Ocean's 7-Eleven

Steven Soderbergh said Side Effects (2013, Steven Soderbergh) would be the last film he directed.

Remember in summer 2013 when Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine), The Bling Ring (2013, Sofia Coppola), and Pain & Gain (2013, Michael Bay) were all released and all of them had young sexy good looking people performing capers?

Logan Lucky (2017, Steven Soderbergh) is a classic star-studded Hollywood heist comedy set in the South. This is Soderbergh in top form. This is a seasoned veteran auteur working within the narrow confines of the crime genre and pushing the craft to its most effective potential, for a broad audience, playing by the rules, and orchestrating our emotions the whole time knowing he's gonna leave us with a life affirming ode to good people. Soderbergh has done more experimenting in the last 30 years than any other American filmmaker; but he rotates between one for me and one for them. This is maybe his best one for them he's done since the Ocean's trilogy.

And this is really weird, but it sounds like this weekend Logan Lucky didn't perform as well at the box office as some were expecting it should. Could this possibly have anything to do with last weekend's vehicle ramming and deaths during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville? The Hitman's Bodyguard with Samuel L. Jackson debuted to a strong opening at number 1 this weekend. Okay I'll stop here. I'm not supposed to talk about this kind of stuff, it doesn't have anything to do with the movie.

But Logan Lucky is centered on rednecks in West Virginia. And what I couldn't get over was how well paced and funny its story is crafted. Logan Lucky is a strong character piece and reminds me of how intelligent and dramatically effective the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s were. Chan as JIMMY LOGAN and Craig as JOE BANG deliver star performances. Has Daniel Craig ever done a comedy before? He's great in Logan Lucky. The comedy is what did it for me, but progressively I had so many unstoppable crying attacks over sentimental moments that I feared I may have developed a medical condition.

Ever since Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004, Quentin Tarantino) I've claimed that that's the only movie that caused me to cry tears of joy. Every other of the countless moments I've cried in movies have been from sorrow. Logan Lucky bests Kill Bill by having several moments that devastated me with their old-fashioned sweet morals and good nature.

The rest of the cast includes a knockout where has she been Katie Holmes, who really lights up the third act in gold capri pants and a silk leopard tank top; Adam Driver as CLYDE LOGAN, sounding like the manchild from Tideland and acting like DELMAR from O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Katherine Waterston with her same Alien: Covenant doo and looking as adorable as always; also with Seth Macfarlane as a cockney asshole called MAX CHILBLAIN who almost turned the whole thing too silly and into Talladega Nights though.

Some of my favorite of the comic gags involve Jimmy's ongoing hatred of cellphones, like the scene where after the barfight Chilblain's cronies are attempting to phone for help. Seriously, I laughed a lot. And holy crap that scene of the bear in the woods! Who throws in jokes like that? The bear moment defies all logic and is never explained. It's brilliant. I love it! Also, yeah, maybe it's almost too cheesy, but I love the gag with the prison inmates desperate for new George R.R. Martin novels.

What carried me as fast as a speeding NASCAR into the third act was the thrill of hoping maybe they'd get away with it. And without spoiling anything, Logan Lucky caught me off guard and its unpredicted ending impressed the hell out of me. And it also made me love rednecks this weekend. Like any group, they're not all bad. Another thing that works toward making this such a feel good movie is the central father daughter relationship, and how real it feels, bolstered by a chemistry that features exchanges between the way smarter young girl and the father who's proud of her. Man, I didn't know I was so vulnerable to this kind of maudlin confection.

The actress who plays Jimmy's daughter is great. She's whip-smart, clever, funny, and tucks her smartphone in the front waist of her wind pants.

I'm glad I wasn't scared off by the Logan Family Curse and Logan Lucky might be my favorite movie of 2017. It's like Soderbergh is teaching a class on how to apply classic Hollywood basics and almost a miracle that it actually works so well.

The Bitter Pill

Steven Soderbergh says he is retiring from making movies. If so, he's gone out in peak fashion.

The best thing going for Side Effects (2013, Steven Soderbergh) is Scott Z. Burns's whip-smart script. Burns proves to have mastered a delicate balance between positive and negative charged genre blending; yet, the protagonist and antagonist are also balanced along a similar +/- structure; and, this foundation is a very strong mix in the hands of Soderbergh.

Rooney Mara plays Emily Taylor, a mousy, modestly-attired social climber sociopath who freely and carelessly manipulates state and government institutions both legal and medical, deviously and deceptively plying her lethal black widow schemes in service of her own survival. Emily murders her husband and lies her way out of it like a pro. This cynical modern epic crime narrative is the negative charge.

Jude Law plays Dr. Jonathan Banks, an upper-class professional who earnestly tries to treat Emily, a young woman suffering from clinical depression. This is the medical drama narrative that initially cloaks the crime plot. But, ultimately it returns. By the end of the film, Banks or Emily wins--but, that doesn't mean that this hybrid settles on taking sides; because, both are so well balanced.

This is one of the rare instances of the protagonist being all bad (Emily) and the antagonist being all good (Banks).  Furthermore, the reason the hybrid genre characteristic is worth commenting on is because this isn't a twist at the end of the second act--Emily revealed as a faker--due to the fact that Emily may or may not actually be a victim of circumstances and depression and misdiagnoses, as she's initially introduced to be. In a disturbingly modern way, Rooney Mara looks realistically like one of those recent young cute female murderers who the cable tabloid news networks saturate the media with.

Mara's performance is the other standout of the film. She's now part of some kind of elite group, having now worked with David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and Terrence Malick. Those three have been the top-rank Hollywood big-budget, quality filmmaking triumvirate for the past decade and a half. We get a lot of Rooney Mara and Side Effects is a vehicle for her brooding explosive sculptured cypher of beauty. And she screams a might deal fierce, which is still unsettling.

Soderbergh is on his best behavior camera wise. It's like one of the most subdued films he's delivered in the past twenty years--probably somewhere between The Girlfriend Experience (2009) and The Informant! (2009). But his stylized interiors, with the fluttery business of artificial lighting in NYC, and subtle variants within warm and cool sources, are impressively and carefully crafted.

Side Effects lacks an emotional punch. But, Soderbergh, in only 100 minutes, puts us in an emotional choke hold, and keeps us there. The moral is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a common everyday anybody can try to get away with crime at some of the highest stakes imaginable; and this target's success is that it's been brought to the screen in a compact, efficiently executed, sleek and right out of yesterday's headlines panache by Soderbergh, entrenched in his own style, as it should be.

--Dregs

Tampa and Xquisite

It's important to keep up with whatever Steven Soderbergh's doing because he's one of the most talented American Independent filmmakers currently working. He also does studio productions, but it is apparent that creative freedom means a lot to him. There are rumors that he's "given up trying to make important films"; however, his work is nevertheless intriguing because he's finding projects that cost less and he keeps churning them out. His worldview is sophisticated and typically seeks out nuances pertaining to mass media pop culture and to a lesser degree, historical and global political subjects; but, he also knows how to be sexy and gear vehicles toward younger or say, more lowbrow audiences.

Magic Mike (2012, Steven Soderbergh) is both fun and funny. The title character definitely anchors the narrative and Channing Tatum's role in the film is a star turn that capitalizes on his star persona and a reported real life stint as a 19 year old stripper in Tampa. But, in many ways, Matthew McConaghuey steals the show. McConaghuey stars as the owner of the Xsquisite all male revue club, Dallas, and projects such charisma mixed with pastiche of his own star persona that he can come across as the only character with any real life to them.

So if I may backtrack, Magic Mike is a fun movie about Dallas and his career. Dallas is flamboyantly over the top, larger than life, dripping with some West Coast type semblance of what must be an attempt at the country boy mystique, but all the while completely straight-faced about it. At one hilarious moment, Dallas is getting his troops motivated and waxes something like: "This isn't a joke."

But of course we know it is. The tone of the film is that of a familiarly over-recylced narrative: backstage performer drama, or ingenue + veteran performer + power producer/manager + one star ascends as another descends. See also 42nd Street (1933, Lloyd Bacon), A Star Is Born (1937, William Wellman), Stage Door (1937, Gregory La Cava), All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven), Velvet Goldmine (1998, Todd Haynes) or Black Swan (2010, Darren Aronofsky) for examples.

What Magic Mike adds to the backstage performance genre is a well-placed sense of cheapness. The millieu here is morally and ethically on par with Showgirls; however, Showgirls celebrates excess, whereas there's something sad about all of these young dumb sexy kids in Tampa. Mike reminds me of a strata of subculture I perceive as dressing cooler, looking sexier, and partying way more than I do in real life. (I suppose the Olivia Munn charcter is offered as my surrogate.) So, while Mike has no problem getting paid or laid in Tampa, he also suffers from a stasis that he can't quite overcome. And in the film, he isn't equipped to. Mike's practically naïve
to the point of being stupid; or not just naïve, but disaffected. Normally I don't criticize qualms like this so harshly, but I found a few troubling issues with the script:

• Why doesn't Mike ever tell The Kid more, like what's really bugging him?
• Why does Mike give The Kid so much money and not seem to care?
• Why does Mike quit right after giving away his savings?
• Why does Dallas spend the whole movie refusing to dance, then does with no explanation?

In addition to all of this, the scene in the bank where he wears the clear lenses/fake glasses to look professional speaks a lot about what Mike's really all about. He seems to be performing the role of an entrepeneur as if he were onstage in Xquisite. And his table business at first was something I found virtuous, but by the end, like The Kid, I thought it was just stupid crap.

If I'm being hard on Mike, it's actually because I feel genuine sympathy for his character. He's like a Replikant out of Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) in the sense that he's young and stupid and he knows he's about to die. In all seriousness, I find something poetically and profoundly tragic about a thirty year old male stripper.

Okay, so if Vegas is the locus of the glamorous excess found in Showgirls, then Tampa is more of a hotbead for dumb strippers and sorority sleaze. Everyone looks beautiful in this filmed Tampa, but in a cheap and trashy way. Soderbergh matches his content with a form that lets most of the strip club action play out in long takes from very wide angle masters. There's not a lot of camera movement, but Magic Mike doesn't suffer from the filmed-play look that marred The Girlfriend Experience (2009, Soderbergh). He's right--the club is filmed like a real strip club or a document of one, as opposed to a strip club that's been lit like a movie and filmed from a bunch of different coverage.

Finally, to support my claim that there's a cheap theme throughout this movie, I'll just bring up the Warner studio card from the 1970s and the montages. I can't figure out why they used the Seventies Warner logo. Because movies started showing a lot of sex in the Seventies? Because porno movies began being produced in the Seventies? I guess. The visuals are all glittery (the black and white ecstasy deal into red and blue sexcapades particularly proved eye-catching). But the montages in Magic Mike indulge the greatest strength of the montage. To compress time? No--to have cheesy fun. The montages cracked me up almost as much as wathcing the men dance.

No matter who you are, it's weird, but I imagine you'll find this movie hilarious. The theatre I was at was packed with women, but there were explosions of laughter continually throughout the screening. I think there is a sense of as laughing with/not at these courageous exhibitionists.

Riley Keough and her micro pig are awesome in the movie.

--Dregs

What If Salt Wasn't a Cartoon?

With another low end mid sized budget, Haywire (2012) is Steven Soderbergh's latest foray into serving two masters at the box office. The movie appeals to those who will be entertained watching Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) running and getting into hand to hand combat, in no less than five sequences, spanning the entire duration of this whopping ninety minute powder keg; and, it similarly holds a draw for those entertained by watching the conspiratorial intricacies of the ensemble unfold, at an explosive pace, before diving back into themselves for somewhat of a coda.

Late in the film, there's a scene where Michal Douglas plays a high ranking government official who makes comments effectively pathologizing the type of personality Mallory Kane has, which in a way represents the two halves of the audience and how they need each other. He says he knows how it must feel for her to run around, always looking over your shoulder, and how she needs that rush. So, he's admitting that he's exploiting her and that he knows exactly how to do so.

It feels like that's what Soderbergh's done, successfully.

However, it may be unfortunate that there just isn't enough time to connect with any of these characters on any significant level. Moreover, all of the events depicted in the film occur in only eight days. But this unfortunate characteristic distills the very nature of Mallory Kane: she doesn't have time for any of this either, due to the nature of her lifestyle. We're made to feel what it's like to be swept up in her roller coaster of an existence--one second running, the next chasing, constantly.

Most of the film's urban locations are complimented with what sounds like 70s Blacksploitation funk-fused chase tunes. The music never felt intrusive or like it suffered from caricaturing the lead protagonist, which could easily have been the case because of the fantastically high stakes this young woman must negotiate. If however, that sort of thing is your bag, Salt (2010, Phillip Noyce) is nothing short of an absurdist cartoon of the female spy on the run plot. I enjoy Salt, but the difference with Haywire is that I actually think while enjoying it, and can buy into the story.

The cinematography wasn't as expressionistic as Contagion (2011, Soderbergh), which is interesting because it shows Soderbergh's restraint. Or, what I'm trying to say is he could have gone a lot bigger and louder with this, but I like the understated approach. He's still managed to film in predominately daylight (overly blue) or tungsten (overly orange, or yellow) settings, to provide some added dimension to the locations dramatically. And the black and white shots from the mission to rescue Jiang are employed nicely, to distinguish this single narrative thread from a total of three concurrently played out onscreen, ending with all three threads converging in black and white. On the technical side though, the dolly shots tracking Mallory running through the Barcelona back alleys are marvelously fluid and alive with open air realism.

The editing of Mallory's part in the Barcelona mission is so quick and effective. Soderbergh and Stephen Mirrione are able to achieve such precision that it's almost something I take for granted. With Haywire, I wasn't disappointed.

--Dregs

MEV-1 vs. the World

If I were to pitch two stakes at each of the furthest ends my cinematic taste reaches, one would represent the prosaic dramatization of everyday human nature and the other would mark sensuous escape into the fantastic. Or, I look to either be deeply moved or taken for a fun ride; yet, I rarely expect to find a movie that delivers both at once.

Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh) shall be categorized as a fun ride (even though there's nothing fun about a story involving a deadly virus), filled with thrills, that moves along at an assuredly purposeful pace right up until its 100 minute running time expires. And then it's over. The film is so compact and self contained (big pun intended) that you just need to sit back and let it happen to you--the hallmark of all genre films?

While this film may lack a dramatic gravitas that stays with the viewer, its formal achievements are so efficient that this becomes a case of style serving as substance. I am reminded of opening a new toy as a kid and the delight of escaping into a fantastic adventure, right out of the box--that's what watching Contagion feels like.

Fist, there's the music. Cliff Martinez's score surprised the heck out of me. Watching the movie, it was audacious at first. To see the montages concurrently launched with this 80s new wave inspired power synth driving and unifying them cracked me up--but they work. It's difficult for me to describe the affinity I feel for kitschy B movie sci-fi aesthetics, but I've always enjoyed the way space helmets and chemistry sets make me think of cutesy beeps and whirring sf/x. And one Mr. John Carpenter was responsible for the watershed synth score he composed for Halloween (1978, Carpenter), which borrowed from Italian giallo scores from bands like Goblin, influencing generic conventions for decades to follow. But back to Cliff Martinez. The synthesizers aren't something I'm qualified or capable of describing in any significant way, however, the guy goes into some funky Moog solos that rock.

The counterpart to the vibrant, modern scoring of Contagion is Soderbergh's cinematography (Peter Andrews is a pseudonym Soderbergh has used since Traffic). This film's palette strikes me as predominately green and yellow and I think it's because this movie is about people getting very sick and dying from a highly contagious virus. Soderbergh shot this on a RED, so I'm guessing he likely photographed with a color temperature that didn't overly correct for the fluorescent, sodium vapor, metal halide lamps, or even daylight and tungsten fixtures--but these colors also could have been manipulated in post. The later Gwyneth Paltrow scenes make heavy use of a tilt shift in the lens. The tilt shift is a special attachment that allows the lens to shift in the housing of the barrel, but what its effect is turns out to be a soft, blurry distortion surrounding the clearly focused center of the frame (this movie uses it a lot, but I can only think of the regatta in The Social Network (2010, David Fincher) for a comparable reference.)

Somewhat related to the cinematography, Soderbergh's blocking is also notable in that he is increasingly in the habit of composing with out of focus objects in the foreground, which I enjoy. He must be having fun these days. His work is vibrant, youthful and slick.

The structure of the screenplay is what allows for this formal excursion to preserve its focus though. With a simple conflict: deadly MEV-1 outbreak as antagonist vs. Earth as protagonist, the script is composed as a day-by-day account, and to me, cohesively shows everything I wanted to see in the world of this story.

Many will comment about the all-star ensemble, but I'll just say I like Demetri Martin as a CFC scientist who looks a little like an indy nerd hipster and Marion Cotillard is too gorgeous for me to forget who she really is and imagine she's an epidemiologist--she's just so classically glamorous.

There are at least two scenes I'd noticed where two characters from opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum cross paths. There's the janitor (John Hawkes) who seems overly entitled in his demands from the high ranking CDC Dr. (Laurnce Fishburne) and the two passersby the Gwyneth Paltrow character infects: the Ukrainian fashion model and the Chinese busboy. At first I thought this was heavy handed, but then I decided that Soderbergh may be preserving genre conventions from 70s disaster pics where the ensemble typically brought together such disparate figures. I also should bring up Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) as a prototype, and if there're earlier examples in film, I cannot think of them at the moment.

A final though I had concerns the Ukrainian model. I am embarrassed to admit that I've never considered myself qualified to discuss politics and I might not even have a clear grasp on what exactly the word means always, under exceptional contexts. But to me, I think the filmmakers are making a subtle comment about a news item I recall reading about, which reported on the potential regulation of model's BMIs before being allowed to take to the runway. Of the three models, two were eastern European, and one, Snejana Onopka is Ukrainian. So, I think the fact that she is the first character to die, very quickly after being contaminated, may hint that her immune system was the weakest due to her dangerously low BMI. Of course, I admit, this may be an absurd speculation. But, then again.

And there's a subtle narrative point that may be stretched to read an eco-friendly message therein. The film ends with a shot of a bulldozer razing a wild bat habitat, and that bulldozer has an AIMM Alderson placard. AIMM Alderson is the company the Gwyneth Paltrow character was a global sales rep for and the Japanese businessman in the casino takes AIMM Alderson documents on the plane back to Japan with him, inferring that their deal somehow precipitated the entire outbreak. Again, if these are political messages, I'm still not sure. But that's how it looks.

The ending is a simple joy of narrative convention. After allowing yourself to be engrossed in a narrative, paying attention and actively engaging with it, there is often the tendency to show the beginning at the very end. The biggest example may be the entire conception of Lucas's prequel trilogy, ending with Anakin putting on the Darth Vader costume; there're plenty of detractors, Patton Oswalt being one of the funnier. But in Contagion, I still can get a big kick out of seeing the beginning as an epilogue. And screenwriters tend to aim for the goal of "show don't tell," so the Contagion ending can serve as proof of what happens when it's done right.

--Dregs