Cereal At Midnight

Steven Soderbergh makes it look easy.  The filmmaker behind Sex, Lies, and Videotape , Out of Sight , The Limey , Erin Brockovich , Traffic , and The Ocean's Trilogy conquered Hollywood long ago by making movies that appealed to both audiences and critics. He was the rare creator who was able to translate his unique style and approach into movies that pretty much everyone enjoyed...and then, about a decade ago, he retired--frustrated by a system that valued dollars more than creativity and art. It didn't last long, but when Soderbergh returned from his brief hiatus, he seemed like a creator reinvigorated, telling stories in just about every medium available: he painted, he made a movie on an iPhone, he worked in television, and he created an off-Broadway play. He sought out challenges and set goals.  Black Bag is the latest result of one of these challenges, Soderbergh's mission to bring the 90-minute movie back to prominence. With running times of everything from kids m...

In the television series Ted Lasso , our perpetually-optimistic football coach says something along the lines of "it's like in that movie Showgirls . There are so many nipples that eventually you stop noticing them." The comparison applies to Furiosa , a movie that is so chock-a-block with mayhem that one is likely to go numb from it all long before the final credits roll. George Miller, the man behind every Mad Max movie made to date, directs Furiosa as if he may never make another film again--as if he has to tell every adventure of this post-apocalyptic wasteland in one single movie, which he also directs as if someone is going to take it away from him. For all I know, maybe they were.  I adore Mad Max: Fury Road . It remains my favorite entry in the series, a visceral, unrelenting experience that pummels the viewer with Miller's particular brand of ambitious Australian insanity. When I saw Fury Road in cinemas, the last shot of the film drew an audible (and entir...