Director Steven Soderbergh calls Full Frontal the unofficial sequel to Sex Lies and Videotape, his groundbreaking 1989 film. Most everyone else has called it a mess, or useless waste of time. One prominent American critic even suggested this might be the worst film ever by a major director. I can’t say I agree with the harsh criticism. While I’m not exactly sure what the movie is about, and vast passages of it simply do not work, I do think it is a film with great passion and energy. Soderbergh has left behind the slickness of Ocean’s 11 and Erin Brockovich and made an experimental film that bristles with inventiveness. Not everything works, but there are several nice performances, particularly by David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener and I enjoyed watching an A-list director stray from the tried and true and explore rockier ground.
No one can accuse Steven Soderbergh of being predictable. His last movie, Che, was a four hour art film based on the book Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Before that was Ocean’s 13, a fluffy money-maker starring every a-lister in Hollywood. His new film, The Girlfriend Experience, is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it (it’s only 80 minutes) impressionistic look at the life of a call girl played by a porn star whose previous credits include Don’t Make Me Beg and Secretary’s Day 3 to mention two of the more dignified titles. Unlike Michael “Blow ‘em up real good” Bay or Brent “Chris Tucker is a genius” Ratner you never know quite what to expect from Soderbergh.
In some cases the results of his cinematic noodling are fascinating; Bubble was a little seen but riveting character study. Other times his auteur ways get the better of him. Full Frontal was an early and well intentioned stab at digital filmmaking but fell just short of success. The Girlfriend Experience falls somewhere between the two.
Leaving the conventions of his mainstream films behind Soderbergh presents a few days in the life of an up-and-coming escort named Chelsea (Sasha Grey), a business minded hooker who provides “the girlfriend experience.” She behaves like her client’s girlfriend, providing emotional (if artificial) intimacy in return for a fat paycheck. In her “real” life she is in a committed relationship with personal trainer Chris (Chris Santos) but their bond may be broken when she steps over a line and becomes attracted to one of her married clients.
On the level of a character study it’s an interesting look at the effect of selling not just your body, but also your emotions to the highest bidder. Chelsea lives in a superficial world—if she wasn’t attractive she wouldn’t be able to ply her trade—but unfortunately as a character she’s also deeply superficial and, dot over dot dot, not very interesting.
Grey, with her French manicure, thumb ring and the longest eyelashes this side of Bridget Bardot, wants to present the character as sophisticated but is more high school Lolita than New York high brow. Her performance is a notch above Debbie Does Dallas but Meryl Streep doesn’t need to worry about losing roles to her.
In the end The Girlfriend Experience, with its fractured timelines, wobbly camera moves and abrupt ending feels more like a tour through some of New York’s nicer hotel rooms, bars and restaurants than a genuine look at a real person.
If you think they don’t make ‘em like they used to, well, you’d be wrong. Director Steven Soderbergh and his muse, George Clooney have produced a film that uses the 1942 Michael Curtiz film Casablanca as the standard.
The Good German isn’t a remake, it’s a tribute to the films of the late 1940s that uses exactly the same technology (or lack thereof) as the golden age of Hollywood—the same lenses, the same atmospheric lighting, the same rat-a-tat-tat style of dialogue, the same everything.
Soderbergh nails the look of the period, but the film’s frankness and subject matter would never have been green lit back in the day. Based upon the novel of the same name by Joseph Kanon The Good German is about an American military journalist (Clooney) covering the Potsdam Conference in post-war Berlin. He is drawn into a murder investigation involving his former mistress (Cate Blanchett) and his driver (Tobey McGuire). That could be the plot of any number of film noirs, but Soderbergh adds in elements that would have made studio boss Harry Warner blush.
His idea was to make a retro film with the increased creative freedom that filmmakers enjoy today. That means nudity, bad language and more overt violence. It’s a more realistic take on the story, but the modern sensibility inserted into this authentic looking black and white noir is jarring. Clooney and Blanchett look like golden age movie stars—she seems to be channeling Dietrich—but behave more like Brat Packers than Rat Packers.
The movie as a whole comes off more as an experiment to please film geeks than mainstream entertainment, but in an age where cookie-cutter movies rule I’ll take one of Soderbergh’s strange (and not entirely successful) experiments any day.
“Haywire,” a new action film from “Ocean’s 11” director Steven Soderbergh isn’t so much a movie as it is a showcase for the lithe athleticism of its star Gina Carano. Imagine an MMA match with a storyline and you get the idea.
Carano, the former champion mixed martial arts fighter, plays Mallory Kane, a mercenary who specializes in the dirty jobs that governments like to freelance out. Her idea of relaxation is “a glass of wine and gun maintenance.” Following a successful hostage rescue in Barcelona her handler Kenneth (Ewan McGregor) dispatches her to Dublin. There she teams with an MI5 operative (Michael Fassbender) only to discover she has been double-crossed. Angry, she Muay Thai’s herself back to the United States searching for clues and revenge.
Does the story mater? Nope. Not one bit. It’s the usual medium to complicated undercover spy tale—the kind that wraps up all the loose ends with a bit of exposition and some well chosen flashbacks at the end—but you don’t go to see “Haywire” for the story.
The movie is at it’s best when Carano is on the move, running, jumping, and kicking the snot out of her opponents. Soderbergh tosses in an action scene every ten minutes or so, but the violence here feels different. Sure necks get broken and people get shot in the face but unlike most action flicks Soderbergh doesn’t amp up the sound to go along with the punches, kicks and gunshots. Many films exaggerate the combat noises to add excitement, “Haywire” doesn’t. It trusts the fight choreography and because the violence isn’t particularly cartoony it doesn’t need to be juiced up.
The fights feel authentic—no CGI, few stunt people—a testament to Carano’s obvious fighting skills and Soderbergh’s wise decision to underplay the violence.
“Haywire” feels like a grrrl power version of a mid-80s Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. Of course it is elevated by the presence of actors like Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and Bill Paxton but at its heart it is a scrappy action movie that would play best in drive-ins and grindhouses.
Here’s the answer to the first question most people have asked me about “Magic Mike”: Yes, Channing Tatum appears naked but not nekkid. In movie terms naked means posterior shots, nekkid is when he turns around. Channing is now too big a star to turn around, but rest assured, within a minute of appearing on screen he leaves little to the imagination.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, “Magic Mike” is a loosely biographical account of Tatum’s time spent dancing for money in a Tampa strip club. He plays the title character, a thirty-year-old entrepreneur and stripper with one foot on the stage and one in the business world. When he recruits the hot-headed Adam (Alex Pettyfer) to dance at the club he gets drawn deeper into the dark side of the art of selling sex.
Let me first say “Magic Mike” is abtastic.
There haven’t been this many finely sculpted stomach muscles in one place since the Dr. Ho infomercials of the late 1990s. The genetic blessings of stars Tatum, Matthew McConaughey, Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer and Adam Rodriguez as Chippendales stereotypes like cowboys, firemen and construction workers, mixed with the little details–how Mike smoothes out the sweaty, rumpled bills that get shoved down his G-string and then presses them under a large book–and moves that redefines dirty dancing, paint an effective portrait of the dancers who liberate the sexual passions of the giddy girls in their audiences.
That part the story gets right. When the movie is showing some skin it works, it’s when it gets to the stuff underneath–the heart and soul–that it falters. Up until the final half-hour it’s all about, as Mike says, “women, money and good times,” but the inevitable turn toward the dark side isn’t nearly as interesting as everything that came before it. “Boogie Nights” did it first and did it better.
By the time “Magic Mike” reaches its redemptive moment, with the classic rock anthem of rebirth “Feels Like the First Time,” blaring in the soundtrack, the movie feels like something we’ve seen before.
But for those who stopped reading after the words “Channing Tatum” and “naked” “Magic Mike” offers the pleasures of an endearingly charming performance from the titular character, an unhinged one from McConaughey and lots of buff, hairless men doing things that would make your grandmother blush.
Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar winning director of “Traffic” and nominee for “Erin Brockovich” is one of the most versatile filmmakers working today. From the art house pleasures of “Che: Parts 1 & 2” to the blockbuster business he did with “Ocean’s 11, 12 & 13” to the introspection of “The Girlfriend Experience,” he’s a master of all genres.
Add to that list “Side Effects,” a new pharmaceutical thriller starring Rooney Mara and Jude Law, which brings the immaculate filmmaking of the above mentioned titles to a potboiler plot that feels like its been sitting on Soderbergh’s to-do list since 1985.
When we first meet Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) it’s just days before her husband (Channing Tatum) is to be released from a four-year-prison stint for insider trading. Their life is about to go back to normal, but it soon becomes clear that Emily is troubled. A suicide attempt brings her to the attention of psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law). She tells him of her lifelong struggle with depression—“a poisonous fog bank that rolls over her mind”—and he prescribes a new drug to help her find equilibrium.
“It doesn’t make you anything you aren’t,” he tells her. “It just makes it easier to be yourself.”
The side effects of the drug, however, include nausea and vomiting, allergic reactions, drowsiness, sleepwalking and criminal behavior. Emily’s erratic conduct while on the drug not only turns her life upside down, but Dr. Banks’s as well.
Saying any more than that would take some of the pleasure away from letting the plot unfold. Besides, detailing the ins-and-outs of the twisty-turny script by Scott Z. Burns would take up the rest of the space I have allotted for this review. You can’t accuse Soderbergh of scrimping on dramatic plot developments, but is it too much?
It all feels very much like the thrillers that used to pack ‘em in at the local bijou in the mid-eighties. Movies like “Jagged Edge” that featured unpredictable plots and elaborate confession montages.
So while it is true that Soderbergh can’t be faulted for not including enough texture in the story, it must also be noted that layers for the sake of layers isn’t always a good thing. The story, which could have been an interesting comment on a broken medical system, or professional misconduct, instead becomes unnecessarily cluttered.
The performances, howevre, are uniformly great. Quick! Somebody buy Mara some Gatorade because she sheds a river of tears—no, make that an ocean—in a performance that is understated but chillingly effective.
Law is terrific as a man whose life is almost torn apart. Luckily he’s left the horrible fake teeth of “Contagion,” his last outing with Soderbergh, at home, replacing them with serious chops playing a man racked with paranoia and anger.
“Side Effects” is a confounding movie because it is beautifully made. Soderbergh strings us along so well in the first hour only to allow the melodrama to win out in the last reel.
Critically acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh says all his films “feel commercial” when he’s making them. His latest, The Girlfriend Experience, is now in limited release.
You’d be hard pressed to find a movie fan that hasn’t seen the Steven Soderbergh films Traffic, Erin Brockovich and at least one of the Ocean’s movies.
A little more eclectic, but still popular are The Limey and Out of Sight, two of the director’s box office near-misses. Mainstream films like those, though, comprise only a fraction of the director’s resume.
Since his breakout film Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989, Soderbergh has directed 19 films (including The Girlfriend Experience, in theatres now), but only a handful — usually the ones starring George Clooney or Julia Roberts—could be called blockbusters. Many others have, however, languished.
Here’s a couple of the director’s deserving films that didn’t set the box office ablaze.
Soderbergh said that “all attempts at synopsizing (Schizopolis) have ended in failure and hospitalization.”
With health card in hand, here goes: Schizopolis is a surrealistic look at two people who can’t communicate. As the level of emotional detachment increases so does the weird stuff.
There’s an exterminator (David Jansen) who only speaks in non sequiturs and near the end Soderbergh’s character (he’s a triple threat here as actor, writer and director) only speaks in overdubbed Italian, Japanese and French.
Even the director acknowledges that this is an eccentric film, noting that the only people who ever ask him about it are “the ones with the crazy look in their eyes when I go to festivals.”
1993’s King of the Hill is more accessible but still made less than $1.5 million at the box office. Based on a 1972 memoir by A.E. Hotchner, it’s the story of a 12-year-old boy surviving and thriving on his own during the Great Depression.
One IMDB contributor called this “the best American film of the nineties,” while another wrote “Spielberg, eat your heart out, this is a real feel good movie.”
Rent it for its unsentimental storytelling and great performances, particularly from Adrien Brody who plays the main character’s surrogate big brother.
Other interesting Soderbergh movies still waiting to grab an audience are the Spalding Gray monologue film Gray’s Anatomy and the suspense story Kafka, but no matter how odd or how low budget these films are, don’t get the idea Soderbergh doubts their commercial appeal.
“When I’m making them,” he says, “they all feel commercial to me. It’s no joke. If I’m making a movie for a million bucks, I feel like this thing could blow up. It’s happened before.”
Director Steven Soderbergh calls Full Frontal the unofficial sequel to Sex Lies and Videotape, his groundbreaking 1989 film. Most everyone else has called it a mess, or useless waste of time. One prominent American critic even suggested this might be the worst film ever by a major director. I can’t say I agree with the harsh criticism. While I’m not exactly sure what the movie is about, and vast passages of it simply do not work, I do think it is a film with great passion and energy. Soderbergh has left behind the slickness of Ocean’s 11 and Erin Brockovich and made an experimental film that bristles with inventiveness. Not everything works, but there are several nice performances, particularly by David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener and I enjoyed watching an A-list director stray from the tried and true and explore rockier ground.
