All the Movies I Watch...

Steven Soderbergh is reliable. Around 2011 he made a movie called Haywire, a relatively simple spy action thriller centered around MMA star Gina Carano, and during the publicity of that movie Soderbergh waged war on the "shaky camera" aesthetic or style that had permeated hollywood action movies since the berth of Jason Bourne. He talked about how he always wanted the viewer to know where they are during the course of a movie - have a good sense of space, maintain the 180 degree lines etc. - especially during a chaotic fight sequence. I remember watching Haywire and feeling disoriented because every action movie for years had been so shaky, and this movie's action had an almost defiant clarity. Shots were often static, and the action progressed through cuts and editing in a way that actually - at the time - made the movie feel old. But as Hollywood has moved away from nauseating handheld cameras back towards conventional ways of shooting action, this movie is actually agi...

A grim portrait of ambition and greed, largely told differently than other gangster stories but retaining a conventional arc. Ridley Scott tells this story in familiar fashion and employs every great actor he can find to flush out his material. And there are incredible scenes with great actors that haven't been in scenes before, perhaps reason enough to see this. A standoff in a diner between Denzel and Idris Alba comes to mind. But the final act of this film devolves into a morality tale that loses its legs even quicker the second title cards tell the passage of 15 years. If this movie is 2.5 hours - needlessly so - then why not take the extra five minutes to show us that passage, or better yet just trust the audience to get it? Quick hits: Russell Crowe never at any point is convincingly from New Jersey. Or even from North America. Denzel/Alba, Denzel/Crowe are amazing scenes and Denzel is super cool A lot of scenes we've already seen in other movies. So is this movie additiv...