Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

He ain't no Terry Gilliam though.

Didn't have the heart to go see _Solaris_, myself.

Plus, the oldest of 'his last four movies' dates all the way back... to 2000.

I've never found much use for the term "hack," as it tends to caricature or obscure the specifics of the creative process. How do we know that Soderbergh doesn't work closely with his screenwriters? That he doesn't feel strongly about the material?

I do agree that the "one for them, one for me" pattern in his filmography is worrisome. I wonder if his films have suffered for his artifical dichotomy between compromise and experiment--"wonder" because I haven't seen the last two.

I *did*. I was a movie critic back then, and I thought it was a hoax. Honestly, the idea that something quite that fake could be sent to Cannes, let alone be the talk of the place, could only be explained by it being a pratical joke. Did anybody listen? Am I still a movie critic? (Is Bush about to bomb Iraq for humanitarian reasons?)

Which, according to the interview he and Clooney did on the Charlie Rose show, is precisely how they ended up remaking Solaris. To his credit Soderbergh said that he could bring something new to the story, but that it wasn't his project from the get go.

it's called THE LIMEY!! (= it isn't even remotely concerned with actual real british people you've met!)

also it's unfinished and oddly-paced in a way quite faithful to the films it's emulating (60s Point Blank-style revenge pictures, not film noir). What's great about soderbergh's genre work is also what i guess can be frustrating about it - its aesthetics are more meticulously "studied" than usual (and it's here where his film-geekiness really kicks in, not in the arty pictures nobody sees), which means you wind up getting his homage to what's good AND bad about the source material

i REALLY didn't get the fuss the "how dare you remake this venerable classic" contingent raised when Ocean's 11 came out - the original is exactly as shallow and silly as the remake is.

bed for me i think

Solaris was a good waste of 2 hours but once again not something I'm gonna add to the stacks anytime soon.

I have apparently not seen any of his really good stuff. Maybe someday I will fix this.

As a cinematographer (under the nom de cam "Peter Andrews"), however, he is particularly good - those Mexico scenes in Traffic.

The Alan J. Pakula reference is OTM on at least one point - he stole the closing credits for Traffic from All the President's Men.

the way the end-credits appear in both traffic and EB (maybe in his other films too but i either haven't seen them or wasnt paying as much attention) - while the movie is still in process, so you don't have this BLACK SCREEN appear and wrap things up and force you into making some kind of judgement/summation. so we get a kind of a profundity-of-the-everyday quality - the 'final judgement' already happened without us noticing (actually, both end scenes i'm talking about here are very much ABOUT the mundane turned profound - benecio attending the little league game which becomes this beautiful cosmic event with the help of eno and everthing being saturated in mars red and erin's workroom squabble which resolves itself into 2 million dollars)

sure, some films of his are great, some are okay - and some are crap.
but i'd like to hear anyone who's seen schizopolis bad mouth soderbergh. go on, you know you can't.

George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh don't have much trouble getting the media's attention. The swooning and curiosity that's surrounded their quasi-fictional political show for HBO, "K Street," never fails to mention Clooney's charm, wit and sparkling grin, and to lavish praise on Soderbergh, glossing over self-indulgent flops "Solaris" and "Full Frontal," and ignoring his obvious embrace of his own celebrity despite humble, "Gosh I just hate this stuff" interviews to the contrary. A few signature leading-man looks from Clooney and a little self-deprecation from Soderbergh and these two are sophisticated, talented, swashbuckling guys just crazy enough to try something new, blurring the line between politics and Hollywood (what line?) and breaking down the barriers between reality and fiction (what barriers?).

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/review/2003/09/15/k_street/index_np.html

breezed through Black Bag - very enjoyable and I’d rather watch a movie series for this before Knives Out.

sotherebird

underappreciated post

having rewatched The Knick a few weeks ago, I would strongly advocate for rewatching The Knick

I loved S1 but for some reason I never did S2 I don't think

breezed through Black Bag - very enjoyable and I’d rather watch a movie series for this before Knives Out.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor

One of the year's best.

Didn't realize he even put out a third movie this year, The Christophers, a two-character one-room one with Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel (TIFF review here).

Still awaiting distribution iirc

The Knick season 2 is great because our antihero played by Clive Owen discovers you do cocaine *and* heroin

Last episode of the series might be one of the best "well, that certainly happened and we should have seen it coming" moments in a tv show

breezed through Black Bag - very enjoyable and I’d rather watch a movie series for this before Knives Out.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, 07 October 2025 13:58 (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

💯

underappreciated post

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), 07 October 2025 17:48 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was more into the fred and ginger line tbh

Greetings 765’rs!

I am thrilled to hustle 2025 out the back door so we can get to the good stuff in 2026, because all (astrological) signs point to this being a very positive year! To begin, we have Mr/Dr Soderbergh’s SEEN, READ list, and it’s a wild one, even by his standards. For one thing, he’s listed WRITING projects that he’s completed, which is a new wrinkle. He actually did a bit of writing in 2020 during lockdown but kept it to himself. Not this time. To him I suppose these read as accomplishments but all of us here know that if he’s writing, something is seriously UP. Since he won’t let us read anything beforehand I can’t speak to the quality of the work, but I can tell you that Production 02074 is the JAWS project he’s been working on for forever so I guess to be fair he should have some sense of accomplishment about that one. The rest? Who knows.

More importantly, the long-promised, limited edition boxed set of his prior independent films WILL be released this year, most likely by summer. I can say this unequivocally because he is LEGALLY BOUND to have it available in 2026, and I’ve actually gotten my eyes on this baby, so I know it’s ready to go. Don’t let the idea of me working myself to death to fulfill your order keep you from making the purchase when the time comes—it really is a treat for you die hard completionists out there.

That’s all for now. As always, we wish you and yours a happy and healthy new year.

All the best,

Fabrizia del Dongo

Criterion Channel has The Limey with the director/screenwriter commentary, the one where Soderbergh and Lem Dobbs butt heads over what works and doesn't in the movie. Loved that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2d1x7VuDmo

This manages to survive even a significant amount of James Corden screen time. McKellen is a treat.

Looking back at the Knives Out refs wrt Black Bag upthread and this one invites them even more...

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/steven-soderbergh-the-christophers-star-wars-ben-solo-movie-controversial-ai-comments-1236713201/

Steven, congratulations on getting into Cannes with your documentary “John Lennon: The Last Interview.” Your recent comments about using AI on the film have been heavily criticized. What do you make of the debate?

Soderbergh: (Pauses) This is mystifying to me.

Are you unaware of the blowback?

Soderbergh: No, I’m aware. I found out from people looking at me like they’d seen my chest X-ray. I was like, “What’s up?” And they’re like, “These AI comments!” And they read me back what I had said, and I honestly felt, “Where’s the smoke here?”

You used AI on that film and said you are going to use it on an upcoming film about the Spanish-American War. Clearly, you see it as a useful tool?

Soderbergh: I’m just not threatened by it. I’m only scared of things I don’t understand. So I felt obligated to engage with it, to figure out what it is and what it can do. It turned out to be a very good tool for certain passages of the Lennon documentary where I needed surrealistic imagery that was impossible to shoot. It allowed me to solve a creative problem about how to visualize what John and Yoko are speaking about philosophically. Ten years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost to come up with this stuff. No longer. My job is to deliver a good movie, period. And this tool showed up at a moment when I needed it. I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, “That was a fun phase.” We may end up not using it as much as we thought we were going to. There are some people that I have absolute love and respect for that refuse to engage with it. That’s their privilege. But I’m not built that way. You show me a new tool. I want to get my hands on it and see what’s going on.

Ed, as a writer, what do you think of AI?

Solomon: I’m not interested in using it as a writing tool because it takes away from what I love about what I do, which is the process. It makes it result-oriented. I’m not scared of it. I just don’t see myself using it in any kind of a significant creative way.