Monday, January 07, 2013

Soderbergh

I went through a phase of hating Steve Soderbergh, after my tween love of Sex Lies and Videotape, but now I am back to loving him.  Did you know that in 24 years he's directed 27 movies, and that isn't even counting his work in TV and his huge role as a producer.  That makes him one of the most prolific quality directors around.  Most of his last few movies have been some of my recent favorites: The Informant (super underrated), Contagion (70s style super fun disaster movie), and yes, Magic Mike, which I watched this weekend.  Any movie with this scene is an instant classic, IMO. This is not SFW.  Inside information: the ladies actually ripped off Mcconaghuey's g string and you can see he is holding it on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQe5DieoJj4

Soderbergh has veered from big budget, super successful movies, some of which are crap and some of which are good, really good small movies, documentaries (two about Spalding Gray and two about Yes(!), two about Che, among others), and super improvised indie movies.  I just watched the Girlfriend Experience and it pretty much sucks, but he went out on a limb and made a movie in two weeks for 2 million dollars, just as an experiment, and what major director is doing stuff like that these days.  No one! Magic Mike clearly had a lot of improv in it, which is really fun and also makes it feel like a 70s movie. The female lead is not that skilled in it, but still, it makes her seem like a real person, a quality which is lacking for most female eye-candy roles these days.

The difference between him and some of the last quality directors is that he can finance his small projects with his big projects.  The few I can think of are Solondz, P.T. Anderson and Wes Anderson.  I think the lastter two guys made some money on their last movies so they are probably in good shape.  Solondz career is pretty screwed.  What other American directors are any good?  I'd count Katherine Bigelow.

In short, he rules.

12 comments:

Caroline said...

I'm a big fan. Out Of Sight is probably my favorite Soderbergh movie, if you haven't seen it, please do.

Anonymous said...

We had Schizopolis at the theater in LA, such a nuts flick. (Sorry for previous comment, just want to share not be annoying know-it-all).

Has anyone seen K Street TV show?

NM

beckler said...

I haven't seen Out of SIght. I don't like Clooney or J. Lo, but I will watch it.

Oh year, I have to include Cronenberg as someone who is fairly prolific and awesome.

Anonymous said...

Not a huge fan, but I LOVE The Limey. Guess I'll have to delve deeper.

-The Neighbor

beckler said...

try The Informant! And yes, the title does contain an exclamation point. While you are watching, keep in mind that this story is incredible but true, and that this american life dug it up and did a whole hour on it, which inspired the movie

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen "Magic Mike" or "Che", but I think that everything Soderbergh has made over the last decade (save for "The Informant!") is either mediocre or terrible. "The Good German" and "Ocean's Thirteen" were unwatchable. But I love "Out of Sight" and "King of the Hill".

-DB

Anonymous said...

Let's not forget Traffic, still one of the best movies on the subject.

beckler said...

What about Contagion? Solid. I don't know if you're the target audience for Magic Mike (I don't want to make any assumptions here) but it is a really good genre movie that has crowd pleasing dances and cliched plot (done really well), yet something for the indie types with the improvisation. He's made a ton of crap, but so has Woody Allen and they are on par with their output. Of course I am not comparing the quality of the output, which would be ludicrous.

beckler said...

Traffic is so fun! I loved it when it came out. The shooting each subplot with really colored filters annoyed me though.

Anonymous said...

Haywire was also a lot of fun! Another genre movie, but the action scenes are awesome and not all that shakycam stuff that is impossible to follow.

I liked the colored filters, an easy trick to remind you what storyline you were following.

Anonymous said...

Dan, you weren't into CONTAGION? It was sharp.

I enjoyed TRAFFIC when it was dropped. However, I recently watched it on Showtime and was totally not feeling it, esp the hokey Michael Douglas/daughter-becomes-crack-whore-over-night storyline. Also, maybe, there's just so much quality TV out there today that films such as TRAFFIC no longer cut it.

NM

Anonymous said...

What about Bubble? I personally think it is one of the best films made in the 2000s.