leagues in a way that is exposed by a lockout. It could feel like the movie only exists to express a certain message and it's clear that's why McCraney wanted to write this movie - but it's not hamstrung by that fact. The message feels like a logical extension of what would happen during a lockout, not a forced message.
Unlike in Unsane, the iPhone doesn't become a crutch or gimmicky either. The movie is beautiful. There are times when you forget that it's shot on an iPhone, in fact you'd probably forget about it for the majority of the movie. Which is why this is a better advertisement for why shooting on an iPhone is a viable solution than Unsane was.
It's kind of weird to have a movie simultaneously be an Ocean's Eleven quality caper without the theft while at the same time revealing a flaw in the capitalistic system of modern sports without either side feeling out of place. And I have to commend both McCraney and Soderbergh for making it work as well as it does.
3/4 stars
High Flying Bird (2019)
To date, Steven Soderbergh has filmed two movies using an iPhone, with Unsane being filmed on an iPhone 7 and this one on an iPhone 8. Of the two movies, Unsane has the better justification for using an iPhone, but High Flying Bird is the better advertisement for the feasibility of filming a movie that way.
The movie follows Ray Burke, who is a high powered agent whose job is at stake due to a fictional NBA lockout that has been going on for a few months at the start of the movie. Burke and the agency he works for are running out of money. Players don't get paid, agents don't either.
On the players' side, he is helped by his "not his assistant" Sam, played by Zazie Beetz (Atlanta). He also frequently talks to the head of negotiations for the players, Myra (Sonja Sohn), and head of negotations for the NBA, David (Kyle MacLachlan). And while he presumably has more than a few clients, we really only see his top client, the future #1 pick of the NBA draft, Erick Scott (played by American Vandal's Melvin Gregg).
Without spoiling the movie, essentially what happens is with no prospect of future employment and no seeming rush on either side to get a deal done, Burke has to enact a plan to get both his agency and himself money, so as to avoid being let go. The movie has the makings of a heist movie despite no theft occurring. But the plot is revealed in a very similar way to a heist movie.
The clever thing about this movie, which is written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who conceived of the story for Best Picture winner Moonlight, is that the movie is about the Burke's plan while also being about something else. It's somewhat of a message picture - the fucked up nature of sports exploiting young black athletes specifically - without necessarily feeling like a message picture.
It illustrates the downfalls of modern sports leagues in a way that is exposed by a lockout. It could feel like the movie only exists to express a certain message and it's clear that's why McCraney wanted to write this movie - but it's not hamstrung by that fact. The message feels like a logical extension of what would happen during a lockout, not a forced message.
Unlike in Unsane, the iPhone doesn't become a crutch or gimmicky either. The movie is beautiful. There are times when you forget that it's shot on an iPhone, in fact you'd probably forget about it for the majority of the movie. Which is why this is a better advertisement for why shooting on an iPhone is a viable solution than Unsane was.
It's kind of weird to have a movie simultaneously be an Ocean's Eleven quality caper without the theft while at the same time revealing a flaw in the capitalistic system of modern sports without either side feeling out of place. And I have to commend both McCraney and Soderbergh for making it work as well as it does.
3/4 stars
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 18
Intro
Unsane (2018)
Steven Soderbergh must get bored directing. That's the only explanation for why he continuously makes experimental movies. But they're not experimental movies in content. No his type of experiment is more "What if I filmed a movie with real people and not actors?" and "What if I shot the entire movie on iPhone 7?"
Unsane is the first of two movies filmed entirely on an iPhone, and it's entirely possible he plans to make more movies this way. Why? I don't know. Because he can is the best I can come up with. The artistic reasons to do so seem... flimsy. It's possible it's some sort of message to the general public that they too can make movies.
Which if that's his message, I don't think his message is effective. Unsane is an ugly, ugly movie, and it's ugly for a reason, but if anyone else is making a movie this ugly, they won't get away with it. They just won't. He proves that he can make a visually more appealing movie on an iPhone in the next movie I'll cover, but for this one, he makes it visually unappealing.
Unsane is about a woman who we quickly find out left her hometown to escape a stalker, a point you can probably gather from the opening shots, which are both shot at a distant and coming on an iPhone, which is pretty effective to quickly convey her state of mind at the time.
Anyway, through a few plot things that you need to hand wave away because the coincidences are astronomical, she finds herself unwillingly in a mental hospital. This was the most effective and uncomfortable part of the movie. She is trapper in there because she made an offhand comment that got her locked up, but shouldn't have, and she keeps making things worse for herself.
That's the other thing. The main character is not remotely likable. Claire Foy plays her as paranoid and rude and better than everyone in the mental hospital. Which is part of the reason she keeps making things worse. It does make it somewhat hard to care about her when you would simply not like her in real life.
She's told the ropes by an undercover journalist, played by Jay Pharoah. Well, we think he's an undercover journalist. This is a mental hospital after all. Pharoah brings a much needed lightness and charm to her everyday life and is a strong part of the movie.
The movie takes a turn, an unbelievable turn - like I said the astronomical coincidences of the movie - and I wouldn't exactly say it's the worse for it, but it is much less interesting in the second half. No less uncomfortable though. The ugliness, the awkward shots are still present.
All in all, an interesting experiment to be sure. And it's no doubt effective at what it's trying to do through using the iPhone, but I do wish the iPhone was used more sparingly and not during the entire movie. Plus, the movie goes from frighteningly realistic to absurd by the end. So I can't really give this my recommendation. But I do appreciate that all of Soderbergh's experiments are for a reason and the story here certainly justifies the reason, despite my complaints.
2/4 stars
Unsane (2018)
Steven Soderbergh must get bored directing. That's the only explanation for why he continuously makes experimental movies. But they're not experimental movies in content. No his type of experiment is more "What if I filmed a movie with real people and not actors?" and "What if I shot the entire movie on iPhone 7?"
Unsane is the first of two movies filmed entirely on an iPhone, and it's entirely possible he plans to make more movies this way. Why? I don't know. Because he can is the best I can come up with. The artistic reasons to do so seem... flimsy. It's possible it's some sort of message to the general public that they too can make movies.
Which if that's his message, I don't think his message is effective. Unsane is an ugly, ugly movie, and it's ugly for a reason, but if anyone else is making a movie this ugly, they won't get away with it. They just won't. He proves that he can make a visually more appealing movie on an iPhone in the next movie I'll cover, but for this one, he makes it visually unappealing.
Unsane is about a woman who we quickly find out left her hometown to escape a stalker, a point you can probably gather from the opening shots, which are both shot at a distant and coming on an iPhone, which is pretty effective to quickly convey her state of mind at the time.
Anyway, through a few plot things that you need to hand wave away because the coincidences are astronomical, she finds herself unwillingly in a mental hospital. This was the most effective and uncomfortable part of the movie. She is trapper in there because she made an offhand comment that got her locked up, but shouldn't have, and she keeps making things worse for herself.
That's the other thing. The main character is not remotely likable. Claire Foy plays her as paranoid and rude and better than everyone in the mental hospital. Which is part of the reason she keeps making things worse. It does make it somewhat hard to care about her when you would simply not like her in real life.
She's told the ropes by an undercover journalist, played by Jay Pharoah. Well, we think he's an undercover journalist. This is a mental hospital after all. Pharoah brings a much needed lightness and charm to her everyday life and is a strong part of the movie.
The movie takes a turn, an unbelievable turn - like I said the astronomical coincidences of the movie - and I wouldn't exactly say it's the worse for it, but it is much less interesting in the second half. No less uncomfortable though. The ugliness, the awkward shots are still present.
All in all, an interesting experiment to be sure. And it's no doubt effective at what it's trying to do through using the iPhone, but I do wish the iPhone was used more sparingly and not during the entire movie. Plus, the movie goes from frighteningly realistic to absurd by the end. So I can't really give this my recommendation. But I do appreciate that all of Soderbergh's experiments are for a reason and the story here certainly justifies the reason, despite my complaints.
2/4 stars
Monday, July 6, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 17
Intro
The Movies of Spalding Gray
Going through the filmography, there is one thing that is abundantly clear: the guy really, really liked Spalding Gray. He cast him in King of the Hill, the excellent 1993 movie that I've already seen. He featured him in Gray's Anatomy, made in 1996, which is just Gray monologuing for an hour and 20 minutes. And he made a documentary about his life, And Everything is Going to be Fine.
I'm combining the documentary and the monologue because there's not enough to say separately about the two movies, or at least there's very little distinction on what I can say. I'll just say: I think the appeal of Spalding Gray is a "you had to be there" thing. He was apparently revolutionary with his monologues, which were personal and literally was just him on a stage with very little in the way of props.
I don't really get it. And to be fair, I think this is probably a deal where it's more compelling when you're literally in the audience and he's talking to you, and not to a screen. And in Everything is Going to be Fine, he brings up audience members which I can imagine makes for a cool experience of actually being there.
But to listen to Spalding Gray talk for 100 minutes or more, while he sits in a chair and does not really much else? That's what Gray's Anatomy is. Soderbergh does what he can - I really don't think he can do more than he does without it being distracting, but the simple fact is that Gray's story is just not that interesting. Or at least the story he tells in Gray's Anatomy. He visits a doctor about his eyes, he needs surgery, he searches for alternative surgeries, he eventually gets the surgery. That's not a story worth the runtime of this movie.
The documentary fares better, which dispenses with a voiceover or even interviews from other people, and just lets Spalding Gray talk for himself. Gray, who by the point of the documentary had committed suicide due to the pain from a previous car crash, tells his entire life story in interviews and in his own monologues. So that's the documentary.
At first, I wasn't that engaged with it, but towards the end, it grabbed my attention. That's because right around the time when he gets in the car crash, the documentary takes on this very tragic tone that moved me. And it's entirely through hearing Gray speak himself. And having known of his fate going in, the effectiveness starts a little earlier when he'd say things in his monologue that are tragic when you know his fate.
So if you're going to watch one Soderbergh feature about Spalding Gray, you should watch the documentary. It also functions are sort of a "Best of" feature, as it goes through his career, and I get the feeling the monologue in Gray's Anatomy was one of his weaker ones. Just a gut feeling on that one.
I don't know if I would necessarily recommend either though unless you're interested in Spalding Gray and his part in pop culture. As a rule, a biopic or a documentary is usually only compelling if you're interested in the subject, and there's only so much you can do if you're not. But the documentary is certainly a good look on his life.
Gray's Anatomy - 1.5/4 stars
And Everything Will Be Fine - 3/4 stars
The Movies of Spalding Gray
Going through the filmography, there is one thing that is abundantly clear: the guy really, really liked Spalding Gray. He cast him in King of the Hill, the excellent 1993 movie that I've already seen. He featured him in Gray's Anatomy, made in 1996, which is just Gray monologuing for an hour and 20 minutes. And he made a documentary about his life, And Everything is Going to be Fine.
I'm combining the documentary and the monologue because there's not enough to say separately about the two movies, or at least there's very little distinction on what I can say. I'll just say: I think the appeal of Spalding Gray is a "you had to be there" thing. He was apparently revolutionary with his monologues, which were personal and literally was just him on a stage with very little in the way of props.
I don't really get it. And to be fair, I think this is probably a deal where it's more compelling when you're literally in the audience and he's talking to you, and not to a screen. And in Everything is Going to be Fine, he brings up audience members which I can imagine makes for a cool experience of actually being there.
But to listen to Spalding Gray talk for 100 minutes or more, while he sits in a chair and does not really much else? That's what Gray's Anatomy is. Soderbergh does what he can - I really don't think he can do more than he does without it being distracting, but the simple fact is that Gray's story is just not that interesting. Or at least the story he tells in Gray's Anatomy. He visits a doctor about his eyes, he needs surgery, he searches for alternative surgeries, he eventually gets the surgery. That's not a story worth the runtime of this movie.
The documentary fares better, which dispenses with a voiceover or even interviews from other people, and just lets Spalding Gray talk for himself. Gray, who by the point of the documentary had committed suicide due to the pain from a previous car crash, tells his entire life story in interviews and in his own monologues. So that's the documentary.
At first, I wasn't that engaged with it, but towards the end, it grabbed my attention. That's because right around the time when he gets in the car crash, the documentary takes on this very tragic tone that moved me. And it's entirely through hearing Gray speak himself. And having known of his fate going in, the effectiveness starts a little earlier when he'd say things in his monologue that are tragic when you know his fate.
So if you're going to watch one Soderbergh feature about Spalding Gray, you should watch the documentary. It also functions are sort of a "Best of" feature, as it goes through his career, and I get the feeling the monologue in Gray's Anatomy was one of his weaker ones. Just a gut feeling on that one.
I don't know if I would necessarily recommend either though unless you're interested in Spalding Gray and his part in pop culture. As a rule, a biopic or a documentary is usually only compelling if you're interested in the subject, and there's only so much you can do if you're not. But the documentary is certainly a good look on his life.
Gray's Anatomy - 1.5/4 stars
And Everything Will Be Fine - 3/4 stars
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Soderbergh Marathon: Part 16
Intro
Contagion (2011)
When I started this project, I certainly didn't think this movie would become shockingly relevant. Indeed, the subject matter of the movie is a pandemic that sweeps the world, although the pandemic that sweeps the world of Contagion seems to be considerably worse and with like a 25% death rate, which I would never walk outside if that was the death rate right now.
So the movie was not as difficult a watch as I thought it might be - watching a movie about a pandemic while a pandemic is literally happening could in theory be a tough watch. But I think I watched this at the right time. We still don't know a lot about the virus, but I think it's safe to say that the virus in Contagion seems infinitely worse. Had I watched this when it was early March, yeah it might have been a worse experience.
The movie is very economical about its approach - this happens, then this happens, then this happens. There's no wasted subplot. This is how the virus starts, you see how it spreads easily, you see the reaction, and you see the eventual cure. Soderbergh and writer Scott Z Burns took painstaking measures to make the movie seem accurate.
The movie mostly succeeds and in fact part of the reason it doesn't completely succeed is because Jude Law's conspiracy character happens to be the fucking president of the United States. Yeah I'm sure if I watched this in 2011, I might take issue with his character, but holy shit was this character's involvement prescient.
This movie doesn't really require big name actors, but one of the benefits of hiring such actors is that you don't need to work as hard to make the death shock you. I know I was surprised when Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies ten minutes into the movie. She gets more screentime through flashbacks, but that's a hell of a role to give to an A lister. It wasn't the first time an A list actor died surprisingly early in the movie either.
The vaccine seems to come a bit too quickly in this movie as well. The chief advisor to the movie said it's possible, but there's talk of the vaccine being widely available as early as December and January and that's wildly optimistic. The vaccine gets made in like 20 days in this movie. Not a huge issue, and I'm not really sure how you'd go about making a vaccine that takes months to work in a movie like this.
As far as the actors, they aren't asked to do much, which is I guess why you hire the professionals. The movie is essentially a series of plot points told in an entertaining fashion, so the actors need to act like real people. They do that successfully. Kate Winslet is a standout, but of course Matt Damon is the "lead" if you had to pick one, although it's clearly an ensemble movie. Laurence Fishburne is the other "lead" so to speak, and he gets a bit more to do than the rest, and he's more than capable. Then there's the appropriately despicable Jude Law character, which Law doesn't overplay, he just lets the sliminess speak for itself.
I also have to give credit to the Soderbergh for making shots of the poles in buses and subway trains look as threatening and scary as any killer with a knife. All I know is that I will be wary of what I touch when I feel sick when this pandemic passes, because it really is easy to pass this stuff if you go out in public.
Anyway, Contagion holds up. It seems pretty realistic. You hear terms in this movie like social distancing that are all over the place now, which gave me a very weird feeling. Like that's how realistic this movie feels at times. If you're feeling apprehensive about watching it due to now, the only real frightening, hard to watch part is the Jude Law character. But otherwise, it's an easier watch than you'd think and that's a credit to Soderbergh's direction.
3.5/4 stars
Contagion (2011)
When I started this project, I certainly didn't think this movie would become shockingly relevant. Indeed, the subject matter of the movie is a pandemic that sweeps the world, although the pandemic that sweeps the world of Contagion seems to be considerably worse and with like a 25% death rate, which I would never walk outside if that was the death rate right now.
So the movie was not as difficult a watch as I thought it might be - watching a movie about a pandemic while a pandemic is literally happening could in theory be a tough watch. But I think I watched this at the right time. We still don't know a lot about the virus, but I think it's safe to say that the virus in Contagion seems infinitely worse. Had I watched this when it was early March, yeah it might have been a worse experience.
The movie is very economical about its approach - this happens, then this happens, then this happens. There's no wasted subplot. This is how the virus starts, you see how it spreads easily, you see the reaction, and you see the eventual cure. Soderbergh and writer Scott Z Burns took painstaking measures to make the movie seem accurate.
The movie mostly succeeds and in fact part of the reason it doesn't completely succeed is because Jude Law's conspiracy character happens to be the fucking president of the United States. Yeah I'm sure if I watched this in 2011, I might take issue with his character, but holy shit was this character's involvement prescient.
This movie doesn't really require big name actors, but one of the benefits of hiring such actors is that you don't need to work as hard to make the death shock you. I know I was surprised when Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies ten minutes into the movie. She gets more screentime through flashbacks, but that's a hell of a role to give to an A lister. It wasn't the first time an A list actor died surprisingly early in the movie either.
The vaccine seems to come a bit too quickly in this movie as well. The chief advisor to the movie said it's possible, but there's talk of the vaccine being widely available as early as December and January and that's wildly optimistic. The vaccine gets made in like 20 days in this movie. Not a huge issue, and I'm not really sure how you'd go about making a vaccine that takes months to work in a movie like this.
As far as the actors, they aren't asked to do much, which is I guess why you hire the professionals. The movie is essentially a series of plot points told in an entertaining fashion, so the actors need to act like real people. They do that successfully. Kate Winslet is a standout, but of course Matt Damon is the "lead" if you had to pick one, although it's clearly an ensemble movie. Laurence Fishburne is the other "lead" so to speak, and he gets a bit more to do than the rest, and he's more than capable. Then there's the appropriately despicable Jude Law character, which Law doesn't overplay, he just lets the sliminess speak for itself.
I also have to give credit to the Soderbergh for making shots of the poles in buses and subway trains look as threatening and scary as any killer with a knife. All I know is that I will be wary of what I touch when I feel sick when this pandemic passes, because it really is easy to pass this stuff if you go out in public.
Anyway, Contagion holds up. It seems pretty realistic. You hear terms in this movie like social distancing that are all over the place now, which gave me a very weird feeling. Like that's how realistic this movie feels at times. If you're feeling apprehensive about watching it due to now, the only real frightening, hard to watch part is the Jude Law character. But otherwise, it's an easier watch than you'd think and that's a credit to Soderbergh's direction.
3.5/4 stars
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