No, not the housing fiasco, but the production company founded by George Clooney and Stephen Soderberg. Mr. Soderberg brought us the provocative Sex, Lies and Videotape and riveting Syriana, but is better known for Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven.

More recently, the acting/directing/producing duo have brought us the compelling legal drama, Michael Clayton (nice site - love the rollovers), which centers on a transformative unethical business and it’s shady dealings.

Brilliantly directed by Soderberg, the tale follows Clooney as he lurks in the shadows, doing the “janitorial” duties for the company, all the while engrossed in his own faltering side occupations. Since I loathe movie reviews that divulge plot points, I’ll just say that the story unfolds in a somewhat predictable manner, though done with an expertise reserved for only a small community of Hollywood elite.

I expected more political overtones, as coming from Section Eight with their staunch liberal financial backing. I suppose the anti big business, hypocritical corporate stance is enough of a slam to fuel the fire. Even though this is one of my top picks for 2007, it doesn’t match the menace and sheer greed of corporate lust portrayed in one of my all-time favorite overlooked masterpieces, Michael Mann’s “The Insider.” Recommend you go have a look at Clayton before it leaves theaters. It’s worth a big screen watch, but if you miss it, go queue up your Netflix. You knew you could do that with (most) films currently playing, didn’t you?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 4:49 pm and is filed under Film+Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.