Female Film Critics 24/375
Steven Soderbergh knows how to spot a filmmaker with something to say, and with Love, Brooklyn, he’s backed Rachael Abigail Holder’s moody, sun-dappled debut. Through the gaze of a Brooklyn cyclist who pedals as though the city’s chaotic traffic is nothing more than atmospheric background, Holder offers us a meandering but thoughtful meditation on love, change, and that hazy thing we call “moving on.”
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Steven Soderbergh’s perfect little cinematic contraption is old-fashioned in the very best sort of way. Movies used to be like this, not that long ago: smart, sexy stories about grownup people, not the serious dramas but the sophisticated nonsense. Sleek and elegant, full of gorgeous, charismatic people with genuine star quality engaging in deliciously amusing balderdash.
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David Koepp and Steven Soderbergh step into the world of British Intelligence with the spy thriller-romantic drama Black Bag. Starring Michael Fassbender as the cerebral George Woodhouse and Cate Blanchett as his glamourous and capable wife, Kathryn St. Jean: Black Bag is a winning combination of style and game playing reminiscent of John le Carré. The puzzles are plenty in Black Bag and the world of these fundamentally untrustworthy people in charge of a shadow milieu that goes beyond conventional politics and morals is a blast to inhabit. Black Bag proves Soderbergh has a lot of juice left in his genre game and it invites the audience to play with him. Go to the party.
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Black Bag: Something’s are best kept under the rug. If you are looking for a liar, just spike the Chana Masala. In Black Bag, that’s how a legendary intelligence agent tries to ferret out a mole within the bureau. By inviting the prime suspects to a dinner party like an Agatha Christie mystery, he’s sure one will speak the truth. But what if the traitor turns out to be his Mata Hari wife?
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What do you call a ghost story that can’t even conjure up a few scares? Presence, Steven Soderbergh’s recent attempt at a horror movie. His puzzling plot begins as an upper-middle class family inspects an old house in leafy suburbia. The location – a.k.a. school district – is exactly what they want – and they’re the first potential buyers, according to Cece (Julia Fox), their eager real estate agent.
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Steven Soderbergh’s Presence captures a new point of view in a horror-adjacent film. Instead of seeing through the eyes of the family living in the ‘haunted’ house at the centre of the film, we see through the perspective of the ‘presence’ as it tries to understand its purpose and who the people are it is haunting. Shot by Soderbergh (using a pseudonym) with a Sony A7, and having only approximately thirty cuts, Presence is another of Soderbergh’s “experiments” with cinematic form like Unsane where the process and the result are equally fascinating.
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Kimi, like Siri and Alexa, is the name of a voice-activated digital assistant (a VADA?). Kimi’s job is to help customers shop, cook, turn on lights, etc. Angela Childs’ job is to repair techno-booboos, so she has to listen. While Angela keeps her ear cocked for mistakes in the system, she hears what might be a murder.
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Steven Soderbergh’s low-budget techno-thriller revolves around a next-generation virtual assistant, like Siri and Alexa, but named Kimi. Paranoid Angela Childs is a tech analyst, working remotely from her sprawling Seattle loft/apartment. Since she’s agoraphobic, she spends a great deal of time looking out of the window. So do her nosy neighbors Terry from across the street who makes periodic booty calls and creepy Kevin armed with binoculars
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Steven Soderbergh’s created a stupefying ‘noir’ trip back to 1954 in Detroit, where ex-con Curt Goynes is eager to pocket $5,000 to re-claim land that was taken from him. When he visits his buddy’s barber shop, he’s sent to the back alley where he’s hired to hold the Wertz family hostage while the husband/father, an accountant at General Motors, is forced to steal engineering specs.
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Director Steven Soderbergh takes a casual approach in his latest film, Let Them All Talk. In fact, so casual that his cast improvised the lion’s share of the interactions, spontaneously expressing what they thought and felt. When the three central actresses are Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Dianne Wiest, that’s not too risky a venture, though conversations often meander.
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