Meat at the Movies: A Great Director Returns From Retirement With ‘Logan Lucky’

So the movie I'm really excited about this weekend is a movie called Logan Lucky, and I'm excited about this for a few reasons, but first is that it marks the return of director Steven Soderbergh. He's one of my favorite directors and has made movies like Ocean's 11, The Informant, and Contagion and four years ago he officially retired from filmmaking after directing the HBO movie Behind the Candelabra. In that time hems still been doing a ton of stuff - he directed every episode of the Cinemax series The Knick, he's posted weird editing experiments on his website, he started his own liquor distribution label and t-shirt line, and even wrote a short novel and released it over Twitter. But I'm excited to see him get back to making movies, and Logan Lucky looks like a blast. It's a heist comedy film in the vein of Ocean's 11, but set during a Nascar race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, and Riley Keough play a trio of siblings planning the robbery who recruit a prisoner by the name of Joe Bang to help them out. Joe Bang is played by Daniel Craig, and it looks unlike anything else Craig has ever done before, like he really gets to let loose in this role, which I'm eager to see since he's known for being stoic and serious in stuff like the James Bond films. Seth MacFarlane, Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Sebastian Stan and Hilary Swank round out the rest of the cast, and reviews for the movie have been really positive - it's currently got a 93 on Rotten Tomatoes and everyone seems to agree that it's good to have Soderbergh back.

The other big movie opening up this weekend is The Hitman's Bodyguard, a new action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson. The movie stars Reynold as a protection agent tasked with guarding the life of his mortal enemy, a hitman played by Jackson. Gary Oldman plays the villain and Salma Hayek is in this as well - I'm hearing mostly mixed to negative things about this, that Reynolds and Jackson have good chemistry together and their banter is a highlight, but otherwise it's a relatively generic action movie. Some are saying its ok fun, and you could definitely do worse this summer, but it seems you should avoid The Hitman's Bodyguard and go see something else.

Like Logan Lucky! That one is my pick for the weekend, and until next time we'll Meat at the Movies.