Review: Magic Mike

Steven Soderbergh continues to impress. He's one of the most unpredictable of American directors, capable of being political or pulpy, working on blockbusters or shoestrings. Earlier this year, he made Haywire, an action movie with a kickass girl hero, and now he turns his sights to male strippers with Magic Mike.

Perhaps even more extraordinary than stretching out and working in different styles and genres is the fact that Soderbergh isn't afraid to deal with sex. Sex -- and I'm talking human sexuality, rather than women in tight clothes -- has always been troublesome in Hollywood, but with the economy and the overall atmosphere of fear and panic, it has become even more scarce.

In his career, Soderbergh tackled sex right away with Sex, Lies & Videotape. He created one of the steamiest love scenes of recent years with Out of Sight, directed a segment of a triptych about sex, Eros, and then -- most daringly -- he made The Girlfriend Experience, a low budget story about the life of a call girl, featuring a real-life porn star, Sasha Grey. Overall, Magic Mike is as safe as an actual male stripper; the sex is there for show, but it still acknowledges the existence of female urges and fantasies.

Channing Tatum -- who also appeared in Haywire -- stars as Magic Mike. He's a popular, Tampa, FL, stripper with some great moves, but his dream is to make furniture, so he works extra jobs trying to save money. On a construction job, he meets a green kid, Adam (Alex Pettyfer), who winds up going to a club with him. By the end of the night, Adam has been pushed out on stage and performed his first striptease.

Some of the plot elements are fairly familiar after that. Adam grows more and more arrogant, begins to enjoy his fame a bit too much, and becomes involved with drugs. He loses a huge stash of drugs and owes some thugs a large chunk of change. He also threatens the older Mike, who wants a behind-the-scenes percentage of a new strip club that the owner, Dallas (Matthew McConaughey), hopes to open in Miami.

What's more, Adam has a cute sister, Brooke (Cody Horn), whom Mike takes a shine to. But she sees him as a bad influence on her brother, so it's an uphill battle. The beautiful Olivia Munn co-stars as a girl that Mike likes, but she refuses to see him as anything more than a sex object. However, despite all these old chestnuts, Soderbergh turns in a fresh film. He's less interested in hitting the plot points as he is exploring the spaces between.

His skills as a cinematographer are apparent as well: he captures an open-air feel and uses warm colors to create a sense of temperature; these establish a loose and organic tone. You can almost smell the warm air coming in through the windows, as well as the sweat of the clubs and parties. It feels like the story is unfolding in a real space and not a vacuum-sealed Hollywood set.

Tatum thrives in an environment like this. It's most gratifying to see him evolve from a glowering thug to a warm, funny presence, capable of living in the moment. Just a year ago, I had written him off, and now he seems poised on the verge of being a great new star. Likewise, McConaughey -- who was a joke a few years ago -- has happily turned back into a character actor, playing offbeat Texans rather than vapid leading men. His performances here and in the recent Bernie have put him back on the map. As for the younger actors, Munn has a lot of charisma, Horn could be promising, and as Adam, Pettyfer projects just the right amount of arrogance.

Magic Mike certainly isn't a great film, but it has a most welcome amount of life in a summer that's all about marketing and trying to please the audience. The only downside is that Soderbergh announced his "retirement" recently, and though it's unclear as to what that's going to entail, it would be a huge shame if films this good were to disappear from multiplexes.

Review: Bernie

A first reaction to Richard Linklater's Bernie would probably be: "just what is this thing?" It seems like a "mockmentary," with all the interviews of people commenting upon the action, but then the action itself is nothing that could be -- or would be -- captured by a documentary crew. But after careful consideration, it actually jells into a peculiar, wonderful, and quite brilliant mingling of fact and fiction. Or, in short, it's a celebration of the plastic nature of storytelling.

Featured at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival, Bernie is based on a true story, but unlike many "based on a true story" movies, it makes no claims of actually being a true story. "Bernie" Tiede (Jack Black) is a mortician in Carthage, Texas. He is introduced in a brilliant opening sequence, demonstrating for a group of students his craft. His work is meticulous but theatrical, and it highlights a large difference between what is shown and what is actually true.

From there, the movie teaches us a bit more about him. He's a singer with a beautiful, perfectly modulated voice. He sings in the church choir, and even performs in some local musicals. In his personal time, he likes to help soothe the grief of the older ladies who have lost their husbands, though there's some speculation as to whether or not Bernie is homosexual. In one case, he befriends a wealthy widow, Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine), who is generally disdained in the small town. They spend a great deal of time together, going on lavish vacations, until Bernie more or less becomes her henpecked personal assistant. That's when the murder happens.

Between these scenes, Carthage locals offer their opinions on the story, which is basically gossip. The gossipers agree and disagree with one another, and fill in the story's holes with conjecture. It turns out that most of these folks are actually actors, though some of them knew the real people, and most of them are from the area and were at least familiar with Bernie's story. Furthermore, though their dialogue was all scripted, it was largely borrowed from interviews. Again, we have a complex mix of truth and storytelling.

Perhaps the movie's masterstroke comes with its introduction of district attorney Danny Buck (Matthew McConaughey), who makes it his mission to bring down Bernie. Buck is shown among the gossipers, and then slowly enters into the narrative; he represents the fusion between the gossip and the events that we are shown. Likewise, McConaughey is well disguised and seems for all the world like one of the locals. Remember that, though McConaughey has gone onto a ridiculous and laughable career as a shirtless Hollywood leading man, Linklater gave him his first potent character role in Dazed and Confused. It looks as if McConaughey ought to stay in character roles from now on.

Not to mention Jack Black, who also had his best lead performance to date in a Linklater film, School of Rock. He surpasses that with Bernie, putting every tool in his arsenal to perfect use. And of course, it goes without saying that MacLaine can play a mean, cranky old woman with the very best of them; here, however, she adds extra depth with her amazed, moved expression when she watches her Bernie singing on stage.

Linklater's final comment on the elusiveness of perception comes in Bernie's trial, wherein a jury of local southerners looks at Bernie as if he were an alien, with absolutely no idea how to define him. I suppose he is an alien in some way. Linklater deliberately avoids looking at Bernie's inner life. We rarely see him when he's alone, and even then -- such as driving his car -- he's performing. He serves only to interact with -- and cause reactions from -- the other characters; and, ironically, the other characters are only there to tell Bernie's story. And yet, due to Black's canny performance, he's somehow a touching soul.

Bernie is a simple movie, clearly funny and entertaining, but at the same time astoundingly complex and intriguing. It's rather unlike anything Linklater has done before, but an altogether welcome new layer to his canon.