THE LAUNDROMAT: Something Is Illuminated

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You are about to start reading the new film review written by Michael Perkins. You saw a link from Hyperreal Film Club on your Facebook newsfeed and clicked on it. You’ve done this with a few links while aimlessly scrolling. You’re at home laying in bed next to your lover who is also doing something similar. Are they also reading the new film review written by Michael Perkins? Will they after you recommend it to them? Will you recommend it to them? So far its not feeling like you will because none of the opening paragraph has been accurate.

Because you are not laying in your bed. You are on the toilet at work. You left your post out of a legitimate need to relieve yourself but that doesn’t mean you are above taking a few moments to reconnect with your digital life. There is someone in the stall next to you. You don’t recognize the black-brown-grey boots they are wearing. Nor do you recognize the crumpled up jeans at their ankles. Will you recommend the new film review written by Michael Perkins to them? Most certainly not. The review seems to be some sort of exercise in cheek and metabation that frankly you don’t have time to indulge without some sort of promise of quality.

You didn’t even see the film directed by Steven Soderbergh that the review is ostensibly about. It was released straight to Netflix and the sources you frequent to get your film recommendations mostly ignored it. It has a 41% score on the Tomatometer! You don’t trust the Tomatometer. But you also know that if a Meryl Streep movie got a 41% score on the Tomatometer, then the film must not have worked very well as a whole.

So here you are, sitting alone at the bar while your friend pees just passing time on your phone and regretting clicking on this “review” for a critically panned film from a director who currently seems more interested in his process than his product. Scorsese, Cuaron, the Coens, Baumbach; they’ve all done films for Netflix now but now Soderbergh has done two and for his first one (High Flying Bird) he said “I want to shoot a basketball movie without basketball in it and I want to shoot the whole thing on an iPhone.” 

“That’s all well and good,” you say. “I, as an aspiring something myself, love the idea of democratized artforms. I have an iPhone. I’m holding it now. Please let me know when Zazie Beetz is available and we can start shooting my short film about what it’s like to be an aspiring something.”

Look at you. Arguing with Steven Soderbergh.

Oh! A photo from the actual film! Perhaps the real review will start below it and it won’t be too high concept to enjoy.

Rating: [2 tuxedo mans, which the editor of this review did not have a new enough computer to copy and paste, see, I tried and it looks like this: 🤵🤵]

The Laundromat opens with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas looking right into the camera and sharing a soliloquy about the origins of money. They do so while strolling idly past a group of actors pretending to be cavemen on a soundstage. We know its a soundstage because it looks like one and as the two movie stars continue this duologue, they descend a staircase into yet another soundstage that is dramatically different. The experience is almost akin to seeing a play with a high production value where an actor ascends a staircase being moved by stagehands while still more stagehands strike and reform the set.

The film is based on the events leading up to the release of the mysterious Panama Papers. The Panama Papers was a massive data dump given to the media by a whistle blower that revealed decades of offshore tax avoidance perpetrated by countless wealthy individuals.

Fun fact: I wrote briefly about the Panama Papers in my Parasite review. In that review, I said that I was not sure what the Panama Papers were and that I was going off my own memory. This was true. But then, while that review was in the editing process, I watched The Laundromat on Netflix. It was so thematically similar to the subject matter I was covering that I felt compelled to include a screenshot from it to help hammer home a point I was making. 

This has been the Fun Fact Corner.

The End.

“The End”???? Who ends a film review with “The End”? There has to be some mistake here. This is egregious. Perhaps there is more to the review somewhere but you don’t care. No! Clearly, you know you will not read the rest of the new film review written by Michael Perkins. Even when the review had gotten into the actual reviewing of the movie, it started referencing other reviews written by Michael Perkins. 

You close the review and push it from your mind. Your hairdresser is ready for you now. They are a little bit behind today which kept you waiting but you know that it is probably the fault of a previous client. You get your haircut and stop by a coffee shop on the way home. The barista’s playlist appears to have been curated from some combination of Madvillain adjacent Pandora stations. You get home and lay on your couch so you can dick around on your laptop before watching something on Netflix. You’re not sure what that will be yet but it won’t be The Laundromat.

You open your browser and go to Facebook first just to check and see if you have any notifications. You have one. Michael Perkins has tagged you in a comment. What? You don’t even know Michael Perkins. You click the notification and find yourself looking at the original post from Hyperreal Film Club for the new film review written by Michael Perkins. There are two likes on the post now. One of them is from him.

His comment reads as follows: “Hey I saw that you were reading my review which I mistakenly turned in half finished. I always put “The End” at the end of my drafts that I’m working on to remind myself of the possibility that today may be the last day I ever get to create something. I have a pretty intense fear of my own mortality. I don’t want to talk about myself too much but I just wanted to let you know that I’ve uploaded the rest of the review now. Sorry for the tag but I just hated the idea of someone missing the payoff at the end.”

You blink a few times. You are concerned to know that the reviewer can see who is reading their reviews. But do websites even work like that? Well whatever. You have to finish reading the review now because you’ve been directly asked to and this could go any number of ways. You aren’t sure what “payoff at the end” means but you are pretty confident its an overstatement.

Sigh. You click on the new film review written by Michael Perkins.

Rating: 💰💰💰💰

Ocean’s 13 is the best movie in the trilogy. I know I’m going to lose a few people by opening a review this way but it is my opinion. Those movies are about fun and lights and Las Vegas and movie stars and 13 gives you the most of those things.

But which one is the most Soderberghy? Probably Ocean’s 12. If only for the reason that it has Bruce Willis playing Bruce Willis and it has Julia Roberts playing someone who looks like Julia Roberts. Soderbergh has always behaved similarly to the Kool-aid Man when it comes to the fourth wall. He’s not content to just break it. Breaking it is essential to his content. Oh yeah!

But Soderbergh’s most egregious wall shatter wasn’t in Ocean’s 12. It also wasn’t in The Laundromat. It was in his other 2019 Netflix release, High Flying Bird. High Flying Bird was shot entirely on an iPhone 8. Despite (or because of) this fact, the film is quite visually striking. The angles get a little wonky in some scenes and the inhibitions of the technology are felt in intangible ways but, it’s overall a successful venture. But there’s one moment that is really odd to see. 

Someone slams something down on a desk and the camera shakes. I don’t mean it quivers slightly. I mean the phone is clearly on a tripod on the desk and the force of the actor’s action caused the issue. It’s hard to say exactly why this shot wasn’t replaced in the final cut of the film but it’s safe to say that it wasn’t missed. 

The End.

Oh my god are you serious? Are you being trolled? Another half-written review that only mentioned The Laundromat in passing. Also, Ocean’s 13 is the third best Ocean’s movie. You snap your laptop shut and storm off to your kitchen to pour yourself a glass of wine. 

You return to the couch and decide that you don’t even want to turn the TV on right now. You have been tantalized enough that you crave some actual film discussion. You put in your AirPods and turn on a podcast where Rian Johnson interviews Denis Villeneuve about that Blade Runner sequel. “Visually, you strike me as someone who probably storyboards,” says Jonhson in your ears and you smile.

Then, you awake in your living room because you have to pee. You fell asleep listening to the podcast. Your wine glass is empty and your AirPods are silent. You check your phone and learn two things: it is now 2:12 AM and you have a text message from a number with a 325 area code.

Your phone recognizes your face and shows you the content of the text message. “Hey this is Michael Perkins.” it says. “I saw that you read my updated review for The Laundromat. I’m so sorry. That was actually an earlier draft that I gave up on because I thought my writing was pretty clunky when talking about the camera shake thing. After the first accident, I rushed this old draft to Hyperreal by mistake and I was very adamant that they publish immediately. This was so I could apologize to you and give you the conclusion. They obliged me because I was so pushy. So as you can see, this was all my fault again. I have re-uploaded the review again and I hope that you read it and that the end pays off. I never got an Austin number so that’s why my area code is still 325 because I grew up in Abilene.”

Why did Michael Perkins feel the need to explain his area code and not how he got your number? Is he a lunatic? There’s some sort of invasion of privacy happening here. The two of you have mutual friends on Facebook. You knew that from earlier. He must have asked around for your number. Not a good look for Michael Perkins. You get another text.

“hyperrealfilm.club/reviews/the-laundromat-review”

You roll your eyes. You click the link mostly to make sure that you aren’t mentioned by name in whatever the fuck this is. Hopefully, he just gets to the point.

Rating: 🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️🏌️

If we were to play a game where we assigned a bunch of directors to different Adam Sandler characters, the first problem we would have, would be that we could only use Michael Bay once. But we’d probably settle on The Waterboy eventually. This is the kind of game where you can make whatever justifications you like to make your case. We’re having fun here. Wanna argue that Shane Black is Mr. Deeds? That’s your prerogative. My pick is Steven Soderbergh as Happy Gilmore. I’ve got a simple and half-baked reason why. 

The guy takes big swings.

The Laundromat is a kind of big swing from several folks involved. Soderbergh is going full Soderbergh. Oldman is going full Oldman. Banderas is going full Banderas. Streep is Streep is Streep is Streep. 

This is a spoiler free review for once and that’s a bit difficult with this film. The plot can’t necessarily be spoiled. The film is based on real events. The Panama Papers were released revealing that the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. had been assisting the world’s wealthy population with fraud, bribery, money laundering, tax avoidance, tax evasion, etc.

What I want to avoid spoiling is the ways in which the film tells this story and plays with expectations. I’ve got a similar relationship to Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler… but I think I’m going to eventually break that NDA because no one reads books anymore.

So what I’d rather do is show you how it made me feel. You. You reading this. 

I encourage you to take a chance on The Laundromat. It’s not perfect. It makes some moves that feel kind of forced. It wastes time occasionally. I don’t care. I love it. You may not and that’s okay too. But if you’re like me, you like it when you can feel an artist really trying something. Like going to indie rock shows in 2007 when the bassist of some band would pull out a kazoo for some fucking reason. Go for it man. 

Blow that thing.

You do that kind of squint people do when they aren’t really sure what the point of something was. You put down your phone and decide to just watch some Community to unwind. You navigate through your Hulu app. You pick S2E5: Messianic Myths. You get to that part of the episode where Shirley says, “I mean come on Charlie Kaufman, some of us have work in the morning. Damn!” You smile.