Based on “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite” by Jake Bernstein “The Laundromat” chronicles the rot that festers on the corrupt body of our financial institutions.
Divided into chapters with names like “Secret Number One: The Meek Are Screwed,” “The Laundromat” is a funny, star-studded portmanteau of thematically linked stories involving tax loopholes, exploitation and financial malfeasance. “All these stories are about money,” says Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas), “the secret lives of money.” Like “The Big Short” it takes the spoonful-of-sugar-to-help-the-medicine-go-down approach to telling a story so dripping with bile you have to laugh to stop from crying.
Meryl Streep is at the helm of this cinematic op-ed playing Ellen Martin, a steely woman whose husband’s death leads her by the nose into the world of fake insurance policies and a shady Panama City law firm run by slicksters Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Fonseca. The flamboyant represent “drug lords, sex traffickers and destroyers of the planet” and also colorfully narrate the action. “Tax avoidance and tax evasion,” says Mossack. “The line between them is as thin as a jailhouse wall.” They’re more interested in the shell companies they control that help line the pockets of their very wealthy clients than the regular Joes affected by their actions. “Bad is such a big word for such a small word.”
As the story splinters into chapters, cameos from Jeffrey Wright (as a secretive insurance broker), Nonso Anozie (as a billionaire who tries to buy his way out of trouble) and David Schwimmer (as a business person screwed by his insurance company) pile up, revealing personal aspects of the dirty business of money laundering. The story wanders here and there but Streep stays on course, lending this ragged movie a strong emotional core.
“The Laundromat” features lively performances—I’m looking at you Oldman and Banderas—timely commentary about whistleblowers and fraud and a rousing fourth-wall-breaking ending and yet, feels like less than the sum of its parts. Director Steven Soderbergh provides some well-crafted big moments but the stories are too far flung and too brief to inspire any real interest in the characters. They come and go with little development (save for Martin), often representing ideas rather than fully formed characters.
Streep plays a double role, an ill-advised choice that feels like a stunt and doesn’t lend much to the telling of the tale, but wraps things up with a wake-up call, asking basic questions—Who is accountable? Where and how do you get justice?—that put a period on this story but should be a starting point for more discussion and thought.
A weekly feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at Wes Anderson’s animated political allegory “Isle of Dog,” Claire Foy as a woman trapped in a mental facility in “Unsane” and “Flower,” starring Zoey Deutch.
Steven Soderbergh’s new movie asks a simple question, Is Sawyer Valentini’s greatest fear real or a delusion? Starring Claire Foy and Jay Pharoah, it takes the legendary director back to basics. Shot entirely with an iPhone camera, it only cost $1.2 million to make.
Foy plays Valentini, a businesswoman with an unhappy life. After a bad one-night stand leads to a panic attack she consults a head-shrinker at a facility called Highland Creek Behavioural Health Facility. In their meeting she divulges something that has been plaguing her, a former stalker. Even though she moved 450 miles away he still haunts her mind. “Rationally I know this is my imagination, but I’m alone in a big city and I never feel safe,” she says, “not for one minute.” Tricked into committing herself—“ There’s some more forms you need to fill out, it’s just routine.”—she is thrust into a house of horrors, surrounded by troubled patients—like the belligerent Violet (Juno Temple)—many, like her, who are there against their will. Her pleas for release fall on deaf ears. Worse, her stalker David (Joshua Leonard) works in the psychiatric ward as an orderly. Or does he? “This man, he’s followed me all the way here from Boston. I’m calling the cops and I want him arrested!”
“Unsane” is a nightmare that stems from not reading the fine print. “They got meds,” says fellow inmate Nate (a terrific Jay Pharoah). “You got insurance. You talk, they find a way to get you committed and you stay as long as your insurance will pay. When they stop paying, you’re cured!” Sawyer’s situation is a political comment on insurance scams and locking up people for profit. It’s a #MeToo thriller—no one believes her stories of stalking—but really, at its heart, “Unsane” is a Gothic b-movie that owes a debt to “The Snakepit” and “Shock Corridor” with some “Gaslight” thrown in for good measure. It’s an examination of women’s voices not being heard of a crumbling medical infrastructure but mostly it’s about Sawyer’s world falling apart and her frustration at not being able to do diddly-squat to put it back together.
Foy is in almost every frame, bringing a frail yet steely presence to the role. She is more than a damsel in distress. By turns charming, cunning, ruthless and jittery, she’s a character designed to keep us guessing. Does she belong in the facility or not? “The Queen” star navigates Sawyer’s personality shifts, zigging and zagging, keeping the audience tantalizingly in the dark as to the truth of her mental state.
“Unsane” has a few clunky moments that detract from the overall feeling of paranoia Soderbergh builds throughout. Beautifully composed and edited “Unsane” still looks like it was shot on an iPhone. Often blown out or bathed in inky blacks it’s an aesthetic we’ve become used to from Instagram and social media videos and it brings and naturalism to the surreal story.
“Unsane” may be low tech but it’s not amateurish. Soderberg expertly builds tension to the point where Sawyer’s frustration is palpable.
A new feature from from ctvnews.ca! The Crouse Review is a quick, hot take on the weekend’s biggest movies! This week Richard looks at “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” withRyan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, the Steven Soderbergh heist film “Lucky Logan” and the social commentary on social media of “Ingrid Goes West.”
Richard and CP24 anchor Jamie Gutfreund have a look at the weekend’s new movies including “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” withRyan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, the Steven Soderbergh heist film “Lucky Logan,” the social commentary on social media of “Ingrid Goes West” and the down ‘n dirty grit of the ironically named “Good Time.”
Richard sits in with CTV NewsChannel anchor Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the big weekend movies including the Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson buddy comedy “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” the Steven Soderbergh heist film “Lucky Logan,” the social commentary on social media of “Ingrid Goes West” and the down ‘n dirty grit of the ironically named “Good Time.”
When all is said and done Adam Driver will likely be remembered for playing Kylo Ren, grandson of villain Darth Vader, in the Star Wars movies. The thirty-three-year-old may be best known for the blockbuster role but it does not define his career. For the star of this weekend’s Logan Lucky, it’s all about a love of acting.
“For me the doing of it is the best,” he told me at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “The things surrounding it don’t matter. Trailers, money, they don’t matter if you get to work with really great people. Hopefully what you’re making is bigger than any one person and it feels relevant, as much as you can attach meaning to your job. The love of collaborating with people who are on the same page is really exciting.”
Perhaps his collaborative spirit came from his time in the United States Marine Corps. Driver, like many young people in the aftermath of 9/11, joined the marines but an injury during a training exercise ended his military career after just three years.
“With the military I grew up very fast,” he says. “Suddenly I was responsible for things that aren’t typical for eighteen or nineteen year olds. Other people’s lives and things like that. It ages you. I loved being in the military but when I got my freedom and could be a civilian again I was interested in perusing acting. I had tunnel vision and there was a big learning curve of learning to be a civilian again; it’s not appropriate to yell at people, people are people and I can’t force my military way of thinking on them. There were a lot of things going on. I am better adjusted now.”
Post marines Driver studied at Julliard—“Believe it or not being in the military,” he laughs, “is very different than being in an acting school.”—became one of the breakout stars of HBO’s Girls and worked on the big screen with luminaries like Steven Spielberg, the Coen Brothers, Martin Scorsese and Logan Lucky director Steven Soderbergh.
“It’s a director’s medium so if I get lucky enough to work with great directors, that’s the only thing as far as a game plan I have,” he says. “I have gotten to do that with really great people and it feels good. I’m lucky in that I get to choose things now, but choose things from what I’m offered. The scale doesn’t matter.”
Since his professional debut in 2009 Driver, who his This Is Where I Leave You co-star Jane Fonda calls, “our next Robert De Niro plus Robert Redford,” has carefully curated a career. From multiplex fare like Star Wars to art house offerings like Paterson and Frances Ha he is driven by artistic demands more than box office returns and immediate satisfaction.
“Really great movies have a longer shelf life,” he says. “You come back to them later and find new things in them. So many times you watch a movie and you’re not ready for it and you come back to it later because you’re a different person and suddenly it speaks to you in a different way. When they are well crafted they have that shelf life whereas a lot of things are made for one weekend.”
Director Steven Soderbergh’s biggest box office came courtesy of the glossy “Ocean’s Eleven” series. His new film sees him revisit similar territory but don’t expect a carbon copy of his biggest hits. “Lucky Logan” is a down-home “Ocean’s Eleven” where some good old boys plan a robbery, but the slickness of the franchise films has been left in the vault.
Channing Tatum is Jimmy Logan, former quarterback and Homecoming King whose glory days are in the rear view mirror. Divorced but devoted to his daughter. He’s now a West Virginia miner laid off from his job of filling in sinkholes at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, home of one of the biggest NASCAR races on the circuit.
His brother Clyde (Adam Driver), a bartender and Iraq War vet whose hand was blown off by an IED, chalks up the job loss to a family curse. The Unlucky Logans have a history of misfortune, one that Jimmy hopes to turn around.
Enlisting his sister Mellie (Riley Keough) and the Bang Brothers, the bleach blonde Joe (Daniel Craig), Sam (Brian Gleeson) and Fish (Jack Quaid), he comes up with an elaborate plan to rob the vault at the Speedway on the busiest weekend of the year.
“Lucky Logan” is a carefully plotted caper flick—although some of the elements of the labyrinthine heist are a little too perfect, relying too much on movie coincidences to be believable—but it’s a loose film with an indie feel. The stars are big but this isn’t a big film. Unlike the sleek “Ocean’s” films, the style of “Lucky Logan” suits its subject. It feels like handmade, blue-collar filmmaking.
Soderbergh’s looseness trickles down to the actors. Tatum and Craig seem to be having the best time, as Driver amps up the sincerity as the younger brother so desperate to live up to big bro’s legacy that he enlisted in the army. Once again (after “American Honey) Keough proves she is a formidable actor and not just Elvis Presley’s grandfather while “Family Guy’s” Seth MacFarlane is suitably smarmy as the owner of a power drink company. Their combined efforts keeps things grounded even when as the caper grows more and more outrageous.
“Lucky Logan” feels like a throwback to the 90s indie scene that made Soderbergh an in-demand filmmaker in the first place. From the Tarantino-esque script—the pop culture references and “Game of Thrones” riffs—to the eye level characters it’s a welcome return.
Based on “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite” by Jake Bernstein “The Laundromat” chronicles the rot that festers on the corrupt body of our financial institutions.
