Last night I finally saw Steven Soderbergh‘s The Laundromat (Netflix, currently streaming), and was surprised to discover that the dour Rotten Tomato ratings (44% Tomatometer, 46% audience) are mostly unwarranted.

It’s a dry, brisk, fact-based satire of sorts, and quite the brilliant accomplishment when you consider what a labrynthian, all-but-impenetrable worldwide patchwork of hidden funds, shell companies and double-talking, money-laundering bullshit that Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns have boiled down into basic terms.

It’s a little splotchy and detour-y here and there, granted, but mostly I felt engrossed and diverted and never bored.

A complex saga of ducking, hiding and hoodwinking has been honed into a digestible and understandable mash that mostly focuses on a retirement-age widow (Meryl Streep) trying to figure out why an accident insurance policy is worthless in the wake of her late husband’s drowning death, and which eventually leads to…well, it’s complicated. But not uninteresting or unamusing.

It The Laundromat “uneven”? Yeah, but who could possibly expect a story this full of confusing, sidestepping narratives and tributaries to be “even”? Is it on the messy side? Yes, but how much of real life is neat and tidy?

I was basically grateful that I was comprehending most of it and was feeling more or less catered to. I took no breaks. I persevered. I chuckled from time to time.

Streep’s ultimate destination is the real-life, now-defunct law firm of Mossack-Fonseca, a Panama City film-flam operation run by Jurgen Mossack (a German-accented Gary Oldman) and Ramon Fonseca (Antonio Banderas). They basically offered thousands of well-heeled clients (some legit, some not) ways of hiding their money from taxation or detection.

Why are there so many thumbs-down assessments of The Laundromat? Because Soderbergh and Burns are basically explaining and in fact “saying” that rich people have their own way of living, operating and hiding their considerable assets, and that Average Joes have never had a clue about these tricky offshore games and never will, and that if their savings or investments happen to collide with the interests of the super-wealthy they’ll never win — that they’re basically clueless and destined to be taken to the cleaners for the rest of their lives by invisible Slick Willie types.

Soderbergh and Burns are basically delivering a wake-up call (the last shot is of Streep offering a raised fist) but the feeling you’re left with is “get used to it, you’ll never win”

It’s an intriguing, spottily entertaining 95 minutes, and at the end you’re left feeling a bit wiser about how fucked everything is (i.e, how unfair things are for working schmoes and how predatory the rich are). I basically don’t see the problem.

And I enjoyed the English-y performances delivered by the large cast — Streep, Oldman, Banderas, Sharon Stone, David Schwimmer, Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeffrey Wright, James Cromwell, Melissa Rauch, Larry Wilmore, Will Forte, Chris Parnell, Robert Patrick, Rosalind Chao, et. al.

Back from the Howard Schultz detour…

From “Lindelof = Uh-Oh, Here We Go,” posted on 10.9.14: “To me, the idea of Damon Lindelof being attached to a film or TV project…to me that’s a threat.”

The wifi in the Georgetown Airbnb where we’re bunking until tomorrow morning barely has a pulse, and so streaming the first episode of Lindelof’s new HBO Watchmen series is a dicey proposition. But sight unseen I’m scared, and the reason for this fear is Lindelof, a puzzleboxer and head-fucker from way back. I’m get around to it when I return tomorrow or sometime Wednesday, but until then….

Damon Lindelof‘s Watchmen (HBO, now streaming) “is here to shake you up,” writes Indiewire‘s Ben Travers. “To stimulate new discussions about age-old issues; to challenge preconceived notions by framing them from new perspectives. Admittedly, as a white critic, I can only imagine it’s easier for me to process a lot of these images and themes from a safe distance.

“The world of Watchmen is as important to absorb as it is fascinating to deconstruct. Having seen the premiere half-dozen times now, there are still new details emerging and more to come as the subsequent episodes roll out. Yes, there’s even more to admire if you’re familiar with the comic, but a deep understanding of the text doesn’t change the quality of the current story. It’s just a fun additional layer, for those who want to cover it.”

HE observation: Travers felt compelled to watch the opening episode six times? What does that tell you?

The first episode, titled “It’s Summer and We’re Running Out Of Ice”, “will beg the audience to ask, ‘What the fuck is going on?‘,” Travers writes, “and that’s before getting to the final twist, where one of the central characters, played by one of the cast’s more famous faces, is killed off.”

Travers summary: “Robert Redford is the President of the United States. He has been for more than three decades. The ‘Sundancer in Chief,’ as one radio caller labels him, passed a reparations bill where descendants of slaves don’t have to pay taxes.

“These three pieces of information are critically important to understanding many of the personal dynamics at play in the premiere. It’s why Topher (Dylan Schombing) attacks his classmate for bringing up ‘Redfordations‘ during Angela’s presentation. It’s why the Nixonville suspect probably shouldn’t have answered “yes” when Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson) asked him if all Americans should pay taxes. It’s why there’s a different, yet all-too-familiar, kind of tension at play when a black cop pulls over a white hick hauling a truckload of lettuce.

Francis Coppola, quoted during an appearance at the Lyon Film Festival: “When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.”

I say that Avengers: Endgame is cinema; ditto the first two Captain America flicks and the first Ant Man. At least these.

Yesterday’s pleasant surprise was realizing that Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy (Warner Bros., 12.25) is not a run-of-the-mill “get an innocent guy out of jail” diligent do-gooder thang, but a carefully made, better-than-decent, stirringly acted, emotionally affecting drama of a slightly higher order.

We have to check out of the Salamander by 11 am (40 minutes hence) but I’ll try to elaborate later today.

Thanks so much to Susan Koch, Dana Bseiso Vazquez and the Middleburg Film Festival for a hugely enjoyable three and a half days. A brilliant gathering with all the right films…comforting, stimulating and exciting at every turn. The Irishman is the final screening (1 pm) but we’ll be catching it on Thursday in Los Angeles.

When Jett graduated from Syracuse in 2010, his mother bought him a nice spiffy suit at Bloomingdale’s. Principally, it was understood, for job interviews and special business occasions. To the best of my knowledge he may have worn it once or twice, but otherwise that lovely suit has done nothing but hang in his closet over the last six or seven years.

For suits…hell, jackets and ties have been fading away for at least that long. Certainly among X-factor Millennial creatives (Jett is a music-industry guy), screenwriters, journalists, Silicon Valley brainiacs, freelancers and gig economy types.

Perhaps not in the Wall Street or banking or governmental realms, but…okay, I don’t really know what I’m talking about as I haven’t done the homework. But I do know I haven’t worn a tie to any social event since Jett and Cait‘s wedding two years ago, and before that Kris Tapley‘s wedding in Palm Springs four or five years ago.

When I want to present myself in a semi-uptown, semi-businessy way I’ll maybe wear a suit and buttoned shirt but without a tie. My recent inclination is to wear a suit jacket along with a black Calvin Klein T-shirt, slim jeans and nice Italian lace-ups (or maybe a pair of black Beatle boots). The way it is.

I know that suits, jackets and occasional ties were fairly de rigeur when I attended industry screenings at the Academy in the ’90s and aughts, but over the last eight to ten years Hollywood male dress sense has downshifted big-time. You could even say “fallen off a cliff.” And I’m not just talking about guys who wear gold-toe socks or whose pant cuffs that are two to three inches above the shoe line.

I’ve eyeballed guys at Academy after-parties and said to myself, “Is he kidding? This is his idea of looking semi-dressy or stylishly urban at a big movie premiere? I wouldn’t wear those duds to shop at Walmart.”

Even (or especially) in the face of all this death and decline and sartorial drudgery, I love die-hards who dress with style and angularity. Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling, for one. Always impeccably dressed for any and all occasions, including beach walks. I wish I was in his class.

It’s all been nicely summarized by Richard Godwin in a 10.20 Guardian piece titled “The New Workwear: Has The Suit Finally Died?” Here are two excerpts plus one after the jump:

But a general, blood-level resentment of the non-Anglo Saxon “other”, and the numerical potential to change the tint and flavor of this country. This was the primal tide (along with general non-denominational Hillary hate) that allowed Donald Trump to squeak into an electoral college victory in 2016. “He tapped into something in a very profound way that began to redefine the debate in the political year of 2016, and continues to redefine the politics of the country today.” — Dan Balz, respected Washington Post journalist-editor.

I don’t know which aspect of Kanye West‘s Jesus Is King is more grotesque. The notion of the profligate Kanye expressing strong allegiance for the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth plus the ongoing obscenity that is Donald Trump. (Or has he backed away from the Trump pallyhood?) Maybe it’s the idea of a super-rich, notoriously flaky superstar promoting King Jesus aka Judean Badass, King Shit of Bethlehem, the boss of bosses. Or the idea of IMAX somehow making an allegedly spiritual venture feel more righteous.

Jesus Is King obviously wasn’t made for your generic West Hollywood smart-ass types but the devotional gospel crowd — I get that. HE nonetheless disapproves.

One discussion panel and two (or possibly three) films today at the Middleburg Film Festival: (a) “Talk Back to the Critics” — DC-area film critics kicking it all around — Travis Hopson (News Channel 8, WETA Around Town), Nell Minow (rogerebert.com), Susan Wloszczyna (GoldDerby.com), Jason Fraley (Entertainment Editor, WTOP)and Tim Gordon (FIlmGordon) — 2 pm at Old Ox Brewery; (b) Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Just Mercy, a fact-based “noble lawyer struggles to get innocent guy out of jail” drama with Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Brie Larson — 3:15 pm at Hill School; (c) toss-up between catching a 6:30 pm screening of Alma Har’el‘s Honey Boy, written by Shia LaBeouf and based on his childhood relationship with dear old shitheel dad, or just sitting down somewhere and writing for an hour or so; and (d) Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out, at long last — 8:30 pm, Hill School.

In a 10.16 “On Second Thought” essay N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott regards Taika Watiti‘s JoJo Rabbit in the same authoritarian-mocking tradition as Charlie Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator (’40), Ernst Lubitsch‘s To Be Or Not To Be (’42) along with the less respected 1983 Mel Brooks remake, not to mention Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler”, an inadvertently successful Broadway musical within the fictitious context of The Producers (’67), and the WWII German-spoofing in Hogan’s Heroes.

“But what if we don’t live in that world?,” Scott asks. “For a long time, laughing at historical Nazis has seemed like a painless moral booster shot, a way of keeping the really bad stuff they represent safely contained in the past. Maybe that was always wishful thinking.

“Recent history shows that the medicine of laughter can have scary side effects. Fascism has crawled out of the dust pile of history, striking familiar poses, sometimes with tongue in cheek. It has been amply documented that ‘ironic’ expressions of bigotry and anti-Semitism — jokes and memes on social media; facetious trolling of the politically correct; slurs as exercises in free speech — can evolve over time into the real thing. A dress-up costume can be mistaken for a uniform, including by its wearer.”

So Scott is saying that anti-Nazi humor doesn’t have the bite or relevance that it once had, and that on a cultural-processing level Jojo Rabbit may not be the anti-hate satire that its admirers believe it to be? Something like that. My first reaction to Jojo was why reach all the way back to 75-year-old Nazi culture to deliver an anti-racist message? Why not fiddle around with anti-immigrant Trumpster sentiments or focus on the go-along child of an ICE officer…something in that vein? Why use the filter of WWII history when it probably doesn’t register all that strongly with a good portion of the audience?

Side issue: David Poland has become an unofficial award-season Twitter lobbyist for Jojo Rabbit. As the Poland ardor ebbs or surges, so goes the campaign itself. Keep close tabs.