Notes Toward A "Late" Soderbergh

I have an upcoming piece on Steven Soderbergh's The Knick, his fantastic medical drama now showing on Cinemax. While writing it, I revisited a piece I began over a year ago on what I called the "Late Soderbergh" period (a poor name in hindsight), covering an era beginning with The Girlfriend Experience and assumably ending with Behind The Candelabra. It was a wild and ridiculous essay, trying to cover way too much ground with flimsy cohesion. I eventually abandoned it. Revisiting the 10,000 word document, however, I found some insights that helped me contextualize The Knick as well as my own thoughts on how Soderbergh evolved in this era. What follows are some excerpts from that, which I found still managed to make sense, and hopefully have some use.

Young and naive Adam (Alex Pettyfer) sits on a couch, pumped up from adrenaline from the experience he just had. On a complete whim, he has does stripped down to almost his bare ass for a loud of screaming young women. He was awkward and a bit silly, unsure of what to do, which made his so-called “performance” all the more exciting for the crowd. He sits on a couch while the rest of his now-colleagues celebrate and joke around for another successful night. Still dressed in only underwear, dollars are flowing out of his pants, as if his cock was spewing it. His body has a value, and we can see it right there.

Wrapping Up 2012

This is the end, my friends. Oh wait that was two weeks ago. (HAHAHAHAHAHA wasn't that a knee slapper?).

Anyways, head on over to The Cinephiliacs to hear my choices for my Top 10 films of the year. I was joined by the ever so lovely Keith Uhlich and had too much fun that we went for over two hours, but got into some intense and honest debates about some of our favorite films. Listen now!

Also, for In Review Online, I was asked to blurb about two favorites, Cosmopolis and Lincoln, so check that out over there.

And finally, my list of honorable mentions that didn't make my Top 10, with links when appropriate. Presented in order from 11 to 25: This Is Not A Film (Panahi, Iran), It's Such A Beautiful Day (Hertzfeldt, US), Goodbye, First Love (Hansen-Love, France), The Loneliest Planet (Loktev, US/Russia), Red Hook Summer (Lee, US), The Imposter (Layton, US), Killer Joe (Friedkin, US), Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow, US), Bernie (Linklater, US), Damsels in Distress (Stillman, US), Almayer's Folly (Akerman, France), Alps (Lanthimos, Greece), A Man Vanishes (Imamura, Japan), Neighboring Sounds (Filho, Brazil), Tabu (Gomes, Portugal).

To more movies in 2013!

Interlude: TwitCrix Poll

Update: A few more people posted lists. I've updated it to reflect those.


Yesterday on Twitter, a number of the film critics I follow/follow me got around to posting their favorite films of 2012 so far. Curious to see what was the favorite, I aggregated the 25 30 lists I found. I ranked them the usual way (#1 picks got 5 points, #2 got 4 points, and so on—if the lists were unranked I each pick one point). This of course isn't the end all list, but for those wondering what to fill your Netflix queues with for the rest of the year, all these films are great, or at least worth checking out. 

1. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA) - 73 points/23 mentions

2. Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey) - 29 points/7 mentions

3. The Deep Blue Sea (Terrence Davies, UK) - 26 points/11 mentions

4. Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, USA) - 26 points/10 mentions

5. The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium) - 24 points/8 mentions

6. The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, Hungary) - 20 points/8 mentions

7. Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman, USA) - 16 points/5 mentions

8. This Is Not A Film (Jafar Panahi, Iran) - 14 points/5 mentions

9. Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, USA) - 13 points/5 mentions

10. The Color Wheel (Alex Perry Ross, USA) - 13 points/3 mentions

11. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico) - 10 points/3 mentions

Haywire: An Ass-Kicker Supreme

Haywire

Directed By: Steven Soderbergh

Written By: Lem Dobbs

Starring: Gina Carano, Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano, and Channing Tatum

Director of Photography: Peter Andrews (Soderbergh), Editor: Steven Soderbergh, Production Designer: Howard Cummings, Original Music: David Holmes

Rated: R for ass-kicking, head-smashing violence.

            The pleasures in Haywire, of which are there many, derive not from the dramatic reveals or explosions or kinetic, impossible to follow, action sequences that populate most films that follow spies and the work they do. Instead, the film gives us details through cinematic delights: a tilted shot in a red-drenched palette, an abstract jazzy score, and the sound of a gunshot runging out with booming thunder. This is after all Steven Soderbergh, a director who despite being in the business for over twenty years, has continued to remain experimental and metatextual with each film, even when approaching genre exercises (most recently the virus thriller Contaigon, which evolved into a political statement on the age of Tea Party politics).

            One could argue Haywire is the closest thing he’s done to a commercial film since his Ocean’s trilogy. However, Soderbergh plays against usual genre standards so often that the film often feels much like Godard and Truffaut making a CIA black ops ass kicking thriller than the next film from Michael Bay. Style is the substance of Haywire, which uses a somewhat paint-by-the-numbers script by Lem Dobbs (who also wrote The Limey for Mr. Soderbergh) as a starting point to give the almost deadening genre a new classic, and led by the commanding performance of Gina Carano.