Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

Kimi is by no plausible yardstick a stretch for director Steven Soderbergh: the most excessively generous thing I could imagine saying about it is that, for a film which unambiguously and indeed proudly steals elements from Rear Window, The Conversation, and Blow Out, it does so very artfully, and with a good understanding of what […]

Notwithstanding its title, one of the most acutely generic and forgettable (not to mention, inapt) I have encountered in an age, No Sudden Move is a triumph of writing, with a hell of a script by Ed Solomon that’s as good as any that director Steven Soderbergh has worked with in a good ten or […]

Let Them All Talk is what happens when multiple people who don’t have to prove a god damned thing to you or me or anyone else all get together and don’t prove it together. Herein is a film that director Steven Soderbergh conceived of, in the abstract, many years before he commissioned a script treatment […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: after an eleven-year break, Ocean’s Eight revives the finest heist movie franchise in all of cinema. The perfect opportunity […]

It had to happen eventually: Steven Soderbergh has at last made a film that I just don’t like at all. Unsane, the director’s second film in his un-retirement, following the lanky heist film Logan Lucky, is the latest in the proud tradition of Full Frontal, Bubble, and The Girlfriend Experience: a film made to be as […]

For his inevitable return to feature filmmaking after the busiest retirement in the history of the entertainment industry, Steven Soderbergh has looked backwards, kind of. He’s never made a film exactly like Logan Lucky (a failed attempt at creating a new commercial opening for creator-driven mid-budget films, but otherwise one of the most effortless triumphs […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Money Monster is a very sober crime thriller about fiscal malfeasance starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts. I would […]

There are two ways to primarily think about Erin Brockovich, I believe: one is that it is among the most conventional films in the career of director Steven Soderbergh, which isn’t to say that it’s really so conventional as all that, but coming sandwiched in his career smack-dab in between The Limey and Traffic, it […]

And so, what kind of a career-defining statement is the last feature-length movie to be directed by Steven Soderbergh, until he changes his mind and starts making them again? None whatsoever, thankfully. The thought of the curtly unconventional Soderbergh making a pat “this is my theory of everything, good night” gesture is anathema to his […]

The unfortunately loaded baggage that Side Effects carries with it, something it does not deserve but has to deal with anyway, is the question, “if this actually ends up being Steven Soderbergh’s last theatrically-released feature film, does it make a suitable cap to his career?” Like any pointless rhetorical question, the answer is both “yes” […]

Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: Oliver Stone’s Savages finds a filmmaker who was once a great stylist hunting for meaning in his career by […]

Of all the questions I hoped to have answered by a movie this summer, the one that’s been bothering me the most, for the longest time, is what on earth compelled Steven Soderbergh to direct Magic Mike. The parsimonious answer is that Channing Tatum told the director all about his life as a young stripper, […]