Sex, Lies, and Videotape 1989
I am not sure when I first saw Sex, Lies, and Videotape. But I do remember that when I watched it on DVD, I wound up watching the director’s commentary and really enjoyed hearing Steven Soderbergh’s insights on the movie, an amazing success for a first-time writer and director. Watching it again many years later, on a Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection, the movie looks and sounds great and while fashions have changed, the movie really holds up with some truly great acting. There are maybe a few clumsy moments of dialogue, but the characters are great and perfectly inhabited by the leads. Andie MacDowell handles her role perfectly and James Spader, of course, is great, but the confidence that Laura San Giacomo has when meeting Graham is just amazing to watch. And Peter Gallagher does a great job of playing a horrible person. The writing, particularly the relationships between the characters, is great to watch. With restored sound and a better audio system, the music also stands out and gets some of the focus in Criterion’s extras. It is hard to believe that with such a great first success and ultimately a great career that Soderbergh struggled so much for the next decade before hitting it big again with Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and Ocean’s Eleven.
The Criterion edition of the movie uses a new UHD scan of the movie (which looks great except for the first scene which is horrible) and a restored soundtrack. One feature is about restoring the soundtrack to eliminate the noise of generators that were used on the set during the filming and due to the low budget were noisier and not as far away as they should have been. Also included is a booklet that includes a write up of the movie plus excerpts from Soderbergh’s diary as he was trying to get the film made (he really wanted the movie to be black and white, but even the one studio he thought he had on board finally said no).
Written: 28 Jul 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital