Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

1/2 way thru the televised mosaic, p good.. i like devin ratray a lot; generally feels like a less gritty "the night of"; some dialogue is a lil overwritten but nontheless enjoyable imo

Unsane might be the culmination of a decade of his films. Actually kinda great.

UNSANE: so good it’s crazy. Soderbergh conjures dizzying terror, evokes visceral emotion, and pretty much rewrites the deep-focus rulebook, using little more than the contents of my front-right pocket.

— Charles Bramesco (@intothecrevasse) March 15, 2018

preview next week!

Twitter dude pretty much otm.

opens in NY tomw

Boring after it turns into a slasher flick

Frederik and Bramesco not otm

will I fare better if I love slashers

Even tedious and tonally muddled ones?

feel like Soderbergh tried to semi-retreat to do things in a workmanlike way but people keep trying to figure out what angle he's playing

in the center of the just-off middlebrow target he's been hitting you get the impression he's trying to find a good project, or at least enjoys honing his craft

one of the writers of unsane is my FB friend and i kinda thought he was an ilxor. but maybe he isn't. i don't know how i know him.

one of (JG) is a music critic who wrote for sp1n, it seems.

one of them

I wondered if it was the same Bernstein!

It's not 'workmanlike', it's vibrantly experimental, and people enjoy it because of the newness, energy and joy in the aesthetics. And yeah, it's weird that it's coming from an old pro who've just fallen in love with new toys, but that's what it is.

ah yeah, I didn't mean this new project -- just the impression he's retreated in some way, or has pretended to retire/retreat a few times because he'd rather have less scrutiny on his works as _his works_

I don't think it's weird for him to use new toys, because that's pretty much what he does in a non-flashy way with every other production

the new toy is his old iPhone, and that part's fine – other than stressing the you-are-there shocks of the nuthouse sequences, it doesn't add appreciably to the verisimilitude of the narrative or whatever

Mosaic was* a totally new toy in terms of storytelling


*"is," it's still only a month or two old. But I'm only 1/3 of the way through it bcz it's fucking horrible to watch a story on a phone

Unsane spoilers to follow:

It's one of the most fascinatingly awful movies I've ever seen. At the beginning it seems like it has some chance at being a decent psychological thriller that paints the for-profit medical industry and the complacency of police and the legal system as the villains. Then it turns out that the actual villain is a psycho murderer, who tortures one victim by sandwiching his head between defibrillator pads, and kills another with a Steven Seagal-style neck break maneuver. The way it gradually escalates the schlock level from moderate to unbearable is really something to see.

I like Soderbergh's schlock side. Side Effects and Haywire are two of his best movies IMO. Might need to check this one out.

from jrn's summary this movie sounds fucking awesome

seconded

it's uninterestingly mediocre

It's fucking awesome. And the for-profit medical industry is clearly the (co-)villains.

Boring after it turns into a slasher flick

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 19, 2018 7:14 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah we prob won't agree on this one alfred

Slasher flicks = fine

"Soderberg makes okay Cuckoo's Nest knockoff with garrulous slasher denouement" = dud

You write that as if it makes sense...

Who wouldn't?

Impressive, at least for a while--up to the first long rubber-room scene--although I was very conscious of all the films it was stealing from: Cuckoo's Next (serendipitous I would see it today), Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby (probably The Tenant, too, which I haven't seen in ages), Get Out, Shock Corridor. I know Soderbergh's proximity to commercial success and getting-films-made has had some wild swings over the years--this is all some metaphor for the film industry, right?

the climax/coda seemed really haphazard, as if a narrative theme was dropped back in after the fact because someone remembered that angle wasn’t addressed, or there wasn’t a good ending they’d filmed

the extreme horizontality of ocean's twelve is a delight to me

not a single scene above ground level iirc

His new one seems to perhaps be Magic Mike for basketball

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/high-flying-bird/

He was on Bill Simmons' podcast and called out Under The Skin as a recent movie that he wished he had made, prompting me to finally watch that freaky-ass movie.

It's good!

watched Out of Sight as a family last night, everyone enjoyed it.

yea bill smartly said almost nothing other than like "surprising answer!" as he clearly had no idea what sodes was talking abt

https://deadline.com/2019/01/steven-soderbergh-sundance-slamdance-icon-interview-1202544513/

I found this to be a pretty excellent, lengthy interview.

of all the people I have interviewed over the years, he was up there with the smartest and most interesting. sort of an eno-esque polymath.

Amy Taubin is a fan

https://www.artforum.com/print/201902/amy-taubin-on-steven-soderbergh-s-high-flying-bird-78379

It's really good! By the writer of Moonlight (and it's a better film).

I sat in the row in front of Bill Duke, who has a golden supporting role. SS and Kyle Maclachlan, among others, were in the back but were not part of the Q&A.

MacLachlan + Sodes is a deeply satisfying pairing

he has a scene-stealing moment in the steamroom

btw if you are not a sports fan, fear not, there is very close to zero playing of basketball in this film

news I can use

opens today in NY/LA (looks great), streams on Netflix

I would have happily watched a whole series of this but liked it just fine as a film. I like all other non sports knowerrs immediately googled the Edwards book the second it was over. Sodes is really good at that wholeclever-but-not-annoying thing.

soderbergh gives so many interviews, he's such a constant presence on social media, etc., and he's such an interesting guy to listen to, that i feel like his movies and TV series are just one (important) part of this ongoing "brand" he puts out there.

he seems like one of those guys who isn't just a workaholic, he just has a fundamentally more active pituitary gland or something, like he's just "on" all the time, always sharp and focused and productive. i had a professor like that. it's amazing.

This was good. The script was in some places beautiful, and Andre Holland was ideally cast.