For the week of November 27th, Shout Factory is offering a special edition of Rob Reiner's phenomenal Misery to Blu-ray. Reiner has had uncommon success when adapting Stephen King's prose for the big screen. It's really just a matter of taste as to whether or not you prefer the coming-of-age dramedy Stand by Me (based on King's novella "The Body") or this 1990 thriller about famous author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) who survives a near-fatal car wreck only to discover that the real nightmare has just begun. Said Nightmare takes the form of Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, in the role that made her a star), Paul's disturbed caretaker and self-described "Number One Fan," and even if you've never seen Misery, you're probably aware of Annie's more ghoulish approaches to physical therapy, most notably the brutal hobbling she administers after Paul tries to escape her clutches. Moments like that retain the visceral power of King's text (he's never been one for subtlety when it comes to violence), yet I'd hesitate to brand Misery as just a thriller. Certainly Reiner stages the hell out of the suspense sequences, expertly highlighting Paul's mounting desperation against his broken body as he tries to find a way out of Annie's isolated cabin, and Bates is one of the screen's most terrifying villains. I don't know what's more unnerving - Annie will fly into a blind rage over the tiniest slights (her manic speech about how a movie cliffhanger "betrays" her might be Misery's unhinged high point), but just as quickly she'll turn sickly sweet and start cooing over Paul's genius, as if she hasn't been subjecting him to constant psychological and physical torture. However, Reiner's secret weapon might be screenwriter William Goldman. You know Goldman even if you don't think you do; the legendary writer behind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, and The Princess Bride, Goldman specialized in filling intense genre scenarios with glib, self-aware characters (he was Joss Whedon before Whedon came along), and he works the same magic on Misery. For one, he adds two characters that weren't in the source material: Richard Farnsworth's wry local sheriff and his sarcastic wife (the great Frances Sternhagen), who begin the film as its wonderful Greek Chorus and eventually give Misery the tension of a Hitchcockian chiller. Furthermore, while Caan's performance might not be as histrionic as Bates's, he's far more subtle in terms of how he evokes Goldman's postmodern conceit: there's this delicious confusion in his eyes, as if Paul is less spooked by Wilkes herself than the fact that he feels like a character in one of his own novels. As such, Misery becomes a kind of jet-black satire, one that sees the symbiotic relationship between art and the spectator as nothing less than a full-blown battleground where winner takes all.
Universal and Bleecker Street's Logan Lucky, on the other hand, is far less ambitious in its aims. Director Steven Soderbergh's first theatrical feature since 2013's Side Effects (at the time, he claimed he was retiring, although I don't know anyone who would define directing two seasons of television and filming/editing Magic Mike XXL as "retirement"), Logan Lucky sees Soderbergh returning to the same kind of sleek heist entertainment that he perfected with the Ocean's Eleven trilogy. Yes, Logan Lucky is little more than Ocean's 7-11 (a term that Soderbergh oh-so-meta-ly sneaks into the film itself), but the end result is so blissfully entertaining you probably won't care. Once again, Soderbergh puts together a rogue's gallery of criminal operators (Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Jack Quaid, Brian Gleeson, and Riley Keough, who walks away with the whole damn movie), this time banding together to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina, except you can see Soderbergh working out how to generate the same level of thrills as an Ocean's feature on a fraction of the budget. Logan Lucky's heroes are a far less polished bunch, hailing from rural West Virginia hollers where John Denver is king and cutting-edge technology isn't a given, and that disconnect between their grand ambitions and their almost total lack of resources makes for developments both exciting and funny. This might be the only heist movie ever made where its robbers "blow" the vault door using a jerry-rigged concoction of gummy bears and other common stadium-concession snacks: Craig's explosives expert pauses the heist to explain the chemical reaction to Tatum and Driver because they're as nonplussed about this idea as we are. Still, as ramshackle as the heist is, Soderbergh treats the film as a masterclass in directing, expertly revealing and withholding key information, and all within the confines of his sterile, professional widescreen compositions. Plus, Soderbergh allows just enough gentle commentary about the American economy and the perils of cultural stereotyping to give Logan Lucky some substance, if only a little. Unlike Danny Ocean, Tatum's sympathetic, downtrodden blue-collar worker turns to crime because he genuinely can't make an honest living. His failure to disclose a preexisting medical condition gets him fired from his construction job, while his far more laconic brother (Driver) has resigned himself to a life of casual tedium after getting part of his arm blown off in Iraq. Rebecca Blunt's script (fun fact: Blunt herself might not be a real person) reminds me of Mike Judge's great King of the Hill in terms of how it gently satirizes the Southern working class without ever condescending to it. If Logan Lucky is making any larger thematic aspirations, it's that we underestimate Middle America at our own peril, and Soderbergh delights in exploding all our preconceived notions about his "hayseed" heroes. Ultimately, I think Logan Lucky is a hair less accomplished that Ocean's Eleven - Soderbergh introduces Hilary Swank's officious federal agent far too late in the film to have her register as the Big Bad the movie needs - but I have such a good time watching it that my concerns matter less with each successive viewing. Would that all populist entertainment were as professional and intelligent as this one.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that "Soderbergh doesn't just dress up the movie with a different location, new faces, and ball caps. He's created a living, breathing world with characters who are facing their own difficulties and struggling through the pitfalls of life, where it's patently unfair but all they can do is their best to get on by. Unless, of course, they devise a scheme to rip off a NASCAR event. There's a distinct sense of character to the movie, both in the way Soderbergh tells the story and in the way the actors present the story. Gone from the film is a sense of distance, that feeling that it's an entertainment vessel like any of the Oceans films. Logan Lucky is instead an organic, tangible film, shot in a way to make the audience feel like an active member of the crew, not overtly, but subtly to be sure. It's approachable, engaging, and a completely fun time at the movies that absolutely flies by even at two hours in length."
From Warner Archive comes the cult romantic comedy Doc Hollywood. Doc Hollywood has proven surprisingly resilient, and I credit its profound adherence to formula. Even if you haven't seen this movie - Michael J. Fox plays a hotshot plastic surgeon who gets stranded in South Carolina on his way to Los Angeles (the geography doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but roll with it), and unintentionally shakes up small-town life - I guarantee you've seen at least one of its imitators. Hell, the Pixar comedy Cars practically ran a Control-F-Find-and-Replace to Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman, and Daniel Pyne's original screenplay, swapping in "racing" for "plastic surgery" and "the American Southwest" for "the American South." Studios love this kind of plug-and-play story because it has broad appeal, no offensive content, and zero thorny thematic complications. By comparison, something like Logan Lucky is practically a neorealist drama. But Doc Hollywood is also the studio formula as wholly satisfying comfort food. From frame one, the outcome is never in doubt - Fox will humble himself with the support of a good woman - so director Michael Caton-Jones compensates by slowing down the pace and enjoying the characters. We like most of these people, whether it's Barnard Hughes's crusty small-town physician or Woody Harrelson's supremely enjoyably lunkhead, and so we're able to accept the clichés because the cast sells them so well. That goes double for Fox and Warner. Marty McFly might be the more iconic Fox performance, but his Ben Stone here is a close second; no one is more skilled at making callow ambition seem both foolhardy and charming. And Warner is so good here you wonder why she never became a Julia Roberts-level rom-com star. Minus her unfortunate introduction (it was sexist in 1991, and it's considerable worse than that in 2017), Warner brings such confidence to the proceedings. Fox gets better around her - he tamps down his manic energy to match her effortless calm, and we get the pleasure of watching two nice people being nice to one another. That's a modest pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless, just like so much of Doc Hollywood.
Finally, A24 and Lionsgate Home Entertainment are offering Woodshock on Blu-ray. Increasingly, I feel like aspiring directors need to pass some sort of competency exam before netting their first picture; status and connections alone should not a filmmaking career make. Case in point: the work of sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy on this trippy psychothriller. The Sisters Mulleavy founded the fashion label Rodarte, and Woodshock plays like a narrative approximation of their aesthetic and social cachet. Dig it: DP Peter Flickenberg gives the film the ethereal shimmer of a really great clothing commercial, all hallucinatory dissolves and layered ennui, and the Mulleavys linger on every one of Flickenberg's tactile compositions like it's a brand-in-waiting: the lush California climes, the plumes of marijuana smoke, the misery pulled taut over star Kirsten Dunst's face. Furthermore, all those years that the Mulleavys spent hobnobbing with Hollywood elites like Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola paid off tenfold here - besides Dunst, Woodshock benefits from the likes of Lorelei Linklater, Jack Kilmer (children of Richard and Val, respectively), and especially K.K. Barrett, the Academy Award-nominated production designer (he's designed every one of Jonze's feature films) whose contributions here give Woodshock a visual appeal far exceeding its modest $5 million. If directing were simply a matter of hiring talented folks and making them look pretty, the Mulleavys would be great ones. But at some point, you've got to invest the viewer in the unfolding on-screen drama, and in that regard, the Mulleavys prove themselves singularly incompetent. The film wants to break our hearts, following Dunst through seemingly endless despair after her mother dies, except all the Mulleavys' beloved sensual filigrees strand us from an recognizable emotional core. The elliptical editing, the dreamlike rhythms: at a certain point, we can't be sure how much of what we're seeing is actually happening, and while I get that the experience is supposed to approximate Dunst's heavy marijuana usage, we also never take her pain that seriously. Dunst tries her best, yet the movie fails her - you get the sense the Mulleavys just told her to do whatever she did on Melancholia without understanding the performance development necessary to reach that place. Look, clearly certain fashion designers can pull double duty as accomplished directors. The gold standard is still Tom Ford (A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals): as seductive as his glittering cinematic surfaces are, Ford understands the premium filmmakers must put on thematic resonance, on narrative development, on human interaction. The Mulleavys, by comparison, treat those qualities like commodities at best and inconveniences at worst.