(Photo by Focus Features / Courtesy Everett Collection. BLACK BAG.)
Steven Soderbergh Movies and Shows, Ranked By Tomatometer
Steven Soderbergh rarely puts his name in front of movies. You’ll almost never see “A Steven Soderbergh Film” right before the title card. He uses pseudonyms based on his parents whenever he writes his own screenplay or edits his movies, which he does often. And yet he’s known as one of the best and most consistent in the business for caper and heist movies, for movies that question big business and authority, for movies featuring strong women and vulnerable men, and movies that use unusual directing techniques but are still unquestionably part of the Hollywood system. That’s been Soderbergh his whole career: one foot in Hollywood, one foot in indie filmmaking, going back to his earliest Super8 films to his more recent fare filmed entirely with an iPhone.
Soderbergh’s latest film, spy thriller Black Bag, is Certified Fresh as critics deliver his highest Tomatometer score since landmark debut, 1989’s sex, lies, and videotape. Black Bag is a two-handed character piece with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender; Angelica Jade Bastién of Vulture says, “This is a master of complementary craft; of two great listeners and communicators bringing rapture to every gesture.”
Soderbergh has been called a great director of women, with the quadruple punch of sex, lies and videotape (Andie McDowell), Out of Sight (Jennifer Lopez), Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), and even Haywire, with Gina Carano making that rare crossover from the MMA set to the action star world, a move only a few fighters have succeeded in pulling off.
And Soderbergh’s one of the best at filming heists and crime capers (the Ocean’s trilogy, but also the Oscar-winning Traffic, Logan Lucky, No Sudden Move, and The Limey), and using sex, humor and heart in interesting ways (the first and third Magic Mikes). He’s also done a select few imaginative projects for television, including hard-hitting period medical drama The Knick, for which he directed all 20 episodes.
In fact, nearly his entire career’s output is Certified Fresh or Fresh. Going down the list, there’s a startling TV biopic of Liberace and his doomed relationship with Scott Thorson, Behind the Candelabra, featuring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon playing way against type but doing it very well. Kimi is compared favorably with Rear Window, starring Zoë Kravitz as an agoraphobic tech woman overcoming her fears to solve a crime.
Soderbergh has delved into Netflix originals and sports dramas with the little-seen but highly-rated High Flying Bird from 2019 (one of two filmed on an iPhone). Even more recently, he took an unusual turn into suspenseful horror with the scary house thriller Presence, filmed from the perspective of the supernatural being at the center of the movie. Let Them All Talk is a documentary-like Max original drama that’s almost all dialogue between Meryl Streep and her friends.
Contagion is another Certified Fresh pure Hollywood pandemic thriller similar to Outbreak but much more terrifying in the wake of the actual pandemic that happened nine years after this one released. Unsane (the other one filmed on an iPhone) is Soderbergh’s turn into psychological horror deliberately filmed low-tech and as unsettling as possible. The Informant! shows his knack for subversive, highly satirical comedy, and is one of several great pairings between the director and Matt Damon throughout both of their careers.
One need not look to just Certified Fresh for Soderbergh gems. Even films just this side of Fresh like his remake of the Russian science fiction epic (and novel) Solaris are cerebral and involving. Really, you can’t go wrong with 90% of his films across just about every genre, mood, and setting you could think of. An actor’s director, yes, but Soderbergh is also a viewer’s director. His movies are eminently watchable. –Steve Horton
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