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diamonds wrote:The article also reveals that the Panama Papers film is now titled The Laundromat, set to shoot in the fall with a supposedly "powerhouse" cast.

Meryl Streep will star, with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas in talks to join in

Goddamnit I love Steven Soderbergh

I knew Amtrak was experiencing some weather delays, but this is ridiculous

Soderbergh described this in an Indiewire interview, and it sounds wild. It's a stylistic hodgepodge, including shifting aspect ratios, both handheld docudrama footage and soundstage material with "a very sort of stylized, non-realistic look", and extended visual homages to Herbert Ross(!!!).

I guess the Herbert Ross-Neil Simon inspiration was stronger than I imagined, since the TIFF site lists this as a comedy.

Per Exhibitor Relations Co., this will be in (presumably limited) theaters September 27th, on Netflix October 18th

diamonds wrote: Wed Aug 28, 2019 2:09 pm Trailer.

This looks great, though I’m hoping it’s got more heart a la Logan Lucky amidst the farce the trailer presents. I’m also excited to see Oldman relax into an oddball exaggerated supporting part again post-Oscar.

Uh oh:

Scott Tobias wrote:THE LAUNDROMAT is the rare whiff from Soderbergh. An irreverent, seriocomic approach to the Panama Papers that opens up comparisons to THE BIG SHORT, none of them flattering. #TIFF19

Apparently Streep plays a very hammy Hispanic caricature and Gary Oldman plays a Chinese cab driver. (This per Twitter, it seems too baffling to be true.)

Regardless, people seem generally miserable about Streep's performance in this one.

mfunk9786 wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:08 am Apparently Streep plays a very hammy Hispanic caricature and Gary Oldman plays a Chinese cab driver. (This per Twitter, it seems too baffling to be true.)

Regardless, people seem generally miserable about Streep's performance in this one.

If true, those elements alone tell you that you're not going to be able to find Twitter praising it regardless of actual quality

These are critics who saw it at TIFF who don't like it, not people with cartoon avis speculating about possible social justice missteps - there are ones who seem pleased with it too, but I tend to trust some critics (like Tobias or A.A. Dowd) over others.

I didn't read the comparisons with The Big Short before I saw this (it's playing theatrically here in Chicago), but that movie was definitely top-of-mind while watching this one. It's bizarre how similar the two movies are in tone, and the similarity seems in both cases to spring from precisely the same impulse: "more people should care about this content than actually do, so how do we dress this up in a way that gets people's attention?" I'm not going to get in to which movie does this better or worse, but how does one avoid the association?

As has been common with Soderbergh for a long time for me now, this movie has some things to enjoy but his conviction in terms of the actual content seems to come and go; I don't think he's seemed fully engaged, at least in his theatrical features, since The Informant!. Here he keeps himself occupied with a lot of soundstage green-screen work that calls attention to itself for being self-consciously ridiculous, and it's half amusing and half "yeah it's amusing but really why bother." He also seemingly gives the actors free reign to do whatever they want to do, which is a lot of fun with Banderas and especially Oldman, and varying degrees of successful for everyone else. Of all people, I thought David Schwimmer was really good in a small role, for better or worse the only name actor here keeping it real. But I found it hard not to wonder - underneath it all, what does all the shenanigans have to do with the price of bananas in Panama?

Spoiler

The film ends with a very audacious formal gimmick that I won't give details about even under spoiler tags, except that I found it revoltingly smug. And I like smug!

I guess that the bottom line for me is that it's an amusing watch, but I can't say I'm convinced for one minute on the evidence of this film that Soderbergh really cares all that much about the Panama papers or the underlying financial system or the fact that mega-profitable companies don't pay taxes. The movie can't even be bothered to make an argument about why all this is really all that bad, aside from the rather banal observation that rich people tend to be assholes who do asshole things to make money. I think Soderbergh would have been better served to either make this twice as anarchic as it actually is, or play it straight. But ultimately he splits the difference and it just kinda fizzles out.

Sheesh, I understand the comparison (there is no way not to think of The Big Short's misguided attempts at making light of a similar ripped-from-the-headlines story when watching this, along with a bit of Wolf Of Wall Street's narration), but it isn't funny how much better this is than The Big Short. That movie's biggest sin was its awful and condescendingly empty direction, full of hideous shakycam and useless non-sequiturs that could not have seemed clever to anyone besides McKay for more than fifteen seconds. The Laundromat is alive and clever in all the ways that that film is dead and stupid. Yeah, it has a lot of explanatory stuff and dead-end individual storylines (including one with Nonso Anozie that could have withstood some trimming) but it's funny and smart, at least in my mind, and never ever condescending to the viewer. I liked the heavily stylized pseudo-host segments with Oldman and Banderas most of all

Spoiler

and the final scene where they walk out of the "jail" and into the backlot is hysterical,

but I can certainly understand why some might be put off by Meryl Streep's segments given how they ultimately come together, even if I wasn't (and she has a great scene of her own in the dream "rampage").

Spoiler

Speaking of, is the twist regarding the true identity of a certain character what put you off the final shot, Brian C, or is it rather its form?

And I certainly don't think the film dances around a condemnation of the criminals connected to Mossack Fonseca, it just approaches that judgment in a bunch of different parallel ways (in a grounded way by the boat accident and its aftermath, in a humorous way by Oldman and Banderas, in a shocking and disturbing way by the Gu Kailai storyline, and finally philosophically in the closing monologue). Maybe Soderbergh is being a little cute when he compares himself and Scott Z. Burns to actual organ harvesters, but I was convinced that he cares well enough about the Panama Papers by the other, more serious stuff he lays out.

Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal and the film, tries to stop its Netflix debut in court (or, more accurately, the partners try to preemptively lay the groundwork for an appeal if convicted)

Do, uh, they not realize this has already been screening in theatres?

Netflix has already filed a motion to dismiss, as you might have guessed. Couldn't they just say "Screw it" and release it to their streaming platform right now before the judge can rule?

I'm not a lawyer (though I work with a couple) - but that has to be obstruction of some kind

Wish I’d known that before I named you in several court documents as my attorney

Bold way to handle LQ's restraining order against you

I maintain that was an overreaction to the misprint in our flyer advertising the unauthorized production of Avenue Q I directed at the local vacation bible camp, but it actually ended up being the nicest of all the legal actions I encountered afterwards

I really wanted to believe this movie was a secret masterpiece even after all the negative buzz, but alas, this is handily Soderbergh's worst movie ever. It's so fragmented and jargon-heavy that it almost seems to make the issues more confusing than they were before, but I could stand it being impenetrable if it was also entertaining; whatever lightness of touch Soderbergh is trying for is weighed down by the lead balloon of a script (the biggest laugh I got was at an exchange about UB40's version of "Red Red Wine"). Streep is very good in one of her parts (her performance in the other is ludicrous, even leaving aside whitewashing concerns; at the very least, the initial report of Oldman as a Chinese man was incorrect), I agree with Brian that Schwimmer is quite moving in his sub-five-minute part, and there's some interesting stylistic experimentation going on (like a sequence that looks to be shot through a beer bottle), but this is a swing and a miss.

I didn't hate this, but it's not very good and is a sound reminder that Soderbergh may be one of our greatest working directors but he's not infallible. For a comedy, I got exactly one laugh out of this (thanks to Larry Wilmore's attempt at small talk with Game of Thrones guy's daughter), and the social commentary is aaaall over the place in tone and execution. I think the final scene has been misread by those furious at the contentious double acting choice (I'm surprised we're spoiler tagging this given the public outrage, but okay), but while I don't find the element involved racist like the most vocally opposed, it is a terrible and broad caricature no better executed than Oldman's Hogan's Heroes' Heinie or Jeffrey Wright's... whatever the hell that was supposed to be. The biggest problem here isn't the cast, though, it's that the script the actors are saddled with suuuuuuuuuuucks. I know this was rushed into production like Contagion, but lightning didn't strike twice and I can't figure out what Soderbergh really got out of making this one. I didn't like the Big Short but it had a clear through-line of purpose and intent. This is a first draft of wacky ideas and mishmashing tones and approaches (sure, I liked Schwimmer's earnestness too, but he's acting in a different movie), almost none of them successful, and all adding up to a lot of noise. I did enjoy the moment where Oldman and Banderas finger-wag Soderbergh in his own movie, but I wanted them to follow up by asking why the expensive movie they're in looks and feels so cheap... Someone check the books!!

I don't even think it has the excuse of being rushed into production; Soderbergh's been attached to this since even before Logan Lucky was shot, and presumably he's been fussing with the script for the two years before this went into production. Given how Soderbergh has said he works best when he works fast, this probably would've been better if it was shot during a lunch break like his last two movies.