Steven Soderbergh's comeback with "Logan Lucky" was a succesful one. The writer-director's film was easily one of his 10 best, it was light, breezy, dramatic, comedic, enetrtaining, everything you really wanted in a movie. In other words, the perfect movie to come out of retirement for, an excellent way to refreshen up for the more serious fare to come. Up next for him is "Unsane" a drama starring Juno Temple, which we know little of.
As he was in retirement a cinematic storm brewed in the summer of 2015: "Mad Max: Fury Road." That film just shook the entire industry with its masterful and revolutionry use of practical effects. I wrote about the film, saying -
"You can't deny the sheer impact of Mad Max: Fury Road. Director George Miller's Fourth installment of the film franchise is proof that not all blockbusters should be greeted with an indifferent shrug. If anything, this brutal action film is even more intense and exciting than its predecessors. With its nihilistic outlook on human nature and a nasty, in-your-face style, this is Miller's triumph through and through. The amount of detail that he brings to every frame is as obsessively meticulous as any Wes Anderson picture I've seen, as is the editing by Margaret Sixel, which – as we stand – is most deserving of next year's Film Editing Oscar. Edited at breakneck pace and staged with manic fury, Sixel is the unheralded hero here. The celebrated one is of course Miller who's passion and vision comes through in every frame. The total control he must have had with this project to pull off what he did on screen is unheard of, which is good for him and great for us."
It seems like Soderbergh himself is a hardcore fan of Miller's visionary work of art. Taking the time to promote the upcoming DVD/Blu-Ray release of "Logan Lucky," Soderbergh decided to sneak in a few good words to THR about how blown away he was by George Miller’s artistry in "Mad Max: Fury Road"
The ability to stage well is a skill and a talent that I value above almost everything else. And I say that because there are people who do it better than I’ll ever be able to do it after 40 years of active study. I just watched Mad Max: Fury Road again last week, and I tell you I couldn’t direct 30 seconds of that. I’d put a gun in my mouth. I don’t understand how [George Miller] does that, I really don’t, and it’s my job to understand it. I don’t understand two things: I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.
I could almost see that’s kind of possible until the polecat sequence, and then I give up. We are talking about the ability in three dimensions to break a sequence into a series of shots in which no matter how fast you’re cutting you know where you are geographically. And each one is a real shot where a lot of things had to go right. I’m going to keep trying; I’m not going to keep trying in the sense that I’m going to volunteer to direct the next Mad Max movie. I’m going to keep trying in the sense that when I have sequences that demand a certain level of sophistication in terms of their visual staging, I’m going to try and watch the people who do it really well and see if I can climb inside their heads enough to think like that.
But he’s off the chart. I guarantee that the handful of people who are even in range of that, when they saw Fury Road, had blood squirting out of their eyes. The thing with George Miller, it’s not just that, he does everything really well. The scripts are great, the performances are great, the ideas are great. He’s exceptional. I met him once for about 30 seconds at the Directors Guild Awards in Los Angeles the year of Fury Road. But you don’t want to say that stuff to somebody’s face; it’s embarrassing.
Watching [“Mad Max: Fury Road”] again last week, there are four little things that I suddenly picked up the math on. This shot went to that and to that and I picked up the math of what on a real visual level what connected those sequences of shots. With the understanding that this is figuring out four more decimals of pi, I’m never getting to the end of this. So I’ll watch that and I’ll watch some Fincher stuff, some Spielberg stuff, some Cameron stuff, and John McTiernan has shot some stuff that is very impressive. I’m just talking about physical staging of sequences, in which there are multiple elements moving very fast.
I wasn’t born with it, so I have to do these workout sessions. I envy it.