Commercialism
When Steven Soderbergh accepted the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for his brilliant debut, sex, lies, and videotape, he was twenty-six, a year older than Orson Welles when the latter made Citizen Kane. Soderbergh's youth, combined with the verve and original cinematic technique of his first film, was remarked on obliquely by himself as he stood on the stage at Cannes, saying, "It's all downhill from here."
Having hit a home run as an unknown, expectations for Soderbergh's work have always been high. I've never failed to be impressed by his technique, while early on, his second and third films, Kafka and King of the Hill, continued the originality and experimentation of his debut. His fourth film, The Underneath, a remake of a much better 1940s heist picture with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne de Carlo, has the Soderbergh style, but lacks depth, a problem showing up in some of his later work.
His artistry is unquestionable; interesting camera angles, character-driven scripts (though sometimes overwritten, as in characters not talking like normal people, delivering lines that fit perfectly within conversations, like in a sitcom), and he's attracted a large company over the years of good actors and actresses.
One of his best films, The Limey, a straightforward revenge story, is driven by great performances by Peter Fonda and Terence Stamp, two actors who, by the 1990s, were well out of the mainstream and ill-regarded as viable stars.
I was asked by a reader of this blog to write a review on "a movie starring people who aren't dead." This request had to do with my tendency to concentrate on old films, such as my reviews of Valentino's work. Okay, I looked around on the Amazon Prime menu, found a film with a thumbnail that looked intriguing: Logan Lucky. What intrigued me was the presence of Daniel Craig (the latest James Bond) sandwiched between two other actors I couldn't identify. I'd never heard of the film even though it came out in 2017. I don't remember ads for it, so I played it.
It takes place in West Virginia and Charlotte, North Carolina, with emphasis on the Charlotte Motor Speedway, a NASCAR event of high importance if you're into that kind of thing. There's a large cash heist in the film, planned out by two brothers (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver). Robbing a racetrack is a premise used by Stanley Kubrick in the great film noir, The Killing. That film, to its advantage, lacked the padding of Logan Lucky but padding seems to be a habit of contemporary American films as they seek to get as much as possible out of huge budgets and stars, some of them grossly overpaid in each film to the point where one wonders why they don't start acting for free.
Since every character in the movie is not a poor or lower middle class Southerner, they're acting the parts as best they can, with Daniel Craig doing quite a good job, his real English accent concealed. He's the one with the knowhow to get into the vault underneath the speedway during the race. Like in the Ocean's trilogy, Soderbergh delves into the mechanics of a heist, giving backstory after the fact. Hey, turns out Channing Tatum's sister (played by Elvis Presley's granddaughter Riley Keough) was actively in on the heist, while we thought she was just the getaway driver. Turns out that Daniel Craig's two dumb brothers got screwed out of the payoff on purpose. These flashbacks have no point. Soderbergh could incorporate them into the film instead of playing with his audience by making them feel confused, thinking, as I did, "Why the fuck did Channing Tatum give all the money back to the Speedway?"
Oh, turns out he didn't give the money back, or at least all of it! I don't understand the purpose of telling a story this way, although it's interesting to note that in sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh backtracks, but in a much more effective way, a testament to how much his four characters in that film are more solid and interesting than characters in standard Hollywood movies these days.
When he applies himself to a small story, like with The Limey, Soderbergh seems more effective to me, although I haven't seen most of his movies. He's been active as a director since 1989 so there's a wide variety of films to view.
Every time Riley Keough was onscreen I had a good time with Logan Lucky. I first saw her in The Runaways, a great film about Joan Jett and Lita Ford's 1970s band of that name. Cherie Currie, the singer, is played by Dakota Fanning, with Cherie's sister Marie played by Riley Keough. She has a very still and hypnotic screen presence. That she's Elvis's and Priscilla Presley's granddaughter adds to the fascination.
The movie took a distinct downturn for me during the prelude to the opening of the race, the "National Anthem" sung by LeAnn Rimes with a fighter jet flyover, military helicopters, a big American flag, lots of soldiers, the NASCAR vehicles covered like plague sores with advertising. NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon and Darrell Waltrip, playing themselves, are interviewed, and the whole NASCAR patriotism sequence has absolutely nothing to do with the film's plot, but must be an obvious bow on Soderbergh's part at NASCAR and the Defense Department for permission to use images of their products that serve capitalism and war.
Thinking of the upstart twenty-six year old Soderbergh, with his quirky debut film masterpiece in 1989, its story involving only four characters, the movie shot in New Orleans--a film of ideas and dark wit--I agree with his statement at Cannes that this typically American patriotic cinematic moment in Logan Lucky is part of the "downhill" he couldn't yet see but perhaps knew was coming if he chose to work within traditional Hollywood business structures.
The appearance near the film's end of Hilary Swank as an FBI agent investigating the Speedway heist perked me up. I haven't seen enough of her in recent years. She has a commanding presence and should've been in the film earlier, as an antagonist to the thieves, instead of an afterthought, as if she's being set up for a sequel, which doesn't seem a likely project, although Soderbergh did drive the Ocean's idea far beyond where it should have stopped.
Vic Neptune
When Steven Soderbergh accepted the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival for his brilliant debut, sex, lies, and videotape, he was twenty-six, a year older than Orson Welles when the latter made Citizen Kane. Soderbergh's youth, combined with the verve and original cinematic technique of his first film, was remarked on obliquely by himself as he stood on the stage at Cannes, saying, "It's all downhill from here."
Having hit a home run as an unknown, expectations for Soderbergh's work have always been high. I've never failed to be impressed by his technique, while early on, his second and third films, Kafka and King of the Hill, continued the originality and experimentation of his debut. His fourth film, The Underneath, a remake of a much better 1940s heist picture with Burt Lancaster and Yvonne de Carlo, has the Soderbergh style, but lacks depth, a problem showing up in some of his later work.
His artistry is unquestionable; interesting camera angles, character-driven scripts (though sometimes overwritten, as in characters not talking like normal people, delivering lines that fit perfectly within conversations, like in a sitcom), and he's attracted a large company over the years of good actors and actresses.
One of his best films, The Limey, a straightforward revenge story, is driven by great performances by Peter Fonda and Terence Stamp, two actors who, by the 1990s, were well out of the mainstream and ill-regarded as viable stars.
I was asked by a reader of this blog to write a review on "a movie starring people who aren't dead." This request had to do with my tendency to concentrate on old films, such as my reviews of Valentino's work. Okay, I looked around on the Amazon Prime menu, found a film with a thumbnail that looked intriguing: Logan Lucky. What intrigued me was the presence of Daniel Craig (the latest James Bond) sandwiched between two other actors I couldn't identify. I'd never heard of the film even though it came out in 2017. I don't remember ads for it, so I played it.
It takes place in West Virginia and Charlotte, North Carolina, with emphasis on the Charlotte Motor Speedway, a NASCAR event of high importance if you're into that kind of thing. There's a large cash heist in the film, planned out by two brothers (Channing Tatum and Adam Driver). Robbing a racetrack is a premise used by Stanley Kubrick in the great film noir, The Killing. That film, to its advantage, lacked the padding of Logan Lucky but padding seems to be a habit of contemporary American films as they seek to get as much as possible out of huge budgets and stars, some of them grossly overpaid in each film to the point where one wonders why they don't start acting for free.
Since every character in the movie is not a poor or lower middle class Southerner, they're acting the parts as best they can, with Daniel Craig doing quite a good job, his real English accent concealed. He's the one with the knowhow to get into the vault underneath the speedway during the race. Like in the Ocean's trilogy, Soderbergh delves into the mechanics of a heist, giving backstory after the fact. Hey, turns out Channing Tatum's sister (played by Elvis Presley's granddaughter Riley Keough) was actively in on the heist, while we thought she was just the getaway driver. Turns out that Daniel Craig's two dumb brothers got screwed out of the payoff on purpose. These flashbacks have no point. Soderbergh could incorporate them into the film instead of playing with his audience by making them feel confused, thinking, as I did, "Why the fuck did Channing Tatum give all the money back to the Speedway?"
Oh, turns out he didn't give the money back, or at least all of it! I don't understand the purpose of telling a story this way, although it's interesting to note that in sex, lies, and videotape, Soderbergh backtracks, but in a much more effective way, a testament to how much his four characters in that film are more solid and interesting than characters in standard Hollywood movies these days.
When he applies himself to a small story, like with The Limey, Soderbergh seems more effective to me, although I haven't seen most of his movies. He's been active as a director since 1989 so there's a wide variety of films to view.
Every time Riley Keough was onscreen I had a good time with Logan Lucky. I first saw her in The Runaways, a great film about Joan Jett and Lita Ford's 1970s band of that name. Cherie Currie, the singer, is played by Dakota Fanning, with Cherie's sister Marie played by Riley Keough. She has a very still and hypnotic screen presence. That she's Elvis's and Priscilla Presley's granddaughter adds to the fascination.
The movie took a distinct downturn for me during the prelude to the opening of the race, the "National Anthem" sung by LeAnn Rimes with a fighter jet flyover, military helicopters, a big American flag, lots of soldiers, the NASCAR vehicles covered like plague sores with advertising. NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon and Darrell Waltrip, playing themselves, are interviewed, and the whole NASCAR patriotism sequence has absolutely nothing to do with the film's plot, but must be an obvious bow on Soderbergh's part at NASCAR and the Defense Department for permission to use images of their products that serve capitalism and war.
Thinking of the upstart twenty-six year old Soderbergh, with his quirky debut film masterpiece in 1989, its story involving only four characters, the movie shot in New Orleans--a film of ideas and dark wit--I agree with his statement at Cannes that this typically American patriotic cinematic moment in Logan Lucky is part of the "downhill" he couldn't yet see but perhaps knew was coming if he chose to work within traditional Hollywood business structures.
The appearance near the film's end of Hilary Swank as an FBI agent investigating the Speedway heist perked me up. I haven't seen enough of her in recent years. She has a commanding presence and should've been in the film earlier, as an antagonist to the thieves, instead of an afterthought, as if she's being set up for a sequel, which doesn't seem a likely project, although Soderbergh did drive the Ocean's idea far beyond where it should have stopped.
Vic Neptune
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