[Editor’s Note: this list was originally published in August 2017. It has since been updated to include more of Soderbergh’s films, including “Black Bag.”]
Steven Soderbergh’s directing career started with “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” a massive breakout that not only launched his career — it changed the industry of independent filmmaking in America. While struggling to find his footing after becoming a household name at age 26, Soderbergh never let himself become frozen by his early success or some preconceived notion of what his career would be. Instead, he dogmatically followed any story that piqued his interest, regardless if it was building the slick “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise or an experimental film he shot in his hometown with friends (“Schizopolis”).
He has been careful to build a career that was commercially viable so as to maximize his ability to be constantly creating and experimenting with films that were sometimes aggressively uncommercial. Along the way, he has fought to be as efficient a filmmaker as possible — constantly trying different approaches and new technology to make and distribute his films — while skirting Hollywood excess.
With Soderbergh’s latest “Black Bag” out in theaters now, we took a look back at his career and ranked all 37 feature films he’s directed.
With editorial contributions from Chris O’Falt.
37. “Full Frontal” (2002)
The only film on this list that doesn’t reward revisiting is this 2002 experiment. Following a quick succession of box office and Oscar hits, the director got $2 million from the Weinsteins to play with the new, inexpensive DV cameras and make something completely different. In a story that feels like it was being made up as it was being shot, the director got his Hollywood friends – led by Julia Roberts, coming off her “Erin Brockovich” Academy Award – to partake in an experiment that blurred the lines between fictional and real-life Hollywood. The results were surprisingly ugly, described by Roger Ebert as “amateurish” — and, unlike Soderbergh’s other films, it’s hard to locate the kernel of an idea that spurred him to make this thing in the first place. —CO
36. “The Underneath” (1995)
After getting bumped off “Quiz Show,” Soderbergh quickly jumped aboard this remake of Robert Siodmak’s classic “Criss Cross.” The filmmaker turns in a decent neo-noir effort with the story of a man (Peter Gallagher) who returns to his hometown and painful memories he would like to forget, but gets sucked into a dangerous plot devised by his ex (Alison Elliot) to free her from her dangerous boyfriend (William Fichtner). The elaborate flashback structure of the original source material allowed Soderbergh to play with some of the unorthodox editing and narrative structuring he’d later perfect with “The Limey” and “Out of Sight,” but ultimately he’s unable to pull the various threads together in “The Underneath.” The film marked a low point for Soderbergh, who knew while he was shooting that it had fatal flaws (it’s not as bad he makes it out to be) and felt he was falling into a rut, which you can feel in the films somewhat sleepy pacing and tone. — CO
35. “Kafka” (1991)
The idea of blending Kafka’s biography and fiction is was wonderfully inventive concept, but unfortunately one that Soderbergh couldn’t quite keep in balance as the young filmmaker at times loses control of the tone of the layered world he’s created. The film is not without its pleasures, including the application of the black-and-white gothic horror tropes in this story about a turn-of-the-century insurance salesman getting sucked into a bizarre and mysterious suicide. In a film that references old movies and genres as much as it does Kafka, it’s fun to see Soderbergh use this canvas to work out influences and ideas to which he would return throughout his career.
Soderbergh has often said that he knew where he went wrong with this film, and he’s been tinkering with a re-edit ever since the film’s rights returned to him. Earlier this summer, he revealed that he would share a new version at the end of 2017. – CO
34. “The Girlfriend Experience” (2009)
Soderbergh, always removing himself from the grip of his most recent project like a child wriggling out of his parent’s arms, pivoted from a two-part historical epic about Che Guevara to a micro-budget chamber drama about a high-end escort in Manhattan. A sexually chaste but economically explicit story set against the backdrop of the 2008 recession, “The Girlfriend Experience” leverages the business of prostitution into an unsubtle look at the role that money plays in American society, and how inextricable it is from our values and self-identity. Former porn star Sasha Grey, here making her first legitimate bid for mainstream success, is fantastically inert as the film’s savvy heroine, and the meta-textual dimension of her casting helps return every scene to its transactional underpinnings.
This is a sterile, forgettable little movie that has quickly come to function more as a time capsule than a salient bit of commentary, but there’s something valuable about the sobriety of its perspective. Beyond that, it’s worth noting that “The Girlfriend Experience” galvanized Soderbergh’s counterintuitive approach to the possibilities of digital filmmaking — as movies became unshackled from money, one of contemporary cinema’s most playful stylists began to favor locked-off shots, shallow depth-of-field, pallid lighting, and dead air. It’s cheaper that way. So many of Soderbergh’s stories teeter between art and commerce, but this is the first one that never allowed you to stop looking at the balance. —DE
33. “Gray’s Anatomy” (1996)
All four of the movies that Spalding Gray made from his monologues are ultimately about one person: Spalding Gray. And that only grew increasingly true as the iconoclast got older and more intimately acquainted with death; the broader his stories became, the more solipsistic he got (a trend that culminated in his suicide). But while Gray may have been the creative engine behind these films, that didn’t stop him from hiring a murder’s row of incredible directors to help animate his words. When Soderbergh agreed to shoot “Gray’s Anatomy” in 1996, he was following in the footsteps of giants like Jonathan Demme, Thomas Schlamme, and Nick Broomfield.
Compelled by the idea of shooting a film in just 10 days, and spurred by the challenge of visualizing a wild story about eye surgery and potential blindness, Soderbergh took a singularly aggressive approach to his subject. He isolated Gray from a live audience (which Demme would never have done) and engulfed the guy in a flurry of disorienting effects. Some of these elements add to the experience; others — like the footage of other people recounting their own ocular misadventures — actively detract from it. At best, Soderbergh’s stylizations lend shape to one of Gray’s most rambling monologues, but there’s little they can do to help us see a man who was struggling to see himself. —DE
32. “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” (2023)
One of the more dispiriting and lame trilogy cappers in recent memory, “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” does the impossible: It makes the famed male stripper franchise wildly unsexy. Now retired from the profession, Channing Tatum’s Mike Lane is a bartender for a catering company who falls into an affair with an older, rich woman (Salma Hayek), who funds a London stage dance show based on his experiences. Whereas the first film was a downbeat and cynical indie and the (non-Soderbergh directed) “XXL” was a horny blast of fun, “Last Dance” is an antiseptic romance, one that contains very little heat and passion. Mike himself has been hollowed out into nothingness, his character chipped away into a hollow avatar for a sensitive, caring man dedicated to providing women pleasure. It’s hard to shake the feeling that the only reason Soderbergh — or anyone, really — wanted to make the thing was so they could advertise the actual London “Magic Mike” live show, and shockingly an advertisement doesn’t make for compelling TV. —WC
31. “The Laundromat” (2019)
A rather tepid, tonally confused thriller-slash-social commentary without much to actually say, “The Laundromat” is easily the weakest of Soderbergh’s collaborations with “The Informant!” and “Contagion” screenwriter Scott Z. Burns. A bizarre riff on the Panama Papers scandal, with Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas playing the money-laundering lawyers at the center of the scandal, the film focuses on three interlocking narratives, including one with Meryl Streep as a widow trying to sue after a capsized boat causes her husband’s death, one with an African heiress getting schemed with worthless shares, and a dramatization of the murder of businessman Neil Heywood. All of these stories connect back to the Panama Papers, but don’t really add up to a coherent whole, and the tone veers all over the place from serious to comical without much precision. And the less said about the didactic, exasperating finale, the better. —WC
30. “sex, lies, and videotape” (1989)
As influential a debut as “Citizen Kane” or “Breathless” (if nowhere near as sturdy), Soderbergh’s first feature not only won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, it also cemented Sundance as a cultural institution and helped codify the language of indie film itself — some movies create a new genre, “sex, lies, and videotape” established a new industry.
So why isn’t Soderbergh’s breakthrough remembered with the same reverence as Orson Welles’ or Jean-Luc Godard’s? Perhaps it’s because the film is too emotionally exposed to weather any sort of climate change, as raw nerve sincerity tends not to age with the same grace as operatic elusiveness or nihilistic cool. This is a chatty, class-conscious relationship drama about the challenges of intimacy and the dangers of distance, and its characters are overpowered by the sheer resourcefulness with which Soderbergh brings them to life. Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo more than hold their own, but Peter Gallagher is already rehearsing for his “American Beauty” role as the Real Estate King, and his yuppie scumbag is a dull vessel for Soderbergh’s nascent interest in the relationship between wealth and happiness. “sex, lies, and videotape” is a necessary film, but it isn’t necessarily a great one. —DE
29. “Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007)
“Ocean’s Thirteen” feels like the movie that Soderbergh was trying not to make with “Ocean’s Twelve.” In other words, it’s exactly what you would expect from a mega-budget Hollywood sequel: It’s bigger (the gang creates a fake earthquake!), dumber (the gang creates a fake earthquake), and safer than the original in every respect. If anything, the film’s revenge plot is so unmotivated that you can almost see Soderbergh winking at you from behind the camera, as though the running joke behind this franchise of hangout movies is that audiences are amiably swindled into spending more time with these characters — there’s no need for a good excuse. That works with something like “The Trip to Spain,” where eating is the main event, but such a casual “let’s just do it and be legends” vibe doesn’t really jive with a trilogy of hyper-intricate heist stories. It doesn’t always need to add up in the end (as “Ocean’s Twelve” proved all too well), but viewers still have to enjoy doing the math.
Why is Danny still getting himself into trouble? If he and his crew can’t extricate themselves from the criminal life, then why doesn’t the script make room for their better halves in order to provide some pull from the outside world? Why does Brad Pitt have hair again, when the shaved head thing was working for him so well in the last film? These are questions that nobody seems to have asked themselves at the time. Still, it’s always fun to watch Soderbergh amuse himself with hilariously self-serving dashes of style (gotta love split-screen showing the same action on both sides). For a guy who’s always been so bad with boredom, this trilogy-capper must have been quite a challenge. —DE
28. “Bubble” (2005)
The first film to ever be simultaneously released in theaters and on VOD, “Bubble” is strikingly modest for something that anticipated the future of the movie business (and set it into motion), but an innovator like Soderbergh would probably rather be prescient than perfect. Billed on the poster as “Another Steven Soderbergh Experience,” the director playing up his brand while coyly emphasizing the film’s experimental nature, this unclassifiable nugget of an indie predicted a digital landscapes where cinema could be made by and about anyone.
Shot on high-definition video and entirely cast with non-professional actors who would never receive another credit (the impeccable lead actress was discovered working a KFC drive-thru window), “Bubble” leverages the social dynamics of an Ohio doll factory into a Nabokovian story of possession and jealousy. And murder, of course. Quietly enthralling but ultimately unformed, “Bubble” might be more valuable as a historical footnote than it is as a work of art, but the film earns a vivid sense of workaday authenticity, and its ominous flourishes — the disembodied doll head, in particular — are scarier than anything those “Annabelle” movies will ever throw in your face. —DE
27. “Schizopolis” (1996)
Not the best movie on this list, but undoubtedly the most important film in the trajectory of Soderbergh’s career. Unhappy with the direction of his career, the 31-year-old director intentionally detonated it by going back to his hometown of Baton Rouge to make this $250,000 experimental film, starring himself, with a small crew of close collaborators over the course of nine months. The exercise unleashed Soderbergh’s creativity, but resulted in a bizarre film no one seemed to understand when it was released. Soderbergh went back and added a hilarious opening that tells the audience it is their fault if they didn’t understand it. Trying to describe the film’s plot is an exercise in futility. “Schizopolis” is packed (overloaded, really) with ideas that don’t always congeal into a cohesive whole, as the film is both childishly silly while being a clear-eyed commentary on modern society. But the experiment has aged well, and feels less haphazard with each viewing. –CO
26. “No Sudden Move” (2021)
For a crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh, “No Sudden Move” is a surprisingly muted affair. That can result in the film — a 1954 Detroit period piece about a small-time criminal hired to steal a document from a General Motors accountant’s home, only to get over his head in a larger criminal conspiracy — feeling a bit anonymous and less memorable than the director’s most stylized highs. Still, “No Sudden Move” is an amiable and likable film, both funny and thrilling and appropriately cynical and bleak about institutional corruption, white-collar crime, and the societal barriers that Don Cheadle’s Black gangster Curt faces. Cheadle and Benicio del Toro are both strong in the dual lead roles, while the cast is full of ringers, from Jon Hamm to Brendan Fraser to Julia Fox in a scene-stealing comedic role. —WC
25. “Traffic” (2000)
A great movie, a decent movie, and a bad movie all rolled into one spliff and smoked at the same time, “Traffic” takes a three-pronged approach to the War on Drugs that tries to be comprehensive but instead ends up being a bit too clean. The great movie stars Benicio del Toro as a Mexican cop who’s slow moral awakening makes it much harder to do his job. The decent movie stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as the pregnant wife of a drug lord, and follows as she Lady Macbeths her way into the family business. The bad movie stars Michael Douglas as the newly appointed head of the National Drug Control Policy who begins to doubt the integrity of his mission when — irony of ironies — he discovers that Topher Grace has gotten his teenage daughter addicted to every narcotic under the sun.
Soderbergh’s hyper-saturated epic should be too sober and cynical to feel so dated, but much of the film now seems uncomfortably suspended between naïveté and easy suspense (17 years can be a long time when it’s filled with the likes of “Cartel Land” and “The Corner”). On the other hand, “Traffic” earned Ingmar Bergman’s endorsement, so that’s something. And good luck not being moved by the sight of del Toro watching those kids play baseball at night. — DE
24. “Unsane” (2018)
“Unsane” had a bit more political resonance in 2018 during the absolute height of #MeToo — this is a film about a woman being gaslit and ignored even as she’s preyed upon, after all — than such a transparently silly thriller probably deserves. That doesn’t mean Soderbergh’s exercise in technical restraints and goofy but wildly entertaining suspense is disposable, though, by any means. Shot on an iPhone during a time when a stunt like that was still a big deal, “Unsane” has a sickly, washed-out look that’s totally fitting for the nightmare Sawyer (a great Claire Foy) undergoes after she accidentally signs paperwork for a 24-hour stay in a mental hospital that gets extended as she grows convinced that her stalker is on staff. Suffocatingly claustrophobic in the best way, “Unsane” is a pleasingly pulpy cat-and-mouse game, one that doesn’t reinvent the wheel but shows how good the basic fundamentals can be when Soderbergh is doing them. —WC
23. “The Informant!” (2009)
No filmmaker was better-equipped to capture the institutional failures of our economic collapse in 2007-08, as Soderbergh has always been pre-occupied by the alienating relationship between our economic systems and his characters. In this madcap tale of whistleblower Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), there are no heroes; the satire focuses on American self-interests that stretch beyond the agri-industry powerhouse that Whitcare exposes. A never-better Damon perfectly captures the jittery and off-center character, who undermines the entire investigation he initiated with his constantly-changing stories and the revelation that he made out like a bandit himself. An unusual, but entertaining film that’s glazed with a great Marvin Hamlisch score and peppered with comedians playing “serious” roles, this is a crowdpleaser for an audience that’s willing to give itself over to its offbeat rhythms and humor. — CO
22. “The Good German” (2006)
A convoluted noir shot in the style of a classic black-and-white studio picture — everything from the booming opening credits to the fogbound closing shot is meant to feel like an rated “R” riff on “Casablanca” — “The Good German” might look like it was made by Michael Curtiz, but it sure sounds like it was made by Steven Soderbergh. This is a movie where money talks, even though it tends to keep secrets. It “allows you to be who you truly are,” one character declares, ignoring that he lives in a world where even identity is very much for sale.
The story is set in Berlin during the summer of 1945, as vultures (“vultures everywhere”) are scouring through the fallen city and picking the last bits of meat off its bones. George Clooney stars as a handsome war correspondent who comes to cover the Potsdam negotiations, Tobey Maguire plays the sociopathic soldier whose death sparks the plot, and Cate Blanchett plays the Jewish prostitute who both men love in their own unhelpful ways. Things only get less interesting as that love triangles widens into an awkward kind of square, the chiaroscuro splendor of Soderbergh’s cinematography laboring to compensate for a murder-mystery that’s as scattered and impenetrable as Berlin itself. “The Good German” hits on a few scattered notes of complicity and moral compromise, but these dark underpinnings never congeal into anything deeper than the divots in Blanchett’s cheekbones. Still, it’s easy to appreciate this as a last hurrah for celluloid, just as it’s hard to hate Soderbergh for cashing in the chips he made on the first two “Ocean’s” movies and getting Warner Bros. to finance something so willfully uncommercial. — DE
21. “King of the Hill” (1993)
This pastiche of classic American cinema shares few cinematic and storytelling commonalities with the other films in Soderbergh’s oeuvre. No matter: “King of the Hill” is deeply engaging, as Soderbergh keeps the drama within the perspective of a boy struggling to survive during the Great Depression with a mother in the sanatorium and a father on the road searching for work. Soderbergh excels in his use of traditional film language and period cinematography to demonstrate what a chameleon he is as a filmmaker. Thematically, the film is recognizable to Soderbergh fans. As Aaron (Jesse Bradford) learns the ropes and scrapes to survive, Soderbergh’s preoccupation with class and his character’s helplessness struggle to be part of a larger economic system emerge. — CO
20. “Behind the Candelabra” (2013)
From the caked-on make-up to the decor of Liberace’s Vegas show and jewel-encrusted home, this is a film fascinated with its surfaces. More to the point, it’s interested in the control Liberace (Michael Douglas) exerted over the presentation of his life that was just as choreographed on-stage as off – both of which were flamboyant and openly gay, yet somehow managed to charm a deeply homophobic mainstream culture. For a rootless Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), getting cast to play the role of assistant/lover in this world was a dream come true, but his closeup view reveals Liberace’s determination to brush aside any ugliness in his life would bring pain and ultimately fail. —CO
19. “Black Bag” (2025)
A prestige, highbrow answer to “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “Black Bag” is the exact type of enjoyable, adult piece of genre filmmaking Soderbergh so excels at and that barely ever seems to get released in theaters anymore. Centering around two married intelligence agents — played with steely, sexy charisma by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender — who are assigned to track down a mole, “Black Bag” is less a spy story than a portrait of two weirdos in a strange but surprisingly healthy marriage, even if it gets threatened a bit when Fassbender’s George begins to suspect Blanchett’s Kathryn may be the mole in question. Sleek and stylish, all soft lighting and cooly lit industrial offices, “Black Bag” seems antiseptic on the surface, but Fassbender and Blanchett’s heat and chemistry make for a hot, ludicrously romantic trip. Soderbergh’s filmmaking is firing on all cylinders to create a film both funny and suspenseful (a central polygraph sequence is perfectly shot and edited for both tension and laughs), and he has a brilliant supporting cast on his roster, including James Bond himself Pierce Bronson, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and a standout Marisa Abela. If more films like “Black Bag” were released every year, the film industry would be a better place. —WC
18. “Presence” (2025)
The central gimmick of “Presence” — it’s a haunted house story from the point-of-view (quite literally) of the ghost — feels like it could verge on exasperating or worse yet, dull. And yet somehow, this horror film about a family whose new home is haunted by a spirit never runs out of gas, managing to resonate as a powerful domestic drama and as a terrifying story about grief and love. Soderbergh never cheats on his device, turning his camera into the eyes of a silent, mysterious entity only the younger daughter of the clan can truly sense, creating an uncomfortable intimacy between the camera and the presence’s new houseguests. It’s one of the director’s most successful experiments, and leads to tense action and a sense of physicality to the handsome townhouse setting that few films can really match. Even beyond the horror though, the domestic drama is genuinely compelling, with ace performances from the entire cast (including Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan as the parents) that make the emotions feel raw and real. The anguished ending is divisive, but god if Liu doesn’t sell it. —WC
17. “Erin Brockovich” (2000)
You have seen this type of Oscar bait before, the based-on-a-true story kind about an underdog taking on the corrupt system. Soderbergh just does it better by adding a layer of depth to the personal B-story underneath the A-Story of a struggling single mom who brought down a massive energy company. The filmmaker loves to tap into an audiences’ desire to see characters doing their job well. It’s deeply satisfying to watch Brockovich (Julia Roberts, in an Oscar-winning role) – who never had the opportunity to learn a real employable skill – discover her true calling and fight through the inertia of pompous, seasoned attorneys. At the same time, the possibility of domestic tranquility enters Erin’s life in the form of a sexy Harley riding neighbor (Aaron Eckhart) who “keeps it simple” and loves taking care of Erin’s three kids. At first supporting her obsessive efforts, the soulful boyfriend-babysitter forces her to make an impossible choice introducing gender politics and an emotional messiness that makes Brockovich’s rags-to-riches story far more compelling. –CO
16. “Logan Lucky” (2017)
A silly movie by a serious man who’s refused to become a self-important artist, “Logan Lucky” wants you to think of it as minor Soderbergh (anything to lessen the sheepishness of ending his retirement so soon after it began). The premise alone, so obviously a Trump country riff on Soderbergh’s biggest film that one character straight up uses the phrase “Ocean’s 7-11,” is enough to position this low-key heist comedy as little more than a joy ride around a familiar track, and it’s true that watching Channing Tatum and pals rob a roadway in Charlotte isn’t as exciting as watching George Clooney and co rob casinos in Vegas. But if “Logan Lucky” begs you not to take it seriously, that doesn’t mean it lacks real soul.
An old-school caper in a modern climate where movies have to be either huge or humble, “Logan Lucky” is stuck between the past and present. To borrow a line from John Denver, it’s “older than the trees, younger than the mountains.” Steven Soderbergh has always belonged in that fertile middle ground, and — after a singularly dubious break — his new film takes him home to the place where he belongs. —DE
15. “And Everything Is Going Fine” (2010)
Assembled purely from Spalding Gray’s interviews and stage performances, Soderbergh crafted a semi-autobiography a few years after the legendary raconteur had passed away. Gray was obviously a gifted storyteller, but by juxtaposing different source material the interviews punctuate the pain and darkness behind the prose. Slowly, a complex and layered portrait emerges that is both surprisingly moving and revealing. The film appears at first to be deceptively simple, as we are lulled into humorous glimpses of Gray’s childhood with a mentally ill mother, but slowly we discover that the film’s narrative arc is Gray’s own decline into despair. Gray was obviously never able to discuss his own suicide, but his collaborator and friend in this unorthodox documentary found a way for him to do exactly that.
14. “Let Them All Talk” (2020)
It’s in the title, really: when you cast Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen in a film together, you really just want to see three iconic actresses get to shoot the breeze. And the odd, wonderful little lark “Let Them All Talk” gives them ample space to do so, devoting much of its runtime to heavily improvised scenes where the cast goes in circles talking about life, everything and nothing. There’s a loose plot — Streep is a novelist taking a cruise to accept an award in London with Wiest and Bergen as her two friends tagging along — but it’s a thin little thing that feels almost beside the point. And yet, somehow, “Let Them All Talk” works wonders, packing so much blissful charm and insight about aging and friendship that it still proves enormously affecting. —WC
13. “Contagion” (2011)
Soderbergh was going to make a biopic about Leni Riefenstahl, but he ultimately deemed that idea to be too uncommercial, so he and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns decided to make a movie about a different kind of disease instead. An unnervingly believable bio-thriller that addresses a global pandemic with a multi-faceted approach similar to the one Soderbergh used in “Traffic,” “Contagion” may not be quite as scary as Nazism, but it’s pretty damn close. The perfect vehicle for the director’s antiseptic digital ambiance, the film follows the progress of its pathogen with clinical detail, disposing of its memorable characters with all the love that viruses show to their hosts (Gwyneth Paltrow’s first act death remains one of the most emotionally destabilizing in recent Hollywood history). Anchored by an anxious Cliff Martinez score and brought to life by a deep bench of brilliant actors (highlighted by MVP Jennifer Ehle), “Contagion” is a nauseatingly compelling movie that knows our civilization is even more fragile than we care to realize. — DE
12. “Haywire” (2012)
Soderbergh turns himself into an action director, and MMA fighter Gina Carano turns into an ass-kicking spy in a film that proves that action films can actually be both visceral and visually pleasing. When the relatively inexpensive (a reported $25 million) film was released, it received a lukewarm reception from critics who applauded Soderbergh’s cool, clean action direction, but found it lacking charisma and depth. Audiences were even harsher, with a D+ Cinemascore and less than $20 million in domestic box office.
But these hesitations suggest viewers were searching for a different kind of movie. There is no big idea to find in this midst of the film’s convoluted plot of double-crossed spies, nor a desire to lure an audience with a charismatic character anchoring it (Soderbergh saw Carano as more of a silent Clint Eastwood-like presence). Instead, this lo-fi riff on the American action film is Soderbergh’s exercise in matching his stripped-down filmmaking approach with the tremendous physical talents of Carano (who had not yet revealed herself to be a Transphobic clown). The director even goes as far as removing David Holmes’ score during the hand-to-hand combat scenes. With the best showdowns set in the confines of a normal-size hotel room, a diner, a snowy backroad and an empty beach, it’s not about scale, but skill (both filmmaking and fighting). The result is a handsome, pulpy, brutal, palette-cleansing piece of genre filmmaking of the highest order. –CO
11. “Kimi” (2022)
One of the best films of Soderbergh’s late-period, no-frills thriller era, “Kimi” is one of the great movies about the COVID-19 pandemic — even if the international disaster is only going on in the background of a techno-thriller. Zoë Kravitz’s Angela is an agoraphobe whose trauma-induced fear of the outdoors is only worse after the pandemic, but must venture out of her large apartment with her mask on her face when she uncovers audio evidence of a murder. At an almost pinpoint precise 90-minutes “Kimi” is a precisely wound work, and Soderbergh stages every chase and action scene as Angela becomes an unwitting hero with clean filmmaking but gritty texture. What puts “Kimi” over from good to great though is Kravitz, a cool but often near translucent actor in other projects who here contorts her body with enough anxiety and tension that you fear she’ll snap in half. It’s an excellent, unexpected turn, and one of the best performances Soderbergh has ever gotten from an actor. —WC
10. “High Flying Bird” (2019)
The second film Soderbergh shot with an iPhone, the excellent and underrated “High Flying Bird” feels far less gimmicky and constrained by its intentional technical restrictions than “Unsane,” instead using its format to capture the claustrophobia and tension of its lead as he grapples with a turning point in his career. Structured a bit like a thriller, the film is set during 72 hours in an NBA lockout, as sports agent Ray (an ace André Holland) attempts to pitch a deal that will get his star rookie paid and save his agency. Soderbergh and screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney (“Moonlight”) have way more on their minds than just sports finances, though: The film peers into how Black athletes are commodified by capitalistic sports organizations in a way that feels authentically radical and never didactic, even if it quite literally ends with a book recommendation. Despite having almost no actual basketball in it, “High Flying Bird” shows more love and appreciation for the sport and its athletes than almost any traditional sports film around. —WC
9. “Solaris” (2002)
More an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s novel than a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic, Soderbergh makes what is arguably his most emotional and deeply felt film. Chris (George Clooney) is a psychologist called to a space station orbiting the mysterious planet of Solaris, which is having an unexplained and powerful effect on the crew who won’t return home. Upon arrival, Chris realizes the situation is far more serious than he imagined and soon starts to realize why — when he’s visited in his cabin by his deceased wife (Natascha McElhone), who committed suicide a few years ago. Cutting between flashbacks of the couple falling in love and her descent into a deep depression, Soderbergh captures Chris’s struggle of what to do with his Solaris “visitor” into a riveting dilemma for the audience. Not bothering to get bogged down in cracking the faceless mystery and motivation behind the appearance of “the visitors,” “Solaris” becomes an unfiltered meditation on love, grief and how helpless we are to understand the nature of human existence. — CO
8. “Side Effects” (2013)
A not-so-distant relative of “Contagion” (also scripted by Scott Z. Burns), “Side Effects” is a savagely ridiculous movie that uses the (legal) drug industry as a Trojan horse for a prescription-strength psychological thriller — in doing for big pharma what “Spellbound” did for hypnotherapy, Soderbergh and his writing partner crafted a story that gets away with murder because almost everyone who sees it has their own medicine cabinet full of evidence. It also helps that “Side Effect,” like all of Soderbergh’s films, is told with the courage of its convictions, even if it leaves us to suss out what those convictions might be.
Rooney Mara, using her natural inscrutability to its full advantage, is brilliant as a sullen woman who stabs her husband to death while she’s sleepwalking and blames the tragedy on her experimental anti-depression meds. Jude Law, a fading sex symbol who Soderbergh loves for the scavenger-like desperation that lurks beneath his good looks, is equally great as the doctor who prescribed the pills. The battle of wits that develops between these two characters should feel more absurd than it does, but the film never loses sight of the fact that greed can be much harder to treat than depression. “Side Effects” was never really going to be the end of Soderbergh’s big screen career, but it would have been one hell of a way to say goodbye. — DE
6 & 7. “Che: Part One” & “Che: Part Two” (2008)
Taking over Benicio Del Toro’s passion project after it fell apart with Terence Malick attached to direct, Soderbergh once again reinvented himself as a filmmaker while putting a completely different spin on the conventional bio-pic. Soderbergh became obsessed with researching (and conducting many of his own interviews) the life of the controversial revolutionary. Eventually, he completely restructured the script into a two-part film that told the story of Guevara’s successful (Cuba) and unsuccessful (Bolivia) guerrilla uprisings. When the two distinct parts were initially combined into a four-hour special edition “road show” — complete with a full color photo program – Soderbergh would take part in epic late-night Q&As and contend with angry critics accusing him of celebrating the controversial figure.
What’s fascinating about Soderbergh’s approach to the film – and what his critics seemed to not realize – is there was little attempt to bring the audience inside the rather distant leader and create a subjective viewing experience where the audience identified with Che. Instead, Soderbergh used all of his knowledge of Che and filmmaking “to give you a sense of what it was like to hang out around this person.” With less than 80 days to shoot what is essentially two movies – set against the backdrop of two very different jungle wars – Soderbergh was also working for the first time with a professional HD digital camera: the Red One had just become available, and it was glorious. Soderbergh worked with his small core of close collaborators for the first time on a larger scale and transformed himself into the efficient, instinctive one-man visual storyteller he dreamed of being when he started shooting his own films in 2000. His visual language grew to become even more determined and stripped-down under the constraints of time and flexibility of the camera. As the filmmaker himself acknowledged, he emerged from “Che” a completely different filmmaker. — CO
5. “Magic Mike” (2012)
First things first, it’s important to note that “Magic Mike XXL” would probably have topped this list had Soderbergh directed it himself. And yes, this film scores free points for inspiring one of the finest and most joyful sequels of the 21st Century. That being said, “Magic Mike” is excellent enough on its own merits. A beefy good time that doubles as a post-recessionary study of greed, Soderbergh’s shirtless spectacular is such a deeply enjoyable movie because it never forgets that the heart is the strongest muscle in the human body.
…Okay, that’s not literally true, but it feels right. Likewise, it’s not literally true that Channing Tatum’s semi-autobiographical performance as an entrepreneurial male stripper is the height of all screen acting, but it feels right. Very right. He’s the eye of the storm in a movie that’s positively raining men. “Magic Mike” wants to be a bit more exuberant than Soderbergh’s antiseptic style allows for, and Cody Horn is too dull of a love interest for a movie in which every character is interesting enough to be a lead, but neither of those drawbacks are enough to hold this thing back from being a massive crowdpleaser. The law says a film about jacked Florida bros shouldn’t be this touching, but I think I see a lotta lawbreakers up in this house tonight. — DE
4. “The Limey” (1999)
One of the most perfect cinematic chamber pieces ever made. Soderbergh had been experimenting with an editing style that slipped through time and space to juxtapose emotional beats from different scenes, and he was able to master what previously had felt like a showy editing gimmick in key moments of “Out of Sight,” giving him the confidence to try and tell an entire story this way.
Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs built a perfect vehicle for the formal experimentation in telling the simple story of an ex-convict (Terence Stamp), who comes to Los Angeles to search for the real story behind his daughter’s “accidental” death and the involvement of her record producing-’60s-icon sugar daddy (Peter Fonda). As Soderbergh shoots entire dialogue scenes in multiple locations and repurposing footage from Ken Loach’s 1967 “Poor Cow” (starring an impossibly handsome Stamp as a young father), the elliptical editing structure creates the emotional texture of a memory that perfectly reflects the internal state of the protagonist. Most impressively, by building the formal experimentation off the simple mano-a-mano detective/revenge narrative structure, “The Limey” is an engaging and entertaining story rather than abstract art. — CO
3. “Ocean’s Twelve” (2004)
Soderbergh has always thought of himself as more of a synthesist than an originator, more of a collage artist than a bonafide auteur. Unlike Quentin Tarantino, Soderbergh tends to be more in service to his influences than his influences are in service to him. But if that’s true — as the filmmaker humbly swears that it is — why do so many of his best movies feel like they couldn’t possibly have been made by anyone else?
How fitting, then, that the most idiosyncratic studio picture Soderbergh has ever made was actually based on the script for a different film. Retrofitting George Nolfi’s “Honor Among Thieves” into a dazzling, go-for-broke sequel about the difficulty of making sequels, “Ocean’s Twelve” was a victim of its own ingenuity (a fate to which its director can certainly relate). Less of a heist movie than it is an abstract investigation of the genre and its expectations, this immensely fun caper has the audacity to make the audience into its primary mark, and that pissed off a lot of people. They’ll come around. Once you’re in on the joke, it’s so much fun to watch Soderbergh weaponize the glitz and glamor of his most incredible cast, using all of that plutonium-grade charisma as a means to distract us from the con at hand; not only is the Julia Roberts sequence the hilarious coup de grâce of a blockbuster that plays inside baseball better than “Full Frontal” ever could, it also gets to the heart of what the “Ocean’s” movies are all about: the seduction of star power. — DE
2. “Out of Sight” (1998)
Steven Soderbergh is obsessed with money, lying, and non-linear storytelling, so it was just a matter of time before he got around to adapting an Elmore Leonard novel. And lo, in the year of our lord 1998, that’s exactly what Soderbergh did, and in the process entered a new phase of his career with his first studio assignment. The surface is cool and breezy, while the film’s soul is about regret and a yearning for something more out of life. Soderbergh makes the absurdity of straight-edged cop Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) and expert robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) taking the risk to spend one night together – beautifully edited so you simultaneously feel both the mounting sexual anticipation and sadness of it being over – utterly believable in this sexy, melancholy screwball set to the smooth tempo of David Holmes music. As handsome and charming as George Clooney is, it’s hard to imagine he would have been the star he is today if Soderbergh hadn’t unlocked the full depth of his persona with this role. It was the start of a fruitful partnership (Section Eight, their production company) that propelled and enabled both men’s careers. — CO
1. “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001)
Has there ever been a more eminently re-watchable film than “Ocean’s Eleven?” That’s a rhetorical question — of course there hasn’t. Maybe the most confidently directed movie about confidence men, Steven Soderbergh’s Rat Pack remake is all about star power, and it picks up every ounce of swagger that Frank Sinatra and Joey Bishop left behind. The basic idea couldn’t be simpler: George Clooney and Brad Pitt assemble a team and try to knock off the biggest casino in Vegas (though one of them is doing it for decidedly personal reasons). But the simplicity of the plot only gives Soderbergh’s impeccable cast more time to fill in the blanks, and they make sure that every square inch of this movie is dripping with personality. From Matt Damon’s anxious pickpocket to Carl Reiner’s old-timer master of disguise, each member of the gang is unforgettable in their own way, and the precision with which Soderbergh arranges them during the big heist is hugely satisfying every time. “Ocean’s Eleven” may not have been new at the time, but it still hasn’t gotten old. — DE
