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OT: Steven Soderbergh's Logan Lucky (MINOR SPOILERS)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
12 replies | jump to latest

It was this or "The Hitman's Bodyguard" and this had better reviews, so I went.

Some thoughts:

Steven Soderbergh rather famously announced retirement a few years back -- and never really did it. I hear he showran a TV show called "The Knick" and dabbled in some sort of movie-making. Like Magic Mike with Channing Tatum as a male stripper(from a story BY Tatum , who WAS a male stripper.)

But he's back with Logan Lucky and evidently back to stay. I think its a great entertainment though I guess it isn't going to be a blockbuster.

Back in 2001, SS's Ocean's Eleven was almost my favorite of the year. It has traded off with that wild-and-crazy "musical" Moulin Rouge on my list, but I sure liked it. George Clooney -- the star who rarely has a hit -- HAD a hit here, with help from Brad and Julia and Matt(star names) and a bunch of other talents.

Here's something: Remember how Steven Spielberg(that OTHER Steven S) had a big hit with Indy versus the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but lost respect with the Indy vs the Hindu Thugees Temple of Doom(which made big bucks) anyway) so he went BACK to Nazis with The Last Crusade?

Well, that's what happened with Steven Soderbergh and Ocean's Eleven. The first one set in Vegas was great; the second one set in Europe was incoherent and too in-jokey(Julia Roberts' fictional character is mistaken for...the real Julia Roberts? By the real Bruce Willis?). So back to Vegas they went for Ocean's 13, substituting Al Pacino for Julia Roberts(paycheck wise) and delivering another good one.

But I digress...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Logan Lucky (NOT "Lucky Logan") is another caper film in the Ocean's Eleven tradition. In fact, (speaking of in-jokes), in the film, the heist is called "Ocean's 7-11" by someone.

The gimmick here is that the caper team are working class Southern rednecks, and that Soderbergh elects to fill the soundtrack with country music, country rock, and blues to re-create the "urban musical rhythms" of Oceans Eleven(which was filled with cool Jazz and sexy Elvis tunes) in a country setting.

The caper team are struggling rednecks, but to a man and a woman, they are very, very SMART. And that's a smart move. We come to respect Channing Tatum(a very handsome young man) as one brother and Adam Driver(a very strange-looking young man) as the other brother; we see their love and respect for each other and come to learn of the guilt that bonds them. Driver is missing a forearm from Iraq duty; Tatum limps from the injury that ended his college football career.
Together, the two brothers have a hot-hot-hot sister(Riley Keough, the real-life granddaughter of Elvis himself) who becomes an invaluable member of the caper team, and they recruit an "in-car-cerated" redneck chemical genius and bomb-maker named "Joe Bang" to blow up a vault as part of the crime. (He's played by Daniel "James Bond" Craig with bleached white hair and the use of his rough face in a comic-menacing way.)

"Logan Lucky" refers to Driver's fear that the entire Logan family of all generations has bad luck("Logan Luck") which leads to things like football injuries, arm loss in Iraq and other travails. This caper plan is a front-on assault AGAINST Logan Luck...and thus we are emotionally invested in the caper succeeding. And we get more invested as the film goes on. There's a surprising emotional wallop (I mean, tear ducts) near the end. (But I'm not talking about the caper; I'll leave open whether it succeeds or not.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

As with any good-to-great movie, "Logan Lucky" has a great script. The dialogue is very funny and knowing, and, yes, funnier still because people say it with Southern accents(especially Brit Daniel Craig's totally WACK Southern accent.) The script is credited to "Rebecca Blunt"(Emily's sister?) who should be being besieged by offers now. But its rumored that Rebecca Blunt is really Steven Soderbergh, and his wife, Jules Asner, who grew up in West Virginia, where much of Logan Lucky is set.

The caper is as intelligent and ingenious as the ones in the good Ocean movies; its a pleasure to watch it unfold. And as in the good Ocean movies, SS makes sure to toss in surprise "roadblocks" as the caper is underway that could ruin everything, create great suspense, and must be dealt with and overcome.

But the extra dimension that the film brings is its serious study of people who are good and work hard but...get hit hard by life and struggle every day. These are characters you can care about. I did.

"Logan Lucky" on its own is a great entertainment, but if one lines it up with "the two good Ocean's Eleven movies" -- we see an auteur at work. Its Mr. Soderbergh. I can't say I like all of his movies that I've seen, but he surely is a master of a very particular type of caper film:

His.

Welcome back, Steven S. "The Other One."

PS. Bonus: The odd-looking Hilary Swank -- a two-time Best Actress Oscar winner who just can't get enough work -- shows up as an FBI agent and does a great impression of her "Million Dollar Baby" co-star Clint Eastwood. Also, Sam Waterston's interesting-looking daughter drops the long hair and sexy act she did in that Joaquin Phoenix LA detective movie and is STILL sexy -- in a very odd-looking way -- as a short-haired pixie-ish "mobile medical specialist" in an interesting cameo.

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

Thanks for the LL review ecarle. I'll definitely check it out at some point. Soderbergh's just never been quite my guy: I mostly enjoy his films while I'm watching them but they never blow me away and as a result they never stick with me much in memory, let alone change film language and change your sense of what's possible in film which is what we expect out of the greatest directors after Hitchcock and Welles. Thus, for all of his indie cred. Soderbergh *feels* to me more like a modern version of one of those very solid golden-age studio directors like Cukor or Mervyn LeRoy or Gregory Le Cava.

A Heads Up on the new Aronofsky film Mother! (2017) w. Jennifer Lawrence. It's getting raves from its Venice Film Festival premiere. It sounds like a super-twisty psychological thriller so only read the headlines and first paragraphs of reviews to avoid spoilers... but it sounds like a must see!

[–] jay440 (107) 7 years ago

Soderbergh *feels* to me more like a modern version of one of those very solid golden-age studio directors like Cukor or Mervyn LeRoy or Gregory Le Cava.
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That seems to be how he would like to see himself, too. This quote is from an interview:

“I often think I would have been so happy to be Michael Curtiz,” Mr. Soderbergh said. Mr. Curtiz, the contract director, made more than 100 films for Warner Brothers, including “Casablanca” and “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” between his arrival in Hollywood from Hungary in 1926 and his death in 1962. “That would have been right up my alley,” Mr. Soderbergh said, “making a couple of movies a year of all different kinds, working with the best technicians. I would have been in heaven, just going in to work every day.”

[–] swanstep (2628) 7 years ago

@jay440. Thanks for that Soderbergh quote. I confess to being a little torn about the basic question of which *sort* of director - daring innovators and instantly-recognizable stylists or near-invisible serve-the-story craftspeople - I really prefer.

Like a lot of people, I imbibed a very director-centric viewpoint in High School and my first attachments were to the obvious director-super-stylists such as Hitchcock and Welles and Kubrick and Minnelli and Donen and Lumet and Fosse and the French New Wave guys and all the '70s movie brats and.... I've most stuck with with that preference since (extending the pantheon in both space and time so that now there are hundreds of directors I kind of follow), but even in those early days for me personally it was clear that there was another kind of director who delivered the goods very reliably that any broadly auteurist approach was bound to underrate whether it was Cukor or Wyler or Curtiz or DeRoy back in the day, or Deray or George Roy Hill or Peter Yates in the '70s, or Reiner or McTiernan in the '80s, or Curtis Hanson in the '90s, or maybe someone like Luc Besson or JJ Abrams now.

I definitely go through periods when I burn out on the more show-boating directors and find that more invisible directors are hitting the spot for me. I watch Stage Door (1937) or Patton (1970) or Wonder Boys (2000) or Behind The Candelabra (2013?) and think 'What more do I need?'

Soderbergh's intriguing because he emerged pre-feted as a bona fide auteur: he went directly from Sundance darling to Palme d'Or + big box office and profits and cultural cut-through with 'Sex Lies and Videotape'. After flailing a bit in the '90s he reset as a studio pro non-auteur, nothwithstanding that the studios have gotten less and less interested in making the mid-budget films of which he's such a capable shepherd. Interesting career.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Soderbergh's intriguing because he emerged pre-feted as a bona fide auteur: he went directly from Sundance darling to Palme d'Or + big box office and profits and cultural cut-through with 'Sex Lies and Videotape'. After flailing a bit in the '90s he reset as a studio pro non-auteur, nothwithstanding that the studios have gotten less and less interested in making the mid-budget films of which he's such a capable shepherd. Interesting career.

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And a weird one. I recall all the ink spilled on "Sex, Lies and Videotape." I remember seeing it and liking all of it except for Andie McDowall(who, of some connection, remains the worst host I ever saw on SNL.)

And then its like Soderbergh took the entire 90's off and came back "respectable" with the overload of "Erin Brockovich" "Traffic" and "Ocean's Eleven" -- pretty mainstream entertainments, you ask me. I could never get a grip on his auteurism. Though of that group, only "Ocean's Eleven" seemed to have REAL entertainment value. The other two were rather message movies, and a bit predictably so.

[–] jay440 (107) 7 years ago

Soderbergh seems to have lost interest in message movies.

From a NY Times article: Mr. Soderbergh, an Academy Award winner for his crisscrossing drug-trade narrative “Traffic,” is deadly serious when he says he is never going back to making the films he used to.

“I’ve really lost my interest as a director — not as a producer or viewer — in anything that smells important,” he said. “It just doesn’t appeal to me at all anymore. I left that in the jungle somewhere.”

After a career of independent breakthroughs (“sex, lies and videotape”), mainstream hits (“Erin Brockovich”) and occasional oddities (“Full Frontal”), Mr. Soderbergh said he was changed for the worse by “Che,” his biographical film about Che Guevara, which was released in two parts in 2008.

That film was a scramble to finance...and a slog to shoot; Mr. Soderbergh spent about two and a half months on it and still found himself wishing he’d had more time. “Che” ended up a critical success but a commercial dud, and it soured Mr. Soderbergh on so-called prestige films. “‘Che’ beat that out of me,” he said.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

From a NY Times article: Mr. Soderbergh, an Academy Award winner for his crisscrossing drug-trade narrative “Traffic,” is deadly serious when he says he is never going back to making the films he used to.

“I’ve really lost my interest as a director — not as a producer or viewer — in anything that smells important,” he said. “It just doesn’t appeal to me at all anymore. I left that in the jungle somewhere.”

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Very intriguing statement. Of course, he said he would retire, too. So I guess he could always go back on it.

For my money, the Ocean's trilogy(others liked the second one even if I did not) and now Logan Lucky are his best works...sheer entertainment, but with an "edge"(mainly musical) . They bespeak of their maker's voice.

Remember how with Traffic one story was done with a blue filter, one with a yellow filter, one -- no filter? It helped keep the three stories separate and it bespoke of style ...but...it was a little too "on the nose" for an important film. SS has used those filters sparingly on others of his movies , and THAT is one way in which I recognize him as an auteur.

I guess 2000 was his year, what with Traffic and Erin Brockovich making big money and Oscars as, indeed, important films. Brockovich won SS the short-term comradeship of Very Big Star Julia Roberts, who did two Oceans movies for him and Full Frontal. (Julia's a loyal one; she worked with Garry Marshall on the silly "Mother's Day" last year because he launched her with "Pretty Woman"; it was a bad movie and, sadly, Marshall's last before his death. I suppose Julia felt good about her participation, accordingly.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Putting this all together, I know that Steven Soderbergh has a big "artistic" reputation in Hollywood (he did some low budget digital work, didn't he?) but it really boils down to his 2000 hits and the caper movies. I see him as a fun filmmaker now; no more, no less.

Oh, and there's this one: Magic Mike. Channing Tatum -- who had a career as a male stripper before making it in movies -- wrote the story about a group of male strippers and, incredibly, Soderbergh agreed to direct it.

A female friend of mine saw "Magic Mike" in a theater filled with females. A drunkish female walked to the front of the theater and yelled "I want any men in this theater to get the hell out of here!" I don't think there were many men, and none left.

I watched "Magic Mike" on a bit of a dare on video. Very lightweight, but it was intriguing to see a film focused on the erotic use of the male body. Matthew McConaghey played the tyrannical former stripper who ran the club, and he did a final dance which well....lets just say MM knew his moves. The film struck me as a very salutary gesture to "the female gaze" with the courage of its convictions. But it was an uncomfortable watch for me.

And didn't SS direct Channing in a cameo for a movie where some MMA female martial arts star played a spy who beat the crap out of many men and killed a few of them(notably, Michael Freakin' Fassbender?)

Its like these Steven Soderbergh movies sort of float up from my subconscious. Why did he make THOSE stories during THAT period? Male strippers. Killer female MMA stars....hmm..I guess he really is done with "important" stories.

[–] jay440 (107) 7 years ago

The quote is from a NY Times article about his WWII film The Good German. Soderbergh's production method on this film is inspired by Golden Age Hollywood directors:

If there is a single word that sums up the difference between filmmaking at the middle of the 20th century and the filmmaking of today, it is “coverage.” Derived from television, it refers to the increasingly common practice of using multiple cameras for a scene (just as television would cover a football game) and having the actors run through a complete sequence in a few different registers. The lighting tends to be bright and diffused, without shadows, which makes it easier for the different cameras to capture matching images.

The advantage for directors is that they no longer need to make hard and fast decisions about where the camera will go for a particular scene or how the performances will be pitched. The idea is to pump as much coverage as possible into the editing room, where the final decisions about what goes where will be made....the sheer amount of exposed film makes it possible for executives to step in (after the director has completed his union-mandated first cut) and rearrange the material to follow the latest market-research reports.

During the studio era it was more typical for directors to arrive on the set, block out their shots and light them with the use of stand-ins; the actors were then summoned from their dressing rooms and, after a brief rehearsal, they would film the lines needed in the individual shot. The crew would then break down the camera and move it to the next setup, as determined by the director.

“That kind of staging is a lost art,” Mr. Soderbergh said, “which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. It means shooting things in a way that basically only cut together in one order. That’s not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.”

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

“That kind of staging is a lost art,” Mr. Soderbergh said, “which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. It means shooting things in a way that basically only cut together in one order. That’s not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.”

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Very interesting and knowledgeable discussion from SS.

I'm reminded that Selznick used to berate Hitchocck for his "g-damn jigsaw cutting!" -- Hitchocck would make his films tightly and pretty much turn into the editors scenes shot from only the angles Hitchcock wanted -- they COULDN'T re-cut the film against Hitchcock's design.

Sounds like that's all out the window now.

Which brings up another point:

I read an article the other day that said most directors on comic book movies and franchise films are now "young, interchangeable, and disposable." Some have been fired off of the Star Wars franchise films, recently.

But I found this even more stunning: the young director who made "Jurassic World" -- a billion dollar hit -- had evidently only made a few(or less) low budget flims before being given Jurassic World -- and that movie looks like a multi-million dollars, complete with state of the art CGI(the plot, not so great.)

The cover is blown: evidently ANYBODY can helm a $200 million budget movie with little experience because the movie is really made by OTHERS: Producers, studio executives, film editors, sound people, and of course the faceless hordes of the Silicon Valley.

Oh, we've still got our auteurs(QT, Nolan, Aronofsky) but they are few and many work in indies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

It remains compelling to me that the "director worship era" that lasted from the 60s through the 90s has pretty much been subsumed by "corporate filmmaking." I know that the names Joss Whedon and JJ Arbrams have some auteuristic cachet but I can't tell the work of one from the other(and if Whedon is responsible for The Avengers, I've seen one of those and -- it wasn't that great as a narrative movie, I don't care if it made a billion.)