The Essentials: The Films Of Steven Soderbergh

“Magic Mike” (2012)
Added to his pre-retirement slate after a conversation with Tatum on the “Haywire” set, “Magic Mike” turned out to be Soderbergh’s greatest success in years. And rightly so; in the spirit of some of his recent films, but with a fresh enough take that the filmmaker seems particularly energized, it’s a smart and terrifically made picture that belongs in the top-tier of the director’s filmography. The film focuses on the titular Mike (Tatum, who commissioned the script based on his ownexperiences in his early 20s), an aspiring furniture maker who subsidizes his dream business by being the top attraction at the Xquisite Strip Club, owned by the semi-retired former stripper Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). Mike befriends Adam (Alex Pettyfer), a 19-year-old kid, and brings him into the fold, while also finding himself drawn to his sister (Cody Horn). But the summer can’t last forever… Once again, Soderbergh is setting up a flashy, audience-friendly exterior (as $100 million of girls’-nights-out attests to), and sneaks in a look at economic collapse and the American dream, with the fun, light life of Mike & co becoming increasingly tarnished by drugs and greed. But while the bait-and-switch might be familiar, this is a a more playful Soderbergh at work, embelleshing the film with a loose, Altmanish energy that’s entirely winning, thanks in part to excellent performances from the unlikely sources of Tatum, Pettyfer, Olivia Munn and Matthew McConaughey, in a turn that seems to combine every performance the actor ever gave into a surface-charming, rotten-hearted whole. In the dance sequences, the filmmaker demonstrates that he’d be a dab hand at musicals (we still mourn his “Antony & Cleopatra” musical, which was to have featured music by Guided By Voices, and starred Hugh Jackman, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Ray Winstone), and a sun-kissed Florida setting gives a nice break from the strip-lighting feel of much of the director’s late-period pictures. We hope it’s not the directors’ last great film, but great it is nevertheless. [A-]

“Side Effects” (2013)
If nothing else, “Side Effects” – a gloomy, clinical character study about a medicated woman that also functions as a scathing indictment of contemporary pharma-greed – is one of the more downcast pictures that this normally more energized filmmaker has ever given us. There are no traces of the chipper insouciance to be found in the likes of “Out Of Sight” or the “Ocean’s” movies here: “Side Effects” is a dour, austere procedural whose color-drained frames (lensed by Soderbergh himself, once again shooting under the alias Peter Andrews) look all but bled of life. Rooney Mara is affecting as Emily Taylor, the film’s depressed protagonist, while Channing Tatum brings his sullen, unforced gravitas to the role of Emily’s white-collar criminal husband, and Jude Law all but walks away with the entire movie, weaponizing his handsome-scumbag charms to sinister effect by embodying one of the most ominously serpentine movie psychiatrists in recent memory. [B] – NL

“Behind The Candelabra” (2013)
“Behind The Candelabra,” a candid, funny, refreshingly unapologetic look at the final days of legendary pianist and style icon Władziu Valentino Liberace, is coated in glitter and surface-level opulence to a degree that would no doubt please its subject. That said, beneath the pageantry is a portrait of a lonely soul, committed to careerism above all else, and a similarly solitary man (in this case, that would be Liberace’s love-in lover, Scott Thorson) who got caught up in the chaos of life in the spotlight. The performances by Soderbergh familiars Michael Douglas (as Liberace) and Matt Damon (as Thorson) are a huge part of the film’s appeal: Douglas, a normally more poised actor, comes unwound with glorious, catty self-regard, while Damon shows us the heartache under Thorson’s well-manicured façade (and then there’s the gloriously batshit supporting performance from Rob Lowe, playing a bizarre plastic surgeon who has clearly never heard the maxim to not get high on one’s own proverbial supply). [A-] – NL

“The Knick” (2014-2015)
On one hand, “The Knick” is very clearly a progenitor to the contemporary medical melodrama, as well as one of the most visually poetic television shows in the history of the medium. It’s a whip-smart work of episodic art that can make turn-of-the-century New York City look as forbidding and alien as the original “Blade Runner” (obviously, Cliff Martinez’s entrancing, synth-heavy earworm compositions only fortify that comparison). And yet, “The Knick,” which stars a never-better Clive Owen as the brilliant, tormented, drug-addicted surgeon John Thackeray, is also a microcosm of American society at the advent of the twentieth century: a melting pot of readily-available narcotics, half-baked philosophies, racial animosities, budding industry, and egos fueled by capitalism and the unprecedented developments of modern medicine. The show is a feast for the eyes and ears, and even in a filmography that includes the likes of “Che” parts one and two, “The Knick” stands as the most purely ambitious undertaking of Soderbergh’s career. Those of you looking for a new binge-worthy T.V. obsession would be wise to give it a shot (both seasons are currently streaming on HBOMax). [A] – NL

“Logan Lucky” (2013)
In many ways, “Logan Lucky,” a lowlife yarn about two hard-knock brothers who conspire to pull a heist underneath the Charlotte Motor Speedway during a big race, is a return to what Steven Soderbergh has always done well: big scores, unflappable camaraderie, local color, movie stars, and lovable, larger-than-life characters. It’s as much of a rousing, classically-made studio picture as the renegade director has ever given us, even if the movie’s country-fried milieu compelled some snarkier critics to refer to the movie as “Ocean’s 7/11.” Everyone in the cast is firing on all cylinders here: Channing Tatum as a luckless Southern crook, Adam Driver as his armless, cocktail-slinging brother, Riley Keough as the boy’s firecracker sister, and especially 007 himself, Daniel Craig, as an effete, terrifying convict with bleached-blonde hair who happens to be named Joe Bang (okay, we also have no idea what to make of Seth MacFarlane as a snooty British race car driver, but we’ll let that one slide). It’s one of the most effervescently entertaining movies that Soderbergh has ever made – and this is the guy who made “Magic Mike”! [B+] – NL