The quiet power of sex, lies, and videotape often gets lost in the cultural influence the film had. It’s often hailed as one of the first real independent films to make an impact and as the movie that announced the arrival of Steven Soderbergh. But beneath all of that is an often challenging film.
When a filmmaker creates a period piece, the audience will expect certain details to be highlighted as an effort of world-building and cinematic magic. They are commonly referred to as costume dramas, a display of a large amount of money pumped into costume and set design to amaze modern audiences in their plight for historicity.
A haggard voice breaks the darkness of the screen. “Tell me… “Tell me… “Tell me about Jenny.” If possible, the voice is simultaneously threatening and pleading. It’s demanding and mourning. Terence Stamp’s Wilson in Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey is a man out of place, a British ex-con in sunny Los Angeles trying to learn about his …
It is Erin Brockovich, a chronicle of the extraordinary story fronted by an energetic woman with little legal knowledge in a David-and-Goliath legal battle against Pacific Gas and Electric in an act of moral representation for the citizens of Hinkley, California.
Read our appreciation of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve here and here, respectively. * * * “I’m a goddamn American icon!” Depending on where you stand on Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen represents either a group of enormously famous actors going back to salvage the goodwill they squandered in the middle entry of the franchise, or that same …
Soderbergh’s film came out on November 27, 2002 to middling reviews and a commercial drubbing by seasonal box office heavyweights like Die Another Day. To say that his film has acquired a cult fanbase would be an overstatement. It is still largely dismissed in favor of Tarkovsky’s canonical picture and is seen as a curiosity among Soderbergh die-hards.
Ocean’s Twelve has a reputation that will always precede it; some have called it an anti-sequel, and publications like Entertainment Weekly have dubbed it one of the worst sequels of all time. Though both reactions are, perhaps, understandable, neither is remotely accurate. Ocean’s Twelve is an inherently self-aware sequel, possibly the most self-aware follow-up in modern history. What Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter George Nolfi (whose original script, Honor Among Thieves, was completely unrelated to Ocean’s Eleven and was sold initially before that remake had been released), and the slightly larger-than-before ensemble cast did was make a sequel to a critically and commercially lauded caper film that was wholly cognizant of the fact that it was a sequel to a critically and commercially lauded caper film. Ocean’s Twelve toys with audience expectations, because to cave into them would’ve promised something potentially more disturbing and commonplace than what many perceived to be an ambitious creative flop: something boring.
During the mid-2000s, between his exercise in low-budget filmmaking and new modes of exhibition with Bubble, and his big-budget ensemble Ocean’s Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh made a mid-budget return to 1940s style with The Good German.
Announcing the unambiguous Casablanca reference with a mimicking poster, Soderbergh’s black-and-white film is full of classic Hollywood soft-lighting and sinister wartime figures.
Movie stars, as we know them, are not so much dead in 2013 as much as they’re no longer making movies. Celebrity has stretched far beyond film or television; people become famous now without having accomplished much of anything, just for being at the right place at the right time, or tweeting out the right scandalous photo to set afire the comments sections at TMZ or Perez Hilton. Though movies cost more than they used to—both to make and to partake—they are less frequently headlined by a man or woman whose very presence ensures bankability. A handful of movie stars remain, yet even someone like Robert Downey, Jr. can only guarantee a movie will make back its profit and then some when he’s donned his Iron Man suit.
Hollywood history always makes for fascinating reading. Hindsight and whatnot. During a month in which Sound on Sight takes an opportunity to tip a collective hat in the direction of recently ‘retired’ workhorse auteur Steven Soderbergh, there is a further chance to reel back the years and examine a period of time when one of …
Slammed by populous opinion, 2009’s The Informant! has been ridiculed for being “dull,” with “laughs far and few between.” Although critically acclaimed with an IMDB rating of 6.5/10 and Metacritic score of 66, a staggering 42% user approval lingers over the film at Rotten Tomatoes, without any signs of it becoming a cult classic. Yet …
The Informant! Written by Scott Z. Burns Directed by Steven Soderbergh USA, 2009 You can’t keep a good executive down. After Enron, after Lehman Brothers, and the continuing fury at executive bonuses it was quite a change to see the corporate executive class as brimming with ineffective buffoons rather than coldly calculated capitalist psychopaths in …
It’s no surprise that rather than for a most established performer and actress like Scarlett Johannson or Christina Hendricks, director Steven Soderbergh would seek out Sasha Grey for his principal role in “The Girlfriend Experience.” Sasha Grey has spent years making millions off of building the fantasies of her male (and female) audience with dozens of notable porn movies. As Chelsea, she’s called upon to create the fantasies of many lonely and lovelorn men with everything but a companion. Rather than fill the screen with graphic sex, Soderbergh instead zeroes in on Grey’s more downbeat aspects like her smoky eyes, pouty lips, and cherubic features.
The most unsettling element of Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion (which is, by any metric, a deeply discomfiting film) is its plausibility. The film has a clinical approach that underlines how possible its central crisis is and how powerless we would be to stop it. The film has a global scope and an all-star cast, but what resonates most is the idea that this could happen. Anywhere. Anytime. To any one of us.
In early 2012, while most of the film world was caught up in Oscar prognostications, one film quietly came and went through theatres, earning less that $20 million domestically, and just over $30 million internationally. That film was Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, with Gina Carano taking on the lead role of Mallory Kane, and its quiet box office reception is in no way indicative of the film’s quality. While it may appear, on the surface, to be a standard action thriller – and there’s certainly no issue with that, as the genre is littered with efforts that fail to even be competent in their execution – in true Soderbergh style, there’s a lot more going on in Haywire than it may appear at first glance.
One of the persistent side effects of what may turn out to be Steven Soderbergh’s final theatrical release is destabilization. The film, aptly named Side Effects, is constantly forcing you to reevaluate who its characters are, what their motivations might be, and ultimately, what kind of story we are watching. In this regard, it becomes an almost perfect capstone to the career of one of Hollywood’s most prolific and versatile filmmakers.
We are now officially half way through the year and so I’ve asked our staff to vote for their favourite films released thus far. Hollywood blockbusters may have disappointed us, but thankfully we can always rely on independent filmmakers to create some truly inspiring films. Rounding out the special mentions is Terrence Malick’s To The …
t is with a significant pang of regret in 2013 that we bid a fond adieu to director Steven Soderbergh, but at lerast we have the smnall placebo of two remaining films from the incredibly profligate director, beginning with his penultimate film Side Effects. If you’ll excuse the pun I don’t wish to get too ‘side’tracked but I think there are a few crucial items to consider before we delve into the movie itself, a concluding episode to his career which is as expected a superb contemporary drama which springboards into other areas with the dexterous ease of a state drilled East German Olympic gymnast, namely what on earth could drive such a prolific and endlessly inventive cinematic soul into potential big-screen retirement?
Growing up gay as a suburban teenager in the mid 90s, my access to queer culture was severely limited (ie nonexistent). Before the proliferation of the internet, one relied on the “gay” section in bookstores and video stores, if there even was one, to seek out examples of visible representation in the media throughout the …
Call it what you must, but if Steven Soderbergh is truly exiting the cinematic frontier for a while, Behind the Candelabra marks a very fitting and appropriate departure for the director. Adapted from the autobiographical novel by Alex Thorleifson and Scott Thorson, Candelabra is a rather direct biopic shedding light on the private life of Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his 6-year relationship with younger lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon).
If cinema has anything to say about it, the modern American dream is best typified by a grandiose level of entitlement in those who covet it most of all. Just a month ago, we saw Spring Breakers, a nightmarish, neon piece of grotesquerie, compelling experimental art about nubile young women trying to attain their hedonistic Western utopia by stealing from and killing people who dared get in their way, consequences be damned.
Side Effects Directed by Steven Soderbergh United States, 2013 Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a smaller thriller than 2011’s Contagion, but as incisive in its critique of the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatry and the justice system. Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) suffers from depression, and her condition doesn’t get any better when her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) …
Steven Soderbergh became the poster child for new American independent cinema in the 90’s, after winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature Sex, Lies, & Videotape. Soderbergh spent the better part of the ensuing decade, directing small idiosyncratic films, and often wearing many hats including producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and …