From there came Traffic, which demonstrated the director’s talent for multi-pronged narratives that are both thrilling and thematically rich. The Great Unappreciated 'Dare Me' Is Now on Netflix, Kevin Feige on ‘WandaVision’, ‘She-Hulk’, ‘Deadpool 3’, ‘Secret Invasion’, and More, Elizabeth Olsen on ‘WandaVision’ and Working with Sam Raimi on ‘Doctor Strange 2’, Chris Pratt’s ‘The Tomorrow War’ May Sell to Amazon for $200 Million, The 30 Best Comedies on Netflix Right Now (January 2021), 'Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist' Standout Alex Newell on Memories of 'Glee' and Mo's Latest Season 2 Reveal, Tom Hanks on ‘News of the World’, Finally Making a Western, and the Future of Movie Theaters. Alisha Weir will play the titular telekinetic kid in the streamer’s adaptation of the Broadway musical. The go-to source for comic book and superhero movie fans. War journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) is covering the Potsdam Conference in Berlin when he gets ensnared in the murder of his driver, the belligerent Tully (Tobey Maguire), who had a secretive connection to Geismer’s mistress, Lena (Cate Blanchett). In comes Danny and the cavalry to right this wrong, sending in Matt Damon’s Linus to seduce Bank’s right-hand woman (Ellen Barkin) while the rest of the gang tempt Bank into a scheme to take away the glory of his new hotel opening. With Logan Lucky, the division of labor is just as important between Riley Keough’s ace driver, Daniel Craig’s bombastic explosives expert, and Tatum’s fearless leader. Shown often in two parts, but shown gloriously as a piece in festival screenings, Che features Benicio Del Toro’s most lived in, deeply felt, gimmick-free performance as the rebel who is neither lionized nor demonized by Soderbergh. Directed by Steven Soderbergh Conclusion. (Damon brings such sincerity and sweetness to the role that it’s a perfect counterbalance to his duplicitous turn in another Soderbergh effort, The Informant!) At its best, it feels like a sneaky Soderbergh heist film: There’s a great moment when we realize, in flashback, what our hero was up to all along. In almost every measure, Steven Soderbergh is an economical artist. In a sense, Chelsea, the escort played by adult film star Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience, represents Soderbergh at the height of his worth in Hollywood, and at his most potently enraged as an artist. Instead, Contagion is a fascinating examination of process — how health officials try to combat the disease and how civilization starts to implode once it becomes clear that all hope is lost. Soderbergh clearly saw something of himself in Gray trying literally every route but the most obvious one to cure himself, seeing his own challenges with using familiar modes of expression to get his point across as a storyteller in Gray’s medical dilemma. Surprisingly, Soderbergh’s take is a thrilling specimen, even if it never touches the grandeur and philosophical heft of Tarkovsky’s original. A documentary of Streep, her co-stars, and Soderbergh just hanging out on a boat might have been more absorbing, and probably would have had more forward momentum. No other modern popular filmmaker has worked so diligently and successfully at molding innovative movies that also entertain. ... Steven Soderbergh Films Ranked by seankelley_bos | created - 29 Jun 2019 | updated - 29 Jun 2019 | Public Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion Keep You Up All Night With Ari’s ‘34+35’ Remix, Emma Thompson to Hurl You Over the Fence in Netflix’s. Of Course Bruce Springsteen Is Playing Biden’s Inauguration Special. The story behind Sex, Lies’ creation is now legend: A then-twentysomething unknown, Soderbergh wrote the script in eight days, inspired by the ugly end of a relationship. Still, Soderbergh’s inherent empathy with his characters, and this setting, sticks with you, even if this still ranks as yet another Soderbergh doodle. Grierson & Leitch write about the movies regularly and host a podcast on film. A Shock Corridor for the #MeToo movement. Sorry to the Aunties Who Weren’t Invited to Riz Ahmed’s Secret Wedding, All the Celebrities Who Have Received the COVID-19 Vaccine. Jason Isaacs Has Some Bad News, 'WandaVision' Review: The MCU's Most Daring Experiment Yet Could End Up Being Its Best, Matteo Garrone on Telling a New 'Pinocchio' Story and Collaborating with Roberto Benigni, Craving Addictive Noir Drama? The Underneath may be, as Soderbergh puts it, where he hit rock bottom, but it also inspired him to reinvent his aesthetic, which would soon lead to his most fecund period. You don’t need a plot recap — the damn movie’s probably on cable right now — but let’s take a moment to remember how impossibly fun the whole enterprise was. And while they all have their rightful place in the pantheon of auteurs, I’ve always wondered why one name has yet to reach the list. Juice WRLD’s Final Music Video, ‘Bad Boy’ With Young Thug, Drops. Menu. Indeed, in Soderbergh’s vision of loss and grief at the edge of the universe, nothing is fully resolved and it becomes hard to tell the difference between the living and the dead. Back when it was released in the early 1990s, reactions were primarily indifferent toward this fantastical twist on the life of Franz Kafka (Jeremy Irons) around the time he was writing “The Metemorphosis,” borrowing freely from “The Trial” and “The Castle.” Arriving in the aftermath of sex, lies, and videotape, it must have come off as a stray foul ball but today, Soderbergh’s conflation of texts and fantastical biography is a consistently intriguing prospect. Roberts won the Oscar for her role here and if there’s a performance more worthy of the honor in her oeuvre, I haven’t seen it. This is mostly an odd trifle that, frankly, both of Streep and Soderbergh are better than. Soderbergh himself plays a man named Fletcher Munson, while his then-wife Betsy Brantley plays his wife. Films include Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve, and Contagion That movie is so entertaining and completely watchable at any time. Everyone’s least favorite Ocean’s movie is better than it’s given credit for, and it might just be the most Soderbergh-playful: The scene where Bruce Willis thinks the character Julia Roberts is playing is actually Julia Roberts is straight out of the Soderbergh meta playbook. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Steven Soderbergh’s nearly 30-year film career is that he’s a genius without a masterpiece. And guess what, we ranked 'em all. The film that announced Soderbergh as a top-shelf director of off-kilter-but-still-mainstream talent, and, notably, the first film that unlocked the cinematic charm of George Clooney (remember The Peacemaker? The use of storied comedic improvisers, including Tom Papa, Patton Oswalt, McHale, and Tony Hale amongst others, underlines Soderbergh’s fascination with people who make up their own stories as they go along. As is often the case in Soderbergh’s movies, professional talent and love of work are celebrated but that same take-charge attitude causes an imbalance, even strife at home. This is the only you’ll see in which the big reveal concerns an obscure civil rights book that’s more than 50 years old. In truth, his debut is the very model of the Stunning First Feature, a groundbreaking planting of the flag that instantly cements a filmmaker’s name. Ocean’s Thirteen. Seen now, though, The Girlfriend Experience is a perfect encapsulation of what life felt like as the fate of the world’s economy hung in the balance. It’s Theater-Festival Season, in a Year When Everything’s Avant-Garde Anyway, Joshua Bassett Releases Video for ‘Lie Lie Lie,’ Further Stirs the, Sarah Lancashire Will Master the Art of Julia Child. Benicio Del Toro took home the Oscar for his role as a smart, savvy Mexican cop, but the film is the high-water mark for several of its actors, including Don Cheadle as a blasé DEA agent, Catherine Zeta-Jones as a kingpin’s wife suddenly thrust into a power position, and Michael Douglas as a judge who quickly learns how little he knows about America’s drug problem. "We’re always giving notes and they are very kind to welcome opinions.". opening in theaters and on DVD and on-demand simultaneously. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. That’s clear in the narrative turns of Magic Mike, one of his very best movies, and Logan Lucky, his imminent return from a self-imposed, half-serious retirement, wherein Tatum plays an unemployed laborer turned reluctant grand-scale thief. They appear to be going through a protracted breakup on screen through empty, flat dialogue and relentless monotony. A two-part HBO documentary shows the toll of an overbearing father and life as a golf prodigy. The closer we get to #1, the better Soderbergh’s movies balance entertainment with tone, character, and story. “It’s just totally sleepy … This thing is just dead-on-arrival … I can’t say that I would recommend it to anyone.” Never let it be said that Soderbergh is deluded about the quality of his misfires: Those quotes were all comments he made about The Underneath, his deeply meh exercise in modern film noir. He’s still one of the most fascinating filmmakers on the planet, and every new movie is an instant must-watch. But the man’s harsh assessment of the finished product is accurate. And yet, the film stands as Soderbergh’s peak as a super-confident, give-‘em-a-show director. Made at the time when plenty of remarkable directors were making extremely ugly movies on digital, this 2002 whatsit feels like a jumble of ideas spread out across a series of disjointed exchanges between a gang of talented actors, including Julia Roberts, Blair Underwood, David Duchovny, and David Hyde Pierce. It’s no insult to say that, in the years since Sex, Lies, and Videotape first hit theaters, Soderbergh has rarely topped it — even as his style has evolved and his technique only grown more dazzling and inventive. You want proof of Soderbergh’s commercial clout around the time of the Ocean’s sequels? Haywire is quintessential Soderbergh during his “Wouldn’t it be fun if I tried this?” period, picking a non-professional as his lead — Carano did her own stunts — and bringing his considered, brainy tone to the action genre. Clooney finally wearing the Cary Grant comparisons as comfortably as he fills out that tux. There’s a happy ending, on both levels, but unlike so many of these types of class-action-suit dramas, the climactic victories feel earned and never over-played. As an added bonus, Magic Mike ended up being one of Soderbergh’s biggest hits — maybe not as slick as the Ocean’s movies, but certainly more touching. Still, he makes a handsome production out of this tale of a rehabilitated gambling addict (Peter Gallaghar) who goes straight but is sucked back into the world of crime via his ex-wife’s new beau (William Fichtner). This remake of a not very good Rat Pack joint underlines the entire artistic philosophy of Soderbergh, utilizing a gang of barely reformed, low-level criminals to take down corrupt casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). But the ideas behind the design of The Good German end up being a lot more satisfying than the story, which follows American journalist Jake Geismer (Clooney) as he enters postwar Berlin to cover a conference hosted by the victorious Allied leaders. As such, Sex, Lies is an exquisite study of a married couple (Peter Gallagher and Andie MacDowell) whose sex life is on the blink. Even the most problematic of them offer learnable lessons about the business of making movies, putting him in a rarified class of American filmmakers: ones who make movies that are consistently both imminently entertaining and unexpectedly audacious. This story was originally published in 2018 but has been updated to reflect Soderbergh’s latest films. Maybe that’s why Streep wanted to work with Soderbergh in the first place? Steven Soderbergh Ranked from Best to Worst. Soderbergh sees medication and diagnosis as a way of building a convincing psychological and physiological narrative, even when a far darker reasoning becomes apparent while Banks looks into his work with Emily and her past. Logan Lucky (2017) The most recent work by Soderbergh on this list, Logan Lucky, is a heist comedy film that forced the filmmaker to come out of retirement to direct it and then to distribute it through his company. The first half is maybe a little stronger than the second, but the whole thing holds up well. The 30 Best Movies … Oceans 11 should be number one. Revered icons Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould having an absolute ball. Steven Soderbergh is like the Ozzy Osbourne of filmmakers ⁠— he keeps saying he’s going to retire, and he keeps making his “final” film, but then he just comes back and makes another movie.He doesn’t so much have a style like David Fincher or Quentin Tarantino, where every movie follows the same basic visual pattern. Indeed, the great triumph of The Informant! Matt Damon happily serving the Ringo Starr/younger brother role alongside his older costars. An efficient, propulsive, and stylish little thriller that often gets buried amongst the taller peaks of Soderbergh’s 90s output. Soderbergh and cinematographer Elliot Davis give this period drama a nostalgic glow, but that’s a bit of a feint: King of the Hill may look warm and wistful, but its story is actually rather unsentimental about the ways that the adult world can look positively frightening to kids — especially when it’s thrust upon them way too early in their lives. The general tone is more overtly goofy here and that’s appreciated in comparison to the half-baked notions about criminal responsibility in Ocean’s Twelve. His directorial works have grossed over US$2.2 billion worldwide. As an experiment, it’s amiable and well-acted but there’s no heart to it, no sense that Soderbergh or Attanasio saw anything of themselves in the material other than a fondness for an outdated style. And in Contagion, the familial love and protective nature felt by Laurence Fishburne’s CDC honcho shows an exploitable weakness for bloggers, vloggers, hot-take journalists, and the angry masses, while the real good work is done by a quiet scientist with lots of guts and not much of a social life, played by the luminous Jennifer Ehle. Based on Scott Thorson’s memoir of his time as Liberace’s boyfriend, Behind the Candelabra is also one of the infamously cerebral filmmaker’s warmest movies, showing how the aspiring veterinarian (Matt Damon) came into the orbit of the famously flamboyant performer (Michael Douglas). Find out what happens after Happily Ever After. Covering the hottest movie and TV topics that fans want. 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