Don’t call it a comeback (he’s been here for years), but Steven Soderbergh’s self-imposed exile from film directing is officially over, and his inevitable return to the big screen confirms what most of us have known all along: The guy is a lot better at making movies than he is at not making movies.

Hollywood’s most restless iconoclast, Soderbergh couldn’t take a vacation if his life depended on it; his “retirement” was shorter than the break that many major directors routinely take between projects, and during that time he directed two staggeringly great seasons of “The Knick,” executive produced both “Red Oaks” and “The Girlfriend Experience,” and shot one of the defining cinematic experiences of this or any other century,…

i tried to push the fact that this is just, as they actually say in the movie, Ocean's 7-11 out of my mind. i really did. i did my best to not think about how perfect brad pitt would've been as joe bang. "daniel craig is giving a great performance," i thought to myself. "and since brad did Ocean's Eleven, there's no way he and soderbergh would do another heist movie, right?"

the credits roll. i go on the imdb trivia section as per uze. "Michael Shannon and Matt Damon were a part of the cast. Both dropped out due to scheduling conflicts." matt damon? co-star of Ocean's Eleven?

so there was no excuse. i clench my teeth. shake my…

as much an extension of Magic Mike's recession era anxieties as it is the Ocean's heist capers, Logan Lucky is a generous (perhaps a little condescendingly so) portrait of the capability of blue-collar america, the endearing sincerity of the americana it inspires, and the poisonous effect corporatization has had on both. the logan brothers are NASCAR's prime audience: john-denver-listening, bob-seger-shirt-wearing members of the working-class that, despite both being left disabled by their country (one playing america's sport, the other fighting one of its many grotesque, unjust wars), buy into the national mythos that NASCAR intends to commodify and exploit. "it's like stealing from america" a member of their crew says late in the film, in regards to the moral concern…

I was only looking for a movie to help pass the time as I wait for the beginning of my Movie & Meaning festival this evening in Asheville, North Carolina. I found this one on Amazon Prime.  

I did not know it was set in Charlotte, NC just a few miles off to the east. The southern drawl reminded me of my conversation with the couple from Chattanooga, Tennessee that I ate breakfast with this morning at the very busy Biscuit Head restaurant. And then John Denver singing about the Blue Ridge mountains in neighbouring West Virginia where my wife and I hope to go hiking next week.

This movie was mostly just a lot of fun.  And knowing that movies…