Soderbergh Marathon: Part 26

Intro

Magic Mike (2012)

I can officially say I've seen every Steven Soderbergh movie.  With a career that started in 1989 and has continued into 2019, I have seen a whopping 31 movies directed by Steven Sodebergh.  In hindsight, I would have skipped a few.  I'm thinking specifically of the Spalding Gray movies, which were not his worst work by any means, but just seemed singularly for Spalding Gray fans and weren't really Soderbergh movies.  

He has a completed movie and one in pre-production so it will not be long before I can't say I've seen every movie.  Although one of those movies appears to be a Meryl Streep movie and the other features Jon Hamm, so I will probably watch both of those movies too.  What's two more movies when you've seen 31 already?

Onto the movie of the day, I am eight years behind the zeitgeist on this one.  I don't think I avoided this movie for any particular reason.  I probably didn't even know Steven Soderbergh directed it so I didn't really have a reason to watch it.  It got solid reviews, but not the type of reviews to make me go see a movie I'm not particularly interested in.

This is the type of movie that is not quite what it seems like it is while at the same time surely not disappointing anyone who thinks it's that type of movie.  Which is probably why it made a ton of money!  If you're there to see Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey strip and put on a show, well it certainly gives the audience what it wants.

This is actually pretty unusually structured movie.  It is, on the surface, something of a romantic comedy while not having the tone of a romantic comedy at all.  It's not clear there's even a true romance until the end in fact.  Yeah they flirt and have some chemistry, but right when a normal romantic comedy would address their relationship, they address the fall of the young stripper instead.

The least compelling aspect of this movie is probably the young stripper, Adam, played by Alex Pettyfer.  It's pretty standard young guys gets in over his head, resorts to drugs, has downfall.  It's not the main part of the movie, and the turn to drugs moment is a lot more casual than most of these movies are to the point where I didn't even realize I was getting that story until, again, the end.

That's basically the movie.  It follows the two normal plots that this kind of movie will typically follow, but it's not totally clear that's where it's headed.  I thought the movie was just going to leave the Mike and Brooke flirtation as just that: a flirtation.  And I didn't necessarily think the movie was going to emphasize the downfall as Adam as much because he quickly becomes not the point of view character.

Magic Mike, as I'm sure most of those reading this know, was created thanks to Tatum's experiences as an 18-year-old stripper.  Oddly enough, the least compelling part of the movie is probably the most like Tatum was at the time.  Tatum, in other words, is not playing his younger self, but I assume a wholly created fictional character.

The appeal of this movie appears to be to see a heretofore unseen subculture of life: the male stripper.  It feels reasonably authentic in its depiction of what it's like to be a male stripper.  You get a sense of what it was like for Tatum to be a stripper, which is I imagine why he wanted this to be a movie.

One thing I was extremely distracted by was the movie's complete ignorance of what I imagine the clientele of a male strip club would be.  Again, I'm assuming and that may make me an asshole, but I think a minority of the attendees would be 20-something, beautiful women.  There would be 1) a lot of middle-aged women I think 2) gay guys 3) 20-something women who aren't models.  And yet you'd think if you became a stripper, everyone who you got to dance for would be a 10.  I know, I know it's a movie, but it's the one thing that ruins the authentic seeming subculture.

It was solid.  I kind of expected to like it more?  I ended with Magic Mike to end with a popular movie, but I had some semblance that it would be great and it's merely fine.

2.5/4 stars

My Thoughts on Interstellar

I don't often feel compelled to write about movies I watch.  But when I do, it's probably because it wasn't a good movie.  For better or worse, it is way easier for me to write about a movie that is not very good and I know exactly why I think it's not very good than to write about an average movie or a good movie.  Even if I know why those movies are good, it's usually not that interesting and it's hard to be more specific than "this part of the movie was good."

Interstellar was not a good movie.  I am truly bewildered by the IMDB score of 8.6 (though IMDB has a weird... thing about Christopher Nolan.  All of his movies are overrated by that site), the critical rating of 74/100 by Metascore, the Rotten Tomatoes of 71% and the 85% of the audience on Rotten Tomatoes who liked the film.  I feel like I watched a different movie than all of these people.  It's not that I don't think I can have a different opinion from the consensus, I'm just not completely sure how people came away from this movie liking it.

This movie is boring.  It's ridiculously slow for most of the movie's running time.  The score is overwhelming in a bad way.  It's really long.  I'm sure all the space stuff is inaccurate, though I honestly don't care.  There's a TON of clunky exposition and nonsense technical jargon.  I'm trying to figure out just how exactly bad this movie would be if Matthew McConaughey wasn't in it.  If this movie fails to be good, he sure as hell doesn't.  (All the actors are pretty good)

All of the above can be somewhat forgiven.  It's not the first good movie that is slow or seemingly too long.  It's definitely not the only movie that seems pretty inaccurate.  Clunky exposition and technical jargon is a tradeoff to getting to the point of the movie faster (which, this movie STILL takes forever despite the sheer amount of exposition and/or meaningless "science" stuff that is said).  But what can't be forgiven is one of the worst endings I have ever seen.  It ruined everything that came before.

Call me twisted, but I would have been very ok if the movie just ended with Cooper dying in space, sacrificing himself so that Brand could very unlikely see her husband.  I would have called this an average movie with great visuals, amazing acting, and good direction.  But... whatever the fuck happened after that is just... awful.  I still don't really understand what happened.  Don't explain it to me either.  It's all bullshit.  He communicated with his daughter in space through I assume a black hole because....... yeah I don't know.  There's not really a logic to it.  Then he gets rescued of all fucking things.  If you're gonna have a bullshit ending where he somehow helps save the world, at least let him be a martyr.

I feel like there are certain movies that get better reviews than the quality of the movie because if you have a checklist of what makes a movie great, it fills enough boxes to at warrant two stars.  You feel guilty giving a well-directed, well-acted film anything below 2 stars because it is well-directed and well-acted.  Most of the time, this correlates to a good movie.  Sometimes, it leads to a movie getting infinitely better reviews than it deserves, because like I said, if a movie is well-directed and well-acted, you expect it to be good.

Interstellar is the exception and my theory above is the only reason I can fathom that it got good reviews.  It didn't get great reviews, but it did get good enough reviews where I would watch a movie based on those reviews.  I don't know.  I just can't put into words my confusion.  There are movies where after watching it, I understand why my opinion diverges from the public or the critics.  This is not one of those movies.  I "know" a movie that critics will tend to overrate and I "know" a movie that the public will overrate.  This doesn't seem like either movie though.  It seems too boring and long for the public to love it, and its ending seems like an awful enough one that I don't know how any critic gave this a great review.  I will never not be confused about this movie, because I do not ever plan on watching this movie again.

1.5/4 stars