Ever the productive workhorse, Steven Soderbergh has released two movies on Netflix this year. The first: High Flying Bird, a sharply scripted drama set behind the scenes at the NBA that follows a canny sport agent whose end game is to shift the financial power from white owners to black players, i.e. to seize the means (or balls) of production. The second: The Laundromat, a Big Short-style anthology film about the Panama Papers leak that explains the proliferation of offshore bank accounts and tax havens, specifically those provided by the firm Mossack Fonseca, and follows the victims of these global […]
by Vikram Murthi on Sep 19, 2019Though popularly acclaimed for its thrillingly choreographed action scenes and the convergence of two of America’s great film stars, Heat (1995) endures because of its layered psychological matrix. Michael Mann interrogates masculinity, as performance and as ideology, across a cat-and-mouse genre template, crafting a diffuse portrait of ethical codes. This modus operandi, combined with Mann’s trademark urban hyperaesthetic—neon cityscapes; dark, empty roads; abandoned lots; dingy warehouses; underpopulated diners, all shot on locations off the beaten path—has elevated the material to classic status. It’s a basic-cable staple that’s also a richly studied, endlessly probed auteurist text. In other words, the perfect […]
by Vikram Murthi on Sep 4, 2019David Simon’s latest HBO series, The Deuce (co-created with George Pelecanos), represents another entry in a career-spanning investigation of institutional corruption and decay, this time focusing on the sex and pornography industry in New York City during the 1970s. Primarily viewed through the eyes of bartender and club owner Vincent Martino (James Franco) and sex worker-turned-pornographer Eileen “Candy” Merrell (Maggie Gyllenhaal), The Deuce uses the sex trade as a microcosm for various developments in late-stage capitalism, including gentrification and urban renewal. As the series shifts periods over the course of its three-season run—1971–1972 in the first season, 1978 in the […]
by Vikram Murthi on Jun 19, 2019