September 21: Oceans Thirteen (2007 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★

September 20: Oceans Twelve (2004 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★

September 19: Oceans Eleven (2001 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★★
It had been awhile and I’d forgotten what fun this movie is.  It’s all about cool…cool costumes, cool people, cool action and, especially, cool music.  The jazz soundtrack does a lot to make Ocean’s Eleven cool.

So does Soderbergh’s camera, which is always panning or shooting from an angle that makes interesting composition or movement within the frame.  Ocean’s Eleven would be a delight to watch even without the sound.  But you’d miss something that way because the sound is so well-integrated into the editing.  Like Contagion, Ocean’s Eleven is lyrical, cinematic poetry….with a story.  And the story has a master’s feel to it, giving just enough information for the viewer to follow it without giving away too much.  Some of dialog creaks, but some scenes, especially the ones between Clooney and Roberts, crackle with the smartness of bygone Hollywood.  That is a pleasure, too.

It was a lot of fun to revisit this film.  It’s not groundbreaking or strikingly original, but it takes a viewer back to what was so cool – and skilled -- ten years ago.

September 16: Videodrome (1983 -- David Cronenberg)

★★★

September 14: Ran (1985 -- Akira Kurosawa)

★★★★★

September 14: The Cowboys (1972 -- Mark Rydell)

★★★★

September 10: Contagion (2011 -- Steven Soderbergh)

★★★★

This is an enjoyable film, like I often find Soderbergh’s.  It is fast-paced, beautiful, lyrically edited and somewhat complex.  In structure, it reminds me of Traffic more than many of his later films have.   Like Traffic, Contagion has several stories woven around a central concern: In Traffic, it’s drugs; here, it’s the outbreak of a super influenza.   Contagion follows several stories of people touched by the epidemic, some of the stories intersecting each other briefly -- like Mitch’s and Dr. Mears’ --  while others don’t meet at all.  The main concern of the film is stopping the epidemic, and the film moves this issue forward while each of the component stories finds its own conflicts and resolutions.  I always enjoy this form of storytelling, which calls to mind Altman and PT Anderson.

I like the technical elements here, too.  The editing is so fluid that I gave myself to it and found it has such a strong rhythm that it is close to visual music.  And there is more than fluid editing because cuts frequently come at moments that draw parallels between the various stories.  One cut I remember comes after a crane shot has followed a car down a hillside curve, and as the camera completes a sweeping move, there is a cut; The cut becomes part of the rhythm of the camera movement, completing that movement.  Because of the film's many sound bridges, the editing that draws parallels between stories and cutting as part of the cinematography, I found many beautiful moment to respond to in the film.

It’s also good to see a film that recognizes the role that the internet has taken in lives today.  From Jory making narrative comments on IM to the awful character of Alan Krumwiede, an unscrupulous, paranoid, self-serving blogger, the net has its place.  And the film shows both the up side and down side of it. 

There are definitely moments here that creak a bit with too much Hollywood contrivance, and there is one big logical (or story) flaw about testing a vaccine, but Contagion is a fun, capable and even touching film.  Films like this one are why I make it a point to catch Soderbergh’s work.

Atlanta's Own