Welles Marathon: The Trial (1962)

I'll be honest.  I was not expecting a parallel with Steven Soderbergh at all in this marathon.  In my Soderbergh marathon, I covered Kafka, which was Soderbergh's second movie.  Part of that movie was based on The Trial, one of Kafka's most well-known novels.  And of course, this movie, which came further into Welles career, was based entirely on the novel The Trial.

In both cases, I feel not entirely qualified to judge the movie.  Because both movies seem largely to depend on mood, and that mood is Kafkaesque, a mood I'm not necessarily in tune to, being mostly unfamiliar with the author's work.  I suppose I should read The Trial and watch these movies again and then maybe I'll feel more qualified.

But... that's not what movies are about!  The vast majority of people will never have read the novel, short story, or comic book that a movie is based on, and they're forced to judge the movie on its own merits, not with a preexisting knowledge.  So I can't take that cop-out and just be done with this movie.

Of the two, I think Orson Welles is the more successful movie.  I think it helps that he is just adapting the novel straight while Soderbergh is sort of crafting an original narrative.  There's more of a singular purpose that propels the movie forward, which is Josef K. trying to figure out what crime he's being accused of so he can defend himself.

If there's a weakness in this movie, I think it's inherent in the material.  Which is to say, it's the point.  The movie is almost incoherent about what exactly is happening, but well I feel like that's what the movie is trying to do.  Josef K. has no idea what's going on, and we're just thrust into his world and the absolute insanity of what's happening to him.

Basically, the movie is a mostly faithful adaptation of the novel.  I mean I imagine.  I haven't read it.  But I can see how it'd be easier to portray confusion when you're reading about the perspective of Josef K as opposed to seeing it on screen.  So I think Welles did about the best he could with putting us in the mind of someone who is rightfully paranoid and lost.

I don't really understand the women though.  I know it's in the novel.  But he encounters three separate women who appear to want to fuck him.  Why?  I'm sure there's a reason.  He had some sort of platonic or otherwise relationship with his neighbor, so that one is easy enough to explain.  The others?  Kafka appears to be saying something here but what I do not know.  I had a similar problem with Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where everyone wanted to fuck Tom Cruise.

You can tell this is well-directed.  Not that the narrative really needed the push, but the camera angles add to the uneasy feeling of the movie.  Lots and lots of disorienting camera angles to let you know something's not right.  It certainly adds to the tension of the film.

As for Welles performance, it's about as expected.  At this point in his career, he could be menacing in a bed, and that's exactly what he is.  He had that kind of presence and voice that he didn't really need to do much but be there and talk and you were afraid of him.  Which reportedly transferred to real life whenever he was on set with certain actors, so clearly he just had an intimidating presence about him.  Which was used quite effectively in his movies.

But the real star in the movie is Anthony Perkins, a couple years after Pyscho pigeonholed his career.  He plays a twitchy, nervous guy - nothing like Norman Bates - and he's very good.  I know he was not happy about the way his career developed post-Pyscho, but he also said this role was one of the highlights of his career.

The interesting thing about The Trial is that at first, it basically looks like a filmed stage play.  The first scene is quite long.  He spends time asking the cops what he's being charged with, and then he talks to his two neighbors, and the whole thing lasts like 20 minutes and it appears the 20 minutes is meant to be roughly 20 minutes on screen too.  And as he starts going to new locations, the camera angles start being disorienting.

Anyway, I wish I could say I loved watching this more, but without a specific connection to the novel it's based on, I did not.  I just thought it was a well-made film that I believe was essentially true to the novel, and I think that's all you can ask for in an adaptation.

3.5/4 stars

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

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 25

Intro

Haywire (2011)
We're reaching the endgame folks.  I have just one more movie after this one and I can officially say I have seen every Steven Soderbergh movie.  I can now say I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of him as a filmmaker.  He has three modes to simplify it more than I should: he has his mainstream movies, his experimenting with technology movies, and his genre movies.

Haywire tackles a genre Soderbergh has not yet tackled, and unless the next and last movie I cover is a vastly different movie than I expect, it remains his only movie.  This is Soderbergh's action movie.  I've also seen it called a martial arts movie, which may or may not be true, but if you told me that beforehand, I'd feel like I was misled.

Haywire combines the Lem Dobbs-Soderbergh collaboration for the third time.  Weirdly, the movies are separated by 20 years and if the trend holds, we can expect a fourth collaboration around 2021.  Dobbs has solo writing credit on all three films, and all three oddly enough are pretty damn reliant on the director.  Kafka is completely stylized, The Limey's appeal is basically its editing, and of course Haywire is an action movie, so the action is the appeal, not the dialogue or even the story.

The main function of an action movie is to entertain with action scenes and not let the rest of the movie fuck that up.  Most action movies fail to even deliver on that first part, much less come up with a competent story.   Haywire does however deliver on the action elements.

Soderbergh would make a good action director if he decided to go in that direction.  He films most of the action scenes at a farther distance than most action directors do, so that you can see every punch and kick land.  There's no shaky cam, no 10 cuts for every 5 seconds here.  And he was able to do this because the film's star, Gina Carano, was an MMA star.

About Carano, she will not blow you away as an actress.  But she does what's needed.  She was well-cast, because the character she plays doesn't really require much range, but she does require someone who can convincingly kick ass.  And she convincingly kicks ass!  This is one of those movies where every punch, kick, you can hear and feel.  They seem brutal.  Like I said, Soderbergh could do this any time he wants to if he wanted to, which I doubt.

As far as the second part of a good action movie, the rest of the movie does not fuck up.  It holds together.  It would certainly not stand under scrutiny, but I had no problems following the movie's plot as the movie happened.  And it's hard to tell if the dialogue is specifically good, because well every other part in this movie is like an A-list actor.

Yeah the supporting cast in this movie is insane.  Like ridiculously overqualified.  You have Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Fassbender playing what amount to bit parts.  Well McGregor's is a bit more prominent, but he lurks in the shadows most of the movie, so even he doesn't get a lot of screentime.  You also have a young Michael Angarano and Bill Paxton to round out the cast, and while both of them I would picture in a movie like this even without Soderbergh's involvement, they just add to the acting talent.

All in all, Haywire gives you what you came for and that's really the most important element of an action movie.  You hire Carano to do what she does best - beat people up - and make it look like she's actually beating people up, and you have a successful movie.

3/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 15

Intro

Solaris (2002)
I'm going to compare this movie to a general style made by another, acclaimed director.  For most critics, nearly all of them in fact, this comparison would be complimentary and in fact maybe some of the highest praise you can give to a director.  I am not most critics.

So here is a potential character flaw for me or if you want to be more generous, a blind spot in my movie watching.  I have watched 2.5 Terrance Malick movies and I haven't liked any of them.  They are boring, they are pretentious, and they are mind-numbingly long.  The 0.5 is The Tree of Life, which I don't even think I watched half of that.  I'm not somebody who likes to watch nature for 20 minutes when I'm watching a movie.

So obviously, this is the Soderbergh version of a Terrance Malick movie.  If nothing else, I appreciate that the length of a Malick movie is not the obstacle I think it is - it's just that I don't like his style.  Because Soderbergh understands that ideally movies are less than two hours, his movies get to the point.  And Solaris is a Terrance Malick film if Terrance Malick believed movies could be short.

But like I said, I don't particularly like Terrance Malick movies and I had been blaming the length on that (and it was definitely my problem with A Hidden Life, a movie I may have liked if it was two hours), but it turns out I'm just as capable of disliking a Malick movie that is short.

I guess my problem is that I just don't like movies that are "reflective" and seem to be in a dream-like state?  I mean I don't mind when movies have those two elements, but when that's the whole movie, I personally have nothing to latch onto.  I have not been given a reason to care about the characters, and so I don't care.

The cast is top notch as these type of movies always seem to be.  It requires a strong cast, because there's not a whole lot in the script.  So the actors are forced to do much of the heavy lifting of providing characterization.  There are essentially just five characters in this movie, and one of them is only seen through recordings.

The movie is purposefully distant and designed for you to be disoriented so you're trying to figure out what's going on for a decent portion of the movie.  Which is fine, but between that and the dream-like state, there's very few moments to sketch out the characters, half of which are designed to be hard to read.  Viola Davis is relatively early in her career in this movie and had you seen it in 2002, you could probably predict her rise pretty easily.  She's that good.  Jeremy Davies is at his most Jeremy Davies here.

And the two leads, George Clooney and the distant Natascha McElhone provide the emotional center of the movie.  It's based on a Stanislaw Lem novel and in fact had been made into a movie already.  Solaris as directed by Andrei Tarkovsky was a 167 minute movie.  With how Roger Ebert describes the original movie, that sounds like an actual Terrance Malick film, so I have little doubt I would not like it, since it's also the length of a Terrance Malick film.

So, sorry that I ended up just talking about Malick this whole time, but well it felt like he could have directed this, which if you like his movies, take that as a compliment, but he's personally not for me, so this movie was not for me.

2/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 14

Intro

Ocean's Thirteen
You can take this as a compliment or a negative about Ocean's Thirteen, and I'm not really sure which one it is, but this movie feels like a very typical sequel.  Do the same thing as the first movie.  This movie is exactly the same as the first movie.  Obviously the details are different - and honestly Tess being removed from the equation removes that weakness of the first.  But it's basically the same movie.

You create a villain so that the theft is about more than money.  And while the first one is reasonably strong on the villain part, the third one definitely provides a better one, as played by Al Pacino.  Pacino is fully old age Al Pacino, over the top and loud.  This is not a complaint.  That's what the role is supposed to be.  It's not like Andy Garcia in the first one was a nuanced character.

And really, you do sort of need a better reason than the first for the internal logic of these movies to track.  At this point, they're all filthy rich.  I can buy that Danny Ocean and Rusty both steal for the thrill of it, but the other characters are not developed enough for that to be a worthwhile reason.

So they had their financier, Reuben, get fucked over by Al Pacino's character.  I'm sure he has a name, but I'm just content to call him Al Pacino.  So everybody wants to get revenge on him, which is a perfectly sound motive for a movie like this.

Let's get to the weird part of the movie: Matt Damon's seduction of Ellen Barkin.  Again I am aware these actors all have character names, but this is just easier.  I don't think their scenes are offensive, but they are weird and they take up a significant amount of screen time.  I don't know how many writers wrote these three movies, but it's amazing how poorly they write women.

That's about all I have to say about Ocean's Thirteen really.  It's the same movie as the first.  I enjoyed it.

2.5/4 stars

The Underneath (1995)
When I covered The Good German, which was attempting to be a film noir that looks like it was made in the 1940s - and successfully so I may add - I was under the impression that was his first attempt at film noir.  I was wrong.  Sort of.

The Underneath is actually a remake of a film noir from 1949 Criss Cross.  I haven't seen the original and actually have never even heard of the movie before researching the remake.  Evidently, it's not all that similar to the original.  Which, you know, if you're going to remake a movie, I guess remaking a little known movie that ventures in a different direction is the way to go.

The film noir elements are not immediately obvious, although once you watch the entire movie, it becomes blindingly obvious.  The reason it's not obviously a film noir, at least at first, is because it's set in modern day, I don't believe it has a voiceover, and it's not really structured like a typical film noir either.  But you have the hard on his luck protagonist, the femme fetale, and the double crosses present here.

Again, it only became clear later, and maybe I'm just slow, but beginning does successfully create the general mood that a film noir does.  Sometimes, you'll start the movie with a flash forward, then have the protagonist deliver pulpy voiceovers setting up the movie.

There is no pulpy voiceover, but there is an ominous start, where Michael Chambers, played by Peter Gallagher, is driving a armored car, and it cut to him and a mysterious passenger, later revealed to be the man his mother is marrying (Paul Dooley), which successfully creates the mood that something will go wrong.  Chambers sweats when driving and it's an armored car, so obviously you can draw your own conclusions about what might happen.

Gallagher is great - he's more sympathetic here than he normally is, but his character is no less slimy.  He's a compulsive gambler who left town when he was in a hole, but returns for his mother's marriage.  Allison Elliot is fine, but I feel like her and Elisabeth Shue should have switched parts.  Shue's role is kind of superfluous in this movie - I don't really think the movie is much different if she's not in it, and that's not a commentary on her performance, just her character is an odd addition.  William Fichtner plays a shady, sleazy hoodlum who is dating Chamber's ex - who he of course wants to get back together with.

Anyway, I'd say the two things holding this movie back are Elliot unfortunately, who doesn't quite rise to the level a movie like this demands.  I'm not saying she's bad, just she's in a film noir where she's the femme fetale.  A hard character to pull off admittedly - making a character intentionally not trustworthy, but who nonetheless has an allure that is hard to resist - not all actresses have that ability.  And the other thing is it goes Wild Things on the twists, which works fine on Wild Things, a proudly trashy movie, but this is supposed to be taken more seriously.

2.5/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 13

Intro

Traffic (2000)
Steven Soderbergh has made movies just about every year from 1989 until 2019, with the exception of a short break from 2014 to 2017, and even with that break he's made 30 movies.  Not all 30 of his movies are considered good movie, in fact quite a bit of them are not, but he has made his fair share of critically acclaimed movies and audience favorite movies.

Somehow, in that long career, the Academy Awards decided to shove all their acclaim on him in basically one year.  Erin Brokovich, a movie I didn't particularly like, was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.  Traffic was also nominated for five awards, which also included Best Picture and Best Director.  Traffic won three awards, Erin Brokovich only won one for Julia Roberts' performance.

Erin Brokovich did not deserve all the acclaim, but Traffic absolutely did.  This is the only Oscar he's got for Best Directing and he directed the shit out of this movie.  There are three disparate, mostly unconnected stories attempting to encompass the entirety of the impact of the drug trade through those three stories.  You have the rich dealers, the drug users, and the incompetent attempts to win a drug war.

It is one of the few long Soderbergh movies - it clocks in at 147 minutes - but actually it's about as short as it can be.  Soderbergh seems to have essentially the same mindset as I do - he does not want to make long movies, but given the scope of Traffic, it's inevitable it will run a little longer.  I admire the fact that it's only 147 minutes actually because you could very easily make this longer and the movie would suffer for it.

One of the most obvious directing choices he makes is that he puts a different color scheme for each story.  This was Soderbergh's way of making the audience instantly aware of which story they're following, and it's highly effective.  Even if you're not aware of what he's doing, your brain can pick up on that stuff subconsciously, which makes the movie feel less confusing than it could be.

The cast is of course great, because no great movie has a bad cast.  I'm a little surprise Benicio del Tor won for Best Supporting Actor, not because he's not good, but just because it's not really that flashy?  Like I get why Roberts won, the Academy loves performances like hers, but he's not like obviously doing a better job than the rest of the cast?  He did have to learn a new accent for the part and I like him in just about every movie I've seen him in, so no complaints he got his dues at some point.

This is just a big cast with lots of names who are normally good in their parts.  You have Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones, who are married in real life but oddly I don't think they shared one scene together in this movie.  Kind of funny.  Don Cheadle, saddled with a stereotype in Out of Sight and a bad accent in the Ocean's movies, finally gets a part that does him justice here.  His partner, Luis Guzman, pretty much plays the same part he always does and I dare you to dislike that part.  Topher Grace was hired to play Topher Grace.  I would name more, but there are a shit ton of well-known actors in this movie, at least known to me.

Traffic was one of the few Soderbergh movies I had seen before, and I don't think I fully appreciated it the first time so I'm glad I got to rewatch it.  If any of his movies were to be critically acclaimed, I understand why it was the one and it's well-deserved acclaim.

4/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 12

Intro

Ocean's Twelve
I had seen Ocean's Twelve before and remember not liking it, so my expectations were not terribly high watching this.  As an added bonus, I remembered essentially none of it either.  Now, I don't like to go into a film thinking I won't like it, but if the film is remotely competent or even good, this is an ideal way to watch a movie in my opinion.  An okay movie will be a happy surprise.

This was an okay movie.  It's a weird movie and I think it's disliked because it doesn't really follow the parameters of what a heist movie is.  This doesn't have the fun plans of the first and third entries of the franchise.  Like with most heist movies, you'll have a target to steal and most of the movie will be comprising the team, developing the plans, and executing the heist.  Doesn't exactly work that way in this movie.

On the one hand, I respect the attempt to not repeat the first movie.  This is a vastly different movie than the first movie.  On the other hand, this is pure popcorn entertainment and you're not really giving the audience what they want with how this movie is structured.  I'm not saying you need to follow the formula exactly, but this is just a very oddly structured movie to be honest.

It's just not as fun of a movie, except for the meta moments, which sure straddle the line between being dumb and actually funny.  I still can't decide if I like Julia Roberts pretending to be Julia Roberts even though the subterfuge is basically the highlight of the movie.  Like the very act of acknowledging this is a movie threatens to trample our ability to get engaged in the movie.

Reportedly, they did this because Julia Roberts was pregnant, and I guess they didn't want the character Tess to be pregnant, so that's how they worked that into the script.  It's certainly one way to deal with a pregnancy.

The movie has Brad Pitt's character just so happen to be formerly sleeping with the head detective in charge of catching them and she just so happens to have an ultra famous secretive dad for a thief.  Between that and the meta moments, this just kind of breaks down for me.  It's entertaining to a point, although the thieves constantly getting caught is not what we want to see.

Anyway, my thoughts on the movie are disjointed and confusing because that's kind of how this movie is, just trying to look cool and get you to ignore all the things that don't make sense.  Which is true of all three movies, but it's never been more true than it is for Ocean's Twelve, which is why it's the worst of the three in my opinion.

2/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 11

Intro

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

This is not a fair film for me to grade.  I have seen this movie many, many times.  Sometimes, when I have trouble sleeping, I'll put on a movie I love and the comfort of watching it somehow allows me to fall asleep faster than otherwise.  Ocean's Eleven has been that movie in the past for me.  (There's been a few though the only other one to immediately come to mind is Pulp Fiction).  It's a very fun movie that I wish I could watch for the first time again.

But alas, here I am, watching it with a more critical eye, doing exactly the thing I'd be content with never doing.  It's still a movie I would stop and watch if I ever found it channel surfing.  (Although oddly enough, that's never happened to me even though this seems like it should be an overplayed movie).  So critical me has not ruined the movie for me thankfully.

It did however make me think I was probably wrong with calling this movie obviously worse than Out of Sight.  I don't think I said that in so many words, but it's definitely implied in my review of Out of Sight.  Trying to look at this movie from a more objective point of view, I'm not entirely sure it is better anymore.  I unfortunately watched Out of Sight four years ago, so I don't remember that movie well enough to compare the two.

There's a couple flaws that I noticed upon a rewatch.  The first and biggest is Tess as a character, and by that I mean she's not a character.  It's not clear why she's with Terry Benedict for starters.  The movie is so focused on making Benedict a villain, it forget to give any compelling reason whatsoever why anyone would choose to date him and the reasons that one can come up would make Tess a very shallow character, which I do not think is the movie's intention.

When she chooses to be with Danny, they didn't really do any work to make it seem like that'd be something to do.  Leave Benedict?  Oh sure, they provided enough reasons well before the deciding blow, but leaving one boyfriend does not mean you need to instantly be with an ex-boyfriend.  You are allowed to be single.

Secondly, and this may somewhat be a function of what type of movie this is, but hiding Danny being in on the plan to join Matt Damon's character was dumb.  Not to hide it from us, but to hide it from Damon.  There's no reason why he shouldn't know that he's being joined in the theft.  I know a good heist movie has to have a sleight of hand towards its audience, but it doesn't need to fool the characters themselves too.

The rest of the flaws are basically nitpicks.  Or least not stuff I necessarily noticed the first 10 times I watched the movie.  So the suspension of disbelief required to believe they could pull off this heist was essentially effective for me.  Yeah if you study the movie, you'll notice some things I won't mention, but I don't think most people really thought about the plot holes the first or second times they watched it.

Which goes back to it being unfair to review this film objectively for me.  As I watched this several times when I was quite a bit younger, I was more easily fooled presumably by the movie's tricks, whereas I have no idea if I would have noticed the plot holes my first time watching now.  Nonetheless, you have to expect plot holes for heist films.  It just comes with the territory.

Ocean's Eleven is just about the peak of popcorn blockbuster for me.  Which may be confusing because I'm not giving it a perfect score, but I doubt anyone who watches this will come out of it unhappy.  Everyone has a good time watching this, and I believe that's ultimately what Soderbergh was trying to do, not make "high art."

3/4 stars

Soderbergh Marathon: Part 10

Intro

Kafka (1991)
Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) was an unexpected success, with a budget of only $1.2 million and a box office return of $36.7 million.  The screenplay, written by Steven Soderbergh himself, was nominated for an Academy Award.  As an independent movie, it also cleaned up at the Film Independent Spirit Awards, winning Best Feature, Best Director, Best Female Lead, and Best Supporting Actress.  Needless to say, Soderbergh was allowed to do whatever he wanted for his second feature.

Whatever he wanted turned out to be Kafka, which is supposedly a sort of biopic through a Kafkaesque atmosphere.  I say supposedly, because I am completely unfamiliar with Franz Kafka, the German writer who became famous posthumously, but was completely unknown when he lived.  I feel I'm at a bit of a disadvantage for this.

Of course, his job working in insurance while privately writing on the side with no fanfare was how Kafka spent his life.  I very much doubt the conclusion of this movie has anything to do with his life, but is probably lifted from one or more of his novels.  Again, I wish I had more familiarity with the author himself or the material he wrote.  As such, I do not feel like I'm the target audience for this movie.

Taken on its own terms, this is a very weird movie.  Again I can only assume it has the spirit of a Kafka novel.  The majority of the movie is in black-and-white and boy is it a beautiful looking movie.  I'd be inclined to recommend this purely for how good the movie looks.  The cinematography by Walt Lloyd, also his cinematography for Sex, Lies and Videotape, is excellent.  He won an Independent Spirit Award for his work for this movie.  Curiously, it's his last movie as a cinematographer for Soderbergh.

This is the first movie of Soderbergh's where I didn't really like the acting, although I'm not going to blame the actors.  Jeremy Irons plays Kafka, and he's competent, but he's also the straight man to everything weird that's going around him.  Soderbergh clearly intentionally wants some of his actors to be way over the top at acting and I don't know why.  You'll know if this is for you near immediately, as the very first scene acts as sort of a teaser to unfold the mystery and a guy is being chased and is very exaggerated with his movements.

Then there's "comedy" which consists mostly of twin brothers that don't look alike who are engaging in the broadest comedy imaginable.  It's not a major part of the movie, but it's very weird.  And not particularly funny to be honest.  A reviewer said it was "broad British comedy" so if you happen to know what that looks like, that's in this movie for some odd reason.

This is a movie that has its quirk for reasons, not just for the sake of weird quirks, and yet it's distracting all the same.  This is a movie that probably works very well if you're on the movie's wavelength.  It makes sense that this is considered a cult film to me.  Myself, I wasn't on the movie's wavelength, so I didn't like it that much.

He really swung for the fences on his second movie, and while it didn't work, it did help indicate where his career was headed, constant curveballs in what type of movies he makes.

2/4 stars

Soderbergh: Part 9

Intro

Erin Brokovich (2000)

By my count, Steven Soderbergh has made six movies that I would call a box office hit, although it's possible I'm missing a movie or two seeing as he made 30 movies and I'm not fact checking this.  I have now seen all but Magic Mike.  Three of the movies are the Ocean movies, where the intention is to make a fun heist movie and nothing more.  Out of Sight is trying to be a fun crime comedy and while I haven't seen Magic Mike yet, that movie is I assume trying to be a fun stripper movie.

Erin Brokovich, while not exactly unfun, seems to break the mold of a typical Soderbergh box office hit.  He's clearly trying to make good movies that are also fun, but these are movies that don't pretend they are anything more than what they are.  They are fun escapism movies and Soderbergh knows that.

This movie on the other hand, I'm actually surprised this ended up making as much money as it did.  I think aside from the Ocean movies, this is his next most successful movie at the box office.  And it's... fine?

Here's where my expectations have possibly been unfairly set by Soderbergh himself, but I'm now on movie #10 and the previous nine have all felt like Soderbergh trying to make a different type of movie.  With Erin Brokovich, we have the Oscar bait movie.

That's probably unfair, but this reeks of Oscar bait to me.  I do like some Oscar bait movies, and I think if I had no idea Soderbergh directed this, I'd probably like it more, but I kind of thought he wouldn't make one of these movies.

I think I would have liked this movie more if Erin Brokovich wasn't played by Julia Roberts.  I'm not saying her performance is bad, but her showy performance is why this seems like an Oscar bait movie to me.  Get Julia an Oscar!  It worked of course.  But I never felt like I was watching anybody but Julia Roberts trying to win an Oscar.

It doesn't really help that this is a story that's been told before.  Another unfair thing going against this movie from my perspective - before I wrote this, but after I saw the movie, I watched Dark Waters.  They are basically the same story, but Dark Waters is told better and is a better movie.  This is a good reminder that sometimes the context of you watching a movie can really impact what you think of the movie and the context for me watching Erin Brokovich did it no favors.

I would love to get responses to this to tell me I'm being unfair, but this just straight up seem like a movie designed to get Julia Roberts an Oscar and I was always aware of that when watching.  I honestly do wish I liked this more, but this is the first huge disappointment for me, which granted it was one of the few movies I had expectations for too.

2/4 stars

Soderbergh Maraton: Part 8

Intro

Bubble (2005)

Soderbergh is the perfect director for this feature.  I want to possibly try my hand at other directors once I'm through with Soderbergh's absurdly high number of films, but I'm afraid that it will just be too much of the same with other directors.  Or even the same at all.  As of now, Soderbergh has not made a single film that is remotely like the others.  Nine films in, all are drastically different.

It doesn't get much more different than Bubble, which seems more like an experiment than an actual movie.  The best way to describe this movie is to simply tell you how it's made.  Soderbergh went to West Virginia and scouted non-actors to be in this movie.  The lead actor was found working in a drive-thru at KFC.

After that, there was a "script" which was just an outline.  And the non-actors had to improvise the dialogue on the basis of the outline.  The idea, in theory, was to create a naturalistic and realistic feeling movie.  It's...  sometimes successful at that?

The problem, as far as I see it, is its the worst of both worlds.  At times, it does feel realistic, but it's also painfully boring.  There's a reason why most of our lives wouldn't make good movies.  The entire movie is mostly conversations of things that are just simply not interesting.  And when it doesn't feel realistic, it really does feel like you're watching non-actors who are not skilled in improv trying to improv.

Soderbergh planned to film six movies like this and as far as I know this ended up being the only one.  So I'd called it a failed experiment.  Thankfully, the movie is astonishingly short.  Which makes sense.  What could be called the plot could be written in one sentence and doesn't happen until 45 minutes into the movie.

Roger Ebert loved this movie and god rest his soul, but I do not agree with him.  But if you trust Ebert's opinion, go ahead and search for his review of it, and maybe give it a shot after that.  Myself?  I can't recommend this movie unfortunately.  It's the first true dud for me in this marathon, but at least it's a dud trying something different.

1.5/4 stars