Steven Soderbergh
444 connections found
Filmography
The Limey 1999 
Magic Mike 2012 
Solaris 2002 
Ocean's Eleven 2001 
Side Effects 2013 
Out of Sight 1998 
Erin Brockovich 2000 
Traffic 2000 
Logan Lucky 2017 
Haywire 2011 
Contagion 2011 
The Informant! 2009 
Behind the Candelabra 2013 
sex, lies, and videotape 1989 
Kafka 1991 
Let Them All Talk 2020 
No Sudden Move 2021 
The Good German 2006 
The Laundromat 2019 
Unsane 2018 
The Underneath 1995 
Schizopolis 1997 
Full Frontal 2002 
Ocean's Twelve 2004 
The Girlfriend Experience 2009 
Bubble 2006 
Ocean's Thirteen 2007 
King of the Hill 1993 
Kimi 2022 
Presence 2025 
Gray's Anatomy 1996 
Black Bag 2025 
Magic Mike's Last Dance 2023 View:
Connections, in both directions
The Third Man (1949)
Directed by Carol Reed
influenced The Good German (2006)
Characters Visuals Plot Themes
He may seem wised-up, but he's as callow as the Joseph Cotten character in "The Third Man," which was set in labyrinthine postwar Vienna.
By contrast, Soderbergh's reality is old movies -- some of us can sympathize with that -- and so he filters this tale of murder, naïveté, and betrayal through "The Third Man" and Billy Wilder's "A Foreign Affair."
Based on Joseph Kanon's novel , The Good German echoes the setting of The Third Man and the central relationship of Casablanca.
George Clooney and Cate Blanchett bring star glamor to bombed-out 1945 Berlin, and stock footage of the destroyed city blends in nicely to create a film that wants to exist in an ahistorical space somewhere between The Third Man, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Casablanca.
You can ignore the behind-the-scenes technicalities and enjoy the movie on face value: as a moderately entertaining nod to “Casablanca” and “The Third Man.”
It doesn't take a USC cinema scholar to observe that "German" is big, fat, wet kiss to filmdom of the 1940s; more specifically to such immortal pictures as "Casablanca" and "The Third Man." Soderbergh pushes "German" to not only emulate the mood of these classics, but the actual cinematic style as well.
Not specifically in a Soderbergh film, but in “The Conversation” (where Gene Hackman played a solitary surveillance snoop who realizes he may have recorded a murder), and in a handful of other cinematic references that Soderbergh does winking homage to: “Blow-Up,” “Rear Window,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” — and, in a funny way, the recycling spirit of Brian De Palma, who’s evoked through the film’s voluptuous old-fashioned musical score, by Cliff Martinez, which sounds like an homage to the Hitchcock/Herrmann homages of Pino Donaggio.
Thrillers inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window are nothing new, nor are films in which someone inadvertently records the evidence of a crime (Blow-Up, Blow Out).
Angela has to play with filters and equalizers to isolate the voice from the background noise, and it’s in that long, eerie sequence of sonic exploration that you realize that “Kimi” is working in the same fields as Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966), Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) and Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out” (1981) – movies in which horrific crimes can be glimpsed through the static of our all-pervasive media state.
Soderbergh’s homages to 1970s paranoid thrillers, and movies like “Blow-Up” and “Blow Out” and “The Conversation” are lovingly integrated: the variations (and even understated homages) the veteran director plays are in the service of David Koepp’s capable script.
The sensation of déjà vu is compounded by Angela’s efforts to extract clearer audio from the recording and determine whether she’s hearing what she thinks she’s hearing, à la John Travolta in Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (which was already a riff on Antonioni’s Blow-Up ).
Seeing her use her tech skills to decipher the message will undoubtably bring up comparisons to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) and to a larger degree, Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981).
Not specifically in a Soderbergh film, but in “The Conversation” (where Gene Hackman played a solitary surveillance snoop who realizes he may have recorded a murder), and in a handful of other cinematic references that Soderbergh does winking homage to: “Blow-Up,” “Rear Window,” “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” — and, in a funny way, the recycling spirit of Brian De Palma, who’s evoked through the film’s voluptuous old-fashioned musical score, by Cliff Martinez, which sounds like an homage to the Hitchcock/Herrmann homages of Pino Donaggio.
The story is an exercise in techno-paranoia, which is always fun, with echoes of such genre classics as Coppola's The Conversation , De Palma's Blow Out , and Antonioni's Blowup , along with grateful nods to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window .
It borrows familiar elements of voyeurism from Rear Window (1954) and combines them with the paranoia and omnipresent recording of The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981), and it reinvigorates these ideas.
Here, it’s his editing that stands out—especially in a sequence of Angela filtering the audio, where the filleting of techy insert shots and close-ups of Kravitz (all amplified by the layered sound design) recall similar sequences in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation .
With “Kimi,” Soderbergh pays homage to Hitchcock (in particular “Rear Window”) and the 1974 classic “The Conversation” in a lean, no-frills psychological thriller featuring some of the finest work in Zoë Kravitz’s career.
Angela has to play with filters and equalizers to isolate the voice from the background noise, and it’s in that long, eerie sequence of sonic exploration that you realize that “Kimi” is working in the same fields as Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966), Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) and Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out” (1981) – movies in which horrific crimes can be glimpsed through the static of our all-pervasive media state.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Solaris (2002)
Visuals Themes Plot
Perhaps even more than Tarkovsky's film, Soderbergh's feels like a purely formal exercise, a visual and philosophical voyage (in the obvious vein of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" ) that begins and ends at the same point, our own planet, which turns out to be no more "real," no less rich and strange, than Solaris itself.
The movie bears a stronger resemblance to 2001: A Space Odyssey than to Star Wars , with an emphasis on ideas over action.
Solaris bears a closer resemblance to 2001: A Space Odyssey than it does to Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
The film it most resembles is Kubrick's masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey, both in its majestic, sweeping vision of a spaceship-bound catastrophe and its slow, measured story pacing.
This idea of reanimating the dead takes on metaphorical as well as literal shape, in part because Soderbergh appears to be reviving the sort of epic, thought-provoking science fiction exemplified by Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Ad Astra (2019)
Directed by James Gray
influenced by Solaris (2002), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Themes Visuals
Deliberate, downbeat, vast in scope and theme but emotionally intimate, it evokes — at times overtly — the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey , Solaris , Contact and Arrival .
Shot with widescreen majesty on 35mm, Ad Astra combines sinewy, space-bound sequences – all floating elegance and weightless wonder – with moments of shimmery inner stillness, reminiscent of Soderbergh’s undervalued Solaris remake.
The influence of iconic science-fiction films like Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey are evident from the outset with the narrative following a path akin to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now .
Truthfully, Gray’s feature rather terrifically splits the difference between the high-momentum survival thrills of Gravity and Interstellar and artier, more ruminative sci-fi touchstones: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Solaris (1972) The Fountain (2006), Melancholia (2011), Arrival (2016), and Claire Denis’ recent, slippery contribution to that sub-genre, High Life .
Solaris, Interstellar, Gravity, 2001: A Space Odyssey — Gray pays homage to each and more, along with another, more earthbound, masterwork: Apocalypse Now.
Visually, it combines the best of Interstellar , Gravity , The Martian , and First Man , with plenty of callbacks to classic space fare like 2001: A Space Odyssey , Contact , and Solaris .
Rear Window (1954)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Kimi (2022), Side Effects (2013)
Themes Visuals Plot
The story is an exercise in techno-paranoia, which is always fun, with echoes of such genre classics as Coppola's The Conversation , De Palma's Blow Out , and Antonioni's Blowup , along with grateful nods to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window .
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Hitchcock is a clear reference point here, from the apartment-on-high views of Rear Window to the psychological angles of Shadow of a Doubt and Spellbound .
It certainly is built as an ordinary genre piece — so ordinary you’ll be reminded of other paranoid suspense films during the whole eighty-nine-minute running time, starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and carrying on through countless descendants to 2021’s The Woman in the Window .
It borrows familiar elements of voyeurism from Rear Window (1954) and combines them with the paranoia and omnipresent recording of The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981), and it reinvigorates these ideas.
The setting of a confined apartment and sense of voyeurism will bring up parallels with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
With “Kimi,” Soderbergh pays homage to Hitchcock (in particular “Rear Window”) and the 1974 classic “The Conversation” in a lean, no-frills psychological thriller featuring some of the finest work in Zoë Kravitz’s career.
Focus (2015)
Directed by Glenn Ficarra
influenced by Out of Sight (1998), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Plot Visuals
There are two ways of seeing "Focus": as a slick, derivative con man movie starring a typically debonair Will Smith that channels the labyrinthine schemes and accompanying jubilance found in everything from "Ocean's Eleven" to "Out of Sight" — or as the worst movie yet from Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the writer-director pair behind "I Love You Philip Morris" and "Crazy, Stupid, Love."
Overall, Focus might not match the sophistication of Ocean’s Eleven or the passion of The Thomas Crown Affair, but it’s an enjoyable enough distraction whose only real major letdown is an unnecessarily twisty ending.
From the start it promises more than it can deliver, mixing tones of screwball comedy romance with “Ocean’s Eleven” caper movie flourishes.
No amount of slight of hand or Ocean’s Eleven style heists could fol you, but boy does this film try to do just that.
The other 70 percent a con man film in the Ocean’s Eleven or Duplicity mold; glossy, neon-lit images; beautiful people in luxe costumes; screwball comedy-esque battle-of-the-sexes banter; endless double- and triple-crosses.
The whole encounter suggests that writer-director duo Glenn Ficarra and John Requa have studied not only how con men operate, but also the best of the genre (having already supplied one of its looniest entries with “I Love You Phillip Morris”), channeling the sultry, smooth-jazz vibe of Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” from the opening scene.
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
influenced Side Effects (2013)
Themes Characters Plot Visuals
From Soderbergh's head-scratching opening homage to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby to a plot that, at first, seems to be a cautionary legal tale of big pharma abuses, Side Effects unexpectedly develops into a post modern Hitchcockian thriller... which is actually akin to one of Brian De Palma's chilly psychological puzzles .
He plays games with the color palette and the sound mix; Mara has a spooky, translucent vulnerability that reminded me of Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby.’’
You’ll also detect echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (questionable psychiatrists involved in Manhattan highrise hijinks) and the 1981 Body Heat (an attractive couple whose passion turns toxic).
The premise is patently yet intriguingly ridiculous—a Manhattan-set psychological thriller that satirizes Big Pharma paranoia, while harking back to such crazy-lady favorites as Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction.
It’s no coincidence he opens his film with a slow, insinuating zoom into a distant apartment window, like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Psycho.”
The Bad Guys (2022)
Directed by Pierre Perifel
influenced by Ocean's Eleven (2001), Out of Sight (1998), King of the Hill (1993)
Visuals Characters Plot
There's a funky 1970s vibe to this children's film, which channels Pulp Fiction , Ocean's Eleven and The Matrix , and might work as a gateway to slightly edgier fare.
In fact, much of “The Bad Guys” is a nod, a wink and a nudge to “Ocean’s Eleven,” down to the storytelling, visual style and some very specific jokes: Wolf puts the moves on a female fox by going “full Clooney.”
The way each character is assigned a skillset will undoubtably draw comparisons to Ocean’s Eleven (2001), with Wolf’s cool, unfazed leader being inspired by George Clooney.
This leads to a rift within the ranks, and some pretty neat twists and turns and reveals, with the actors doing wonderful voice work while “The Bad Guys” serves up nods to classic crime films such as “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Bullitt,” “The Italian Job,” “The Hot Rock” and “Snatch”—but mostly Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequels.
Other classics like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Heat” seem to be obvious inspirations for director Pierre Perifel, making his feature directorial debut.
And that's being a caper sort of flick along the lines of "Ocean's Eleven," especially with Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell) clearly giving off a definite George Clooney vibe.
Jones's debut, which had its local premiere at the last Tribeca Film Festival, is pleased to engage genre behemoths—2001, Solaris, Blade Runner—as well as B-movie classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But since we spend so much time in a kind of “2001’’-meets-“Solaris’’ scenario, one with its strains of Ray Bradbury, we’re invited to notice how little vision or scope or psychological texture there is in “Moon.’’
Not coincidentally, at least as regards Moon’s milieu, it’s also the era of philosophically serious science-fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey , Silent Running and Solaris, the influence of which is consciously at work in Moon.
The well-placed inclusion of several impossible-to-predict plot twists - courtesy of screenwriter Nathan Parker - ensure that the movie's inevitable transformation from drama to thriller is just about seamless, and it's finally clear that Moon represents one of the most entertaining and flat-out engrossing sci-fi efforts to hit theaters since Steven Soderbergh's woefully underrated 2002 Solaris remake.
Reminiscent of 2002's underappreciated " Solaris " and 2007's " Sunshine ," the film creates a thick pall of dread and despair without the conventional means of tossing evil aliens or supernatural beings into the plot.
His pensive debut feature Moon is an elegy for the thoughtful storytelling of films such as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
Angela struts and dances through the apartment while doing routine tasks or talking on the phone, and Soderbergh matches her vigor with shots from below or above, extreme closeups on physical contact with objects and optical connection with digital information that evoke both a passionate engagement with the world and a chilly alienation from it (in ways that are reminiscent of Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”).
The story is an exercise in techno-paranoia, which is always fun, with echoes of such genre classics as Coppola's The Conversation , De Palma's Blow Out , and Antonioni's Blowup , along with grateful nods to Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window .
It borrows familiar elements of voyeurism from Rear Window (1954) and combines them with the paranoia and omnipresent recording of The Conversation (1974) and Blow Out (1981), and it reinvigorates these ideas.
For this project he seems inspired by Brian De Palma’s great “Blow Out,” where John Travolta plays a movie sound editor who is convinced he has recorded a murder linked to a political conspiracy.
Thrillers inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window are nothing new, nor are films in which someone inadvertently records the evidence of a crime (Blow-Up, Blow Out).
Angela has to play with filters and equalizers to isolate the voice from the background noise, and it’s in that long, eerie sequence of sonic exploration that you realize that “Kimi” is working in the same fields as Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966), Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) and Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out” (1981) – movies in which horrific crimes can be glimpsed through the static of our all-pervasive media state.
Ocean's Eight (2018)
Directed by Gary Ross
influenced by Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Logan Lucky (2017), Ocean's Thirteen (2007), Out of Sight (1998), Erin Brockovich (2000), Traffic (2000)
Visuals Plot
Viewers unfamiliar with Soderbergh’s heist movies (including last year’s rock-solid “ Logan Lucky ”) might find the twists and turns stimulating.
Unfortunately, director Gary Ross fundamentally lacks the Soderbergh snap that was on display in last year's Logan Lucky.
Co-writer-director Gary Ross has several decent credits (writing Big , directing and writing Pleasantville and Seabiscuit ), but he lacks the irreverent tone and agile pacing Steven Soderbergh brought to his Ocean's 11 trilogy and the more recent Logan Lucky .
A crew of women teaming up to boldly go where so many male-dominated heist teams, from “Rififi” to “The Italian Job” to the “Ocean’s” films, from “The Asphalt Jungle” to “The Town” to “Logan Lucky,” have gone before?
James Corden appears late in the film, extending the narrative as a tireless investigator, a postscript that unavoidably recalls Soderbergh’s more recent heist pic, Logan Lucky.
Frazier’s investigation plays out much differently than that of the investigation depicted in last summer’s Logan Lucky .
Vertigo (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Side Effects (2013), Kimi (2022)
Visuals Themes Music
Soderbergh builds terrific tension in these sleepwalking episodes where his heroine seems to flirt with tragedy, recalling those drawn-out daydreams Kim Novak drifts through in Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.”
With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
Emily refers to "Madeleine" (Vertigo, 1958).
It is easy enough to spot Soderbergh’s influences – Vertigo and Les Diaboliques alongside countless B-movie psychological thrillers and Patricia Highsmith novels.
It’s easily his finest – and most commercial – effort since “Oceans 13.” It’s also like nothing he’s ever done before, as he boldly treads into the domain normally reserved for masters of suspense like Hitchcock (think “Vertigo”) and Brian DePalma (“Body Double,” anyone?).
(Cliff Martinez, who composed the score, does an arresting job of suggesting the somber themes written by Bernard Herrmann for other Hitchcock films like Psycho and Vertigo .)
Knives Out (2019)
Directed by Rian Johnson
influenced by Logan Lucky (2017), No Sudden Move (2021)
Themes
Enter Beniot Blanc, a world-famous super-sleuth played by Daniel Craig with the same kind of lip-smacking relish and hambone Southern accent he deployed to such revelatory effect in 2017’s “Logan Lucky.”
Over the years, Daniel Craig has shown considerable range when not playing 007 and his performance as Blanc deserves a place alongside that of Logan Lucky’s Joe Bang.
Much as Steven Soderbergh did in his Southern-fried heist picture Logan Lucky (2017), Johnson embeds a zeitgeist-tapping urgency within Knives Out’s more simplistic, twisty pleasures.
Craig uses a Southern accent, with more molasses in it than the one he used in Logan Lucky.
The Cheshire-born Craig obviously relishes the chance to get well away from James Bond and put on a showier version of the Southern-friend accent he adopted in Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky, and he’s very amusing, despite the character’s inherent preposterousness.
Yes, to call the performances by most of the cast hammy is to wildly understate the case—especially when it comes to Craig, whose latest take on a Southern accent (following “Logan Lucky”) would give even Foghorn Leghorm pause—but these are smart actors who know exactly what they are doing and who realize that there is a time and a place for quiet and deft underplaying and this particular film is not it.
Likewise we see clips of Stamp in the 1967 Poor Cow, which show a younger Wilson as a budding thief.
Another ingenious idea that Soderbergh and Dobbs came up with was to incorporate footage from an old Stamp movie called Poor Cow (1967, directed by Ken Loach) and evolve Stamp into an older version of that character.
A sly film ploy also adds realism to Stamp's character by inserting clips from Poor Cow, a 1967 Ken Loach movie starring Stamp that is used to reflect Wilson's flashbacks to his earlier days.
For parts of the character's history, Soderbergh lifts footage from a 1967 film called "Poor Cow," in which Stamp played a young thief, implying that "The Limey" is in some ways a sequel.
Flashbacks of Wilson in his youth are actually scenes from one of Stamp's movies of the '60s, Poor Cow, and they remind us how devastatingly handsome he was as a younger man.
The character is the older, more contemplative incarnation of the thug Stamp played in Ken Loach's "Poor Cow" from 1967.
With its steady pacing and probing, supple camera work (handled by Soderbergh, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews), the film evokes classic psychodramas, from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, as well as kinky offshoots such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
The premise is patently yet intriguingly ridiculous—a Manhattan-set psychological thriller that satirizes Big Pharma paranoia, while harking back to such crazy-lady favorites as Rosemary’s Baby and Fatal Attraction.
This last one, Side Effects, looks like an homage to the '80s heyday of the twisty psychological thriller—Fatal Attraction, Jagged Edge, and Dead Calm—and to a large extent, it plays out as exactly that.
A doozy of a Hitchcockian thriller with Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones, “Effects” is a go-for-broke valentine to ’80s cinematic psychological potboilers such as “Jagged Edge” and “Fatal Attraction.”
It’s telling that Soderbergh watched Fatal Attraction “a lot” while preparing to shoot Side Effects (screenwriter Scott Z. Burns was probably busy studying Basic Instinct).
"Side Effects" takes a page from the "Fatal Attraction" school of late eighties/early nineties erotic thrillers, chucking it onto a contemporary hook: the pratfalls of the pharmaceutical industry.
Hustlers (2019)
Directed by Lorene Scafaria
influenced by Magic Mike (2012), Out of Sight (1998), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Themes Visuals
There are shades of the wit and grit of Scorsese's Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street but Scafaria combines it with a refreshingly sincere approach, akin to Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike .
Though there are early moments when the film recalls the vibe (if not the particulars) of Magic Mike, Scafaria uses the opening scenes to provide a “stripper primer” – how it’s all about the tease and what kind of Wall Street workers provide the best marks (always look for the wedding ring).
When Magic Mike arrived in 2012 the stripper was infused with an air of seriousness, courtesy of director Steven Soderbergh, though it reminded audiences of the double standards that plague these narratives (women are regularly nude, men aren’t).
It has its drawbacks; the pacing is not always on point and can lurch forward at some moments or ritard to a standstill, particularly in the second act; but, like Magic Mike before it, Hustlers is a movie that successfully manages to interweave surfaces pleasures with substantive themes.
In this introduction, Lopez gives the audience a jaw-dropping spectacle and full-body rush on par with Channing Tatum’s “Pony” sequence from Magic Mike.
"Hustlers" could, and should, do for her what "Magic Mike" did for Matthew McConaughey.
Kajillionaire (2020)
Directed by Miranda July
influenced by Ocean's Eleven (2001), Logan Lucky (2017)
Plot Visuals
I can understand the potential appeal of a "heist" movie in which the thieves are lower-class small-timers, although Steven Soderbergh pulled that off in a much more convincing fashion a few years ago with Logan Lucky (another Soderbergh heist movie, Ocean's Eleven, is name-checked in Kajillionaire.)
However, unlike the population of Ocean’s Eleven (which is explicitly referenced at one point), she doesn’t engage in sophisticated or elaborate schemes.
She’s ordinary enough to be exhilarated by the idea of joining the family’s antics, which remind her of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise.
I can understand the potential appeal of a "heist" movie in which the thieves are lower-class small-timers, although Steven Soderbergh pulled that off in a much more convincing fashion a few years ago with Logan Lucky (another Soderbergh heist movie, Ocean's Eleven, is name-checked in Kajillionaire.)
The heist in its opening scene (which might as well be a low-key homage to Ocean’s Eleven) sees Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) diving and tumbling around to avoid the cameras as she collects the mail.
But Melanie eagerly asks to become part of the gang (she confuses their little scams with Ocean's Eleven -style heists), and knows a way they might take advantage of the elderly.
Boogie Nights (1997)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Magic Mike (2012), The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
Themes Characters
Made in the lighthearted, unfussy vein of Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” movies and “Haywire,” this midsummer programmer has less in common with such antecedents as “Striptease” and “Boogie Nights” than with “Lifeguard,” a little-known 1976 gem in which Sam Elliott played an aging beach bum contemplating his future (and looking mighty fine doing it).
Indeed, the story arc and the dilemmas therein are largely just one more modest elaboration of themes already mined in movies like Saturday Night Fever, Showgirls, Lifeguard, American Gigolo and Boogie Nights.
…here will not be a single review of “Magic Mike” that does not reference “Boogie Nights.”
Directed by Steven Soderbergh from a script by Reid Carolin, it deliberately echoes such iconic films as “Shampoo,” “American Gigolo,” and “Boogie Nights,” in which shiny, sexy surfaces hide dark and creepy interior worlds.
Like Don Cheadle's stereo system-loving porn star in "Boogie Nights," Mike isn't his job, but only people he works with can see him as anything else.
But we feel more than a little uneasy when leading actors appear in male versions of these roles, and an essential part of Billy Wilder's Irma la Douce , Paul Schrader's American Gigolo and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights is to make us warm to and understand Jack Lemmon, Richard Gere and Mark Wahlberg as respectively a pimp, a gigolo and a porn star.
The Big Short (2015)
Directed by Adam McKay
influenced The Laundromat (2019), Logan Lucky (2017), Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Visuals Themes
Rather, it’s an interesting combination of the two, closest, probably to Adam McKay’s “The Big Short” but a lot sillier.
One moment, Soderbergh and friends attempt to recapture the magic of films like The Big Short; complicated issues handled with a wink and a smile as they mesh playful interaction with concise descriptors of what exactly occurred.
Con un estilo reminiscente al de cintas como The Big Short y Vice, el director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich) expone en The Laundromat (La Lavandería) uno de los escándalos fiscales más grandes a nivel internacional.
“The Big Short,” Adam McKay’s 2015 film about the financial crisis that ushered in the Great Recession, is an obvious precedent.
The most successful recent film in this didactic form—essentially fictionalized Michael Moore movies—was probably Adam McKay’s The Big Short, about a particularly cynical exploitation of the late-aughts financial crisis.
The Laundromat, The Big Short-esque collection of celebrity-laden vignettes explaining the ins and outs of a recent financial crisis, is a showcase for Steven Soderbergh’s vim and vigor.