#stephen Soderbergh

[sloshed-cinema]

Presence (2024)

David Koepp is perhaps the greatest WMD in the Hollywood Industrial Complex’s arsenal at present. Certainly, he can create shock and awe in impactful screenplays like Jurassic Park or War of the Worlds when he collaborates. But he is also capable of annihilating stalwart franchises as with Indiana Jones, or even destroying multi-film projects before they can even get off the ground: no one has heard from the Dark Universe since 2017. But it’s not just the big-budget blockbusters that are unsafe in his hands. With this latest Soderbergh project, Koepp sets his sights on the high-concept microbudget indie film. The conceit is simple enough: a family are haunted by some sort of presence in the house they recently bought. Already at wit’s end as a group due to a daughter wracked by grief, a mother consumed by tax fraud or something (it really doesn’t matter, it goes away mid-film and is never commented upon again), a son in the throes of jocky adolescent douchedom, and a husband trying and failing to be the anchor point for everyone else, this spirit proves to be just too much. But this isn’t a conventional ghost movie. No, it is shot entirely from the perspective of this (mostly) unseen presence. Excellent. Do the people really even need to speak, or could this be told in some sort of dialogue-free manner, with the excuse being ghosts can’t perceive sound on the mortal plane or something, who cares? The answer is, yes it could. But the version provided here sadly contains dialogue. So much of it. So, so much terrible dialogue. This is a man who doesn’t even know that Gen Z exists trying to write teen speech, though perhaps it’s a blessing there are no Skibidi Toilet references to be found. This is a man who has never encountered another human being trying to depict marital strife and instead makes both raging alcoholics as lazy shorthand. This is a man completely lacking subtlety trying to create a poignant exploration of grief. Isn’t there a Star War you could be ruining somewhere instead, David?

Could this have been an interesting formal exercise? Perhaps. The opening minutes are an indictment of the DoP, as the introduction of the camera’s movements are obscured by poorly sculpted darkness as the entity begins to wander about the home, though I concede that could have been the projection in the theatre. Ultimately, there is a curiosity to the camera as this spirit tries to understand what is going on and when (David Koepp dropping time loops into his supernatural story casually ruins it halfway through), a confusion about the space. Anger occasionally breaks through, erupting into frenetic camerawork and flying objects. It’s this latter portion that causes the film to fall off its tightrope now and again: the manipulation of objects is introduced far too early into the film and every time something like that happens, the tone shifts into one of unintentional corniness. All the same, if left on mute, there is enough to go off in a story that blends natural and supernatural angst. Also maybe let’s leave the final reveal out in such a literal sense. It’s just kinda silly as-is.

THE RULES

SIP

Chloe is in her bed

Fist-pump dad line

Bashful ghost cam

The Presence causes something to move

BIG DRINK

Every line Julia Fox says

Ryan drugs a drink

The “punching the membrane” vibrating camera effect happens

[ohwolfling]

A unique experience for ghosts, the same ol', same ol' for women and girls. 👻 I wrote about Soderbergh's Presence and the tiredest trope in horror

[amityvilleplanet]

[goodjohnjr]

Divinity (Film)

Divinity (2023) What Is It? The 2023 American science fiction movie Divinity. Divinity | Official Trailer | Utopia Movie Review of Divinity | Entertainment Rundown Here is how Rotten Tomatoes describes this movie: DIVINITY centers on two mysterious brothers, who abduct a mogul during his quest for immortality. Meanwhile, a seductive woman helps them launch a journey of…

[randomrichards]

DIVINITY:

Two oddball brothers

Kidnap tycoon for his cure

Lynchian sci fi

[01sentencereviews]

New To Me - 2023

All About Alice (1972, Ray Harrison)

Bambi (1942, David Hand)

Die, Mommie, Die! (2003, Mark Rucker)

Dreams (1990, Akira Kurosawa)

Elephant (1989, Alan Clarke)

Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh)

Glen or Glenda (1953, Edward D. Wood Jr.)

A Happening in Central Park (1968, Robert Scheerer)

In Vanda’s Room (2000, Pedro Costa)

LA Plays Itself (1972, Fred Halsted)

The Ladies Man (1961, Jerry Lewis)

Morvern Callar (2002, Lynne Ramsay)

News from Home (1976, Chantal Akerman)

A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018, Jane Schoenbrun)

Series 7: The Contenders (2001, Daniel Minahan)

Single White Female (1992, Barbet Schroeder)

Terminal USA (1993, Jon Moritsugu)

What Really Happened to Baby Jane (1963, Ray Harrison)

The Wiz (1978, Sidney Lumet)

Zero Day (2002, Ben Coccio)

+++

2LDK (2003, Yukihiko Tsutsumi)

AM1200 (2008, David Prior)

Another Gay Movie (2006, Todd Stephens)

Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)

Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984, Ray Cameron)

Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell (1995, Shinichi Fukazawa)

Caniba (2017, Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)

Charade (1963, Stanley Donen)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg)

The Color Purple (1985, Steven Spielberg)

Crimes of Passion (1984, Ken Russell)

Death to Smoochy (2002, Danny DeVito)

The Faculty (1998, Robert Rodriguez)

Foxfur (2012, Damon Packard)

The Fluffer (2001, Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland)

Freeway (1996, Matthew Bright)

Girls Will Be Girls (2003, Richard Day)

Hotel (2004, Jessica Hausner)

The Idiots (1998, Lars von Trier)

The Inheritance (2020, Ephraim Asili)

Lady Gaga and the Muppets Holiday Spectacular (2013, Gregg Gelfand)

Mod Fuck Explosion (1994, Jon Moritsugu)

Ned Rifle (2014, Hal Hartley)

Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special (1988, Paul Reubens & Wayne Orr)

R100 (2013, Hitoshi Matsumoto)

The Salt Mines [1990] & The Transformation [1996] (Susana Aikin & Carlos Aparicio)

Seconds (1966, John Frankenheimer)

Sextool (1975, Fred Halsted)

Sibyl (2019, Justine Triet)

Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)

Star 80 (1983, Bob Fosse)

Strange Days (1995, Kathryn Bigelow)

Teknolust (2002, Lynn Hershman-Leeson)

Theorem (1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini)

[screenandcinema]

Coming Attractions March 2025

As usual, we present monthly previews of new movies being released. These are the movies that will be hitting your local cinemas (and streaming services) this month:

March 7th

Mickey 17 - Bong Joon-ho delivers his first film since winning Best Picture (and a handful of other Oscars) with Parasite and it is a science fiction black comedy starring Robert Pattinson. Let's go!

F*** Marry Kill - Lucy Hale uses online dating apps to catch a serial killer in this comedy thriller hitting theaters and VOD this month.

March 14th

Black Bag - Director Stephen Soderbergh and writer David Koepp enter the world of espionage with this spy thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

Opus - A24 goes full A24 with this thriller about a pop star gone cult leader starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich.

Novacaine - Jack Quaid can't feel pain in this action comedy thriller also starring Prey's Amber Midthunder.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie - Daffy Duck and Porky Pig try to save the world in this animated comedy. I must say to Warner Bros. though - release Coyote vs. Acme you cowards.

The Electric State - Coming to Netflix this month is a new science fiction adventure comedy from the Russo brothers. Cool, I guess.

The Actor - Andre Holland stars in this crime mystery film that has a killer poster.

March 21st

Snow White - Rachel Zegler is Snow White and Gal Gadot is the Evil Queen in this new live-action Disney retelling from director Marc Webb.

Alto Knights - Robert DeNiro is Vito Genovese and Robert DeNiro is also Frank Costello in the upcoming biographical crime drama.

March 28th

A Working Man - Fresh from their team-up on The Beekeeper, director David Ayer and Jason Statham are together again for a new action thriller.

Death of a Unicorn - Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega deal with the fallout of hitting a mythical animal with their car in this comedy horror film.

Now for a quick look ahead to March, my top picks for next month are Sinners, The Accountant 2, and Warfare.

-MB-

[michaelcoffeysthoughts]

Favorite First Time Watches of 2024

Favorite pre-2024 films watched for the first time in 2024:

All About Eve (1950) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The Battle of Algiers (1966) dir. Gillo Pontecorvo

Black Narcissus (1947) dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Boyz n the Hood (1991) dir. John Singleton

Chungking Express (1994) dir. Wong Kar-Wai

The Deer Hunter (1978) dir. Michael Cimino

Dr. Caligari (1989) dir. Stephen Sayadian

Donnie Darko (2001) dir. Richard Kelly

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) dir. Howard Hawks

The Heartbreak Kid (1972) dir. Elaine May

Heat (1995) dir. Michael Mann

The Heroic Trio (1993) dir. Johnnie To

The Hitch-Hiker (1953) dir. Ida Lupino

The Intruder (1962) dir. Roger Corman

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) dir. Elio Petri

John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) dir. Chad Stahelski

Macbeth (1948) dir. Orson Welles

May (2002) dir. Lucky McKee

Oldboy (2003) dir. Park Chan-wook

Out of Sight (1998) dir. Steven Soderbergh

Poor Things (2023) dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Portrait of Jason (1967) dir. Shirley Clarke

Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985) dir. George Butler

Serial Mom (1994) dir. John Waters

The Seventh Juror (1962) dir. Georges Lautner

Shock Troops (1967) dir. Costa-Gavras

Southern Comfort (1981) dir. Walter Hill

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) dir. Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson & Joaquim Dos Santos

[sloshed-cinema]

Black Bag (2025)

I guess we’re in a ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ situation with the whole Soderbergh/Koepp pairing between this and Presence. Black Bag takes an ostensibly engaging intrigue plot and then bludgeons it within an inch of its life with egregiously clunky dialogue and lazy exposition. If this is what married life is like, hard fucking pass. Michael Fassbender does have some fun turtlenecks, so at least we have that much to go off.

It does leave me with questions, just not really about the plot. Did Soderbergh finish the opening tracking shot and go “Welp, that’s enough style for me, time to make the rest of this turkey look boring as shit!”? Why did George and Kathryn have an entire Anthropologie’s stock of glowing lawn décor baubles on their dining room table at the dinner party? Did they forget to include Michael Fassbender making Naomie Harris’ resolution at that party (or did I go into a coma out for five seconds)? Was the dinner party cobbled together from exclusively the takes with the strangest line reads by all performers? How come each day was announced in some Live Laugh Love font when people generally know the order of days in a week and the story is told in linear format? Why was the score composed entirely by cats walking across a MIDI keyboard? And what in the everloving fuck was that heinous living fish dish?

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'black bag'.

The topic of marriage is brought up.

Day of the week splash title.

BIG DRINK

A dinner party begins.

A span of time is named.

[talkteav]

Shudder in August 🎃

Divinity, a mind-bending, trippy film written and directed by Eddie Alcazar, follows two brothers who abduct a mogul during his quest for immortality.

Executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, this sci-fi horror stars Bella Thorne, Stephen Dorff, and Scott Bakula.

From spine-chilling classics to new thrillers, these must-watch titles could be just what you need to make it through to Halloween.👻

[world-cinema-research]

Week 7 Short Essay Part 1 – Sex, Lies and Videotape comparison to Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 

By Christian Lavarello

The films, Sex, Lies and Videotape by Director Steven Soderbergh and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai by director Jim Jarmusch are vastly different from one another. Sex, Lies and Videotape follows the intertwined lives of four individuals living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana: John Mulaney (Peter Gallagher), Ann Bishop Mulaney (Andie MacDowell), Cynthia Bishop, and Graham Dalton. John is an attorney who is having an affair with his wife Ann’s sister. Ann claims to not want sex anymore, being excessively concerned about world issues until John’s old college friend, Graham (James Spader) visits them. Graham is ‘brutally honesty,’ especially about the fact that he is impotent and the only way he can have some physical satisfaction is by videotaping women talking about sex and their sexual encounters. With his arrival, everyone’s deceptions and hypocrisies come to the surface and so does Ann’s desire to have to sex again. Director Steven Soderbergh’s groundbreaking debut shook the Indie Filmmaking scene awarding him the Palme d'Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, making Soderbergh the youngest solo director to win the award.  

Almost ten years later, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai was released by director Jim Jarmusch which tells the story of an urban samurai (Forest Whitaker), a man who was saved when he was younger by Louie (John Tormey), a mafioso. Sometime later, Ghost Dog reappears before the mafioso and, in accordance with his samurai ethical code, admits he is in debt with Louie. Louie turns Ghost Dog into his own efficient, uncatchable hitman and nobody knows his "real" name and they communicate via carrier pigeon-delivered messages. Ghost Dog’s only "outside" conversations are with the French-speaking Haitian ice-cream vendor Raymond (Isaach De Baukole) and a precocious girl, Pearline (Camille Winbush), whom he meets in the park, and they share books.  

One the most prominent differences between both films is that Sex, Lies and Videotape is more of an unconventional film, whereas Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is conventional. Alisa Perren wrote a scholarly review on Sex, Lies and Videotape and its’ impact on filmmaking and marketing of the 80s and early 90s, where she states, “On a cost-to-earnings ratio, Steven Soderbergh’s creation —with its $1.1 million dollar budget and $24 million plus in North American box office—was a better investment than Batman, which—at an investment of $50 million—returned $250 million in domestic box office”.

Chuck Stephens wrote a scholarly article on Jim Jarmusch's way of telling the Ghost Dog’s story where he states, “There are many stories within Ghost Dog, and Jarmusch rashomon-ically wants to tell - or retell - them all. The simplest of them is this: Ghost Dog lives alone in a rooftop aerie, kept company by a covey of carrier pigeons as he studies the nihilist koans of the Hagakure. Around him, the wind whistles with hiphop hybridity ("black Mafia mind De Niro") and moans with the "everything's changing," time-to- die fatalism of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, another film in which out-moded men are picked off like chickens buried to their necks in sand”. Both films are reviewed critically from very different aspects and the reviewer sees they excel and radiate different qualities that contributed to films of the 80s and 90s.  

During the time of the film Sex, Lies and Videotape in 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay Area with a 6.9 magnitude, leaving behind a trail of destruction, while in 1999 during the time of the film, Ghost Dog: The way of the Samurai John F. Kennedy Jr., wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren G. Bessette are lost at sea when a plane he was piloting disappears near Martha's Vineyard, off Mass. coast on July 16, 1999. Two different tragic events occur during the time of both films which affected many individuals.  

Both films had great success in their own ways with Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai touching on the history of the warriors of Japan with a gangster American twist where the characters are understood and the story comes together at the end, whereas Sex, Lies and Videotape touched on more socially unacceptable topics of its’ time and sexual conversations making the audience work to resolve issues brought up in the movie. Their differences make these films unique and do cater to very different audiences, but both are great films to watch. 

[bluebird-lake]

The Algorithm Is Trying To KILL ME By AutoPlaying "Nobody" By Mitski... What Did I Learn Too Much Of By Just Now Watching Logan Lucky 2019? What Hidden Kernel Of Wisdom Did Stephen Soderbergh's Caper Comedy Impart Upon Me That Has Now Forfeit My Life?

Th

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[byneddiedingo]

Benicio De Toro in Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000)

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Jacob Vargas, Tomas Milian, Michael Douglas, Luis Guzmán, Don Cheadle, Miguel Ferrer, Topher Grace, Erika Christensen, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Albert Finney, Dennis Quaid, Peter Riegert, Amy Irving, Benjamin Bratt, Viola Davis. Screenplay: Stephen Gaghan, based on a miniseries by Simon Moore. Cinematography: Steven Soderbergh. Production design: Philip Messina. Film editing: Stephen Mirrione. Music: Cliff Martinez.

Traffic hasn't held up as well as it might have over the past 23 years, and one reason for that is a bit ironic: The movie was based on a British miniseries, and since the film's debut its central theme, the paralysis of politicians and police in trying to stop the drug trade, and its multiple-track storytelling have been handled more brilliantly by an American miniseries, The Wire (2002-08). It's even possible that the film demonstrates the limits faced by movies as opposed to long-form television in handling stories of complexity and sweep. (Imagine, for example, Game of Thrones or Mad Men or Breaking Bad stuffed into the confines of a two-or-three-hour movie.) Traffic still holds your interest, of course, thanks to some brilliant performances, especially the Oscar-winning one by Benicio Del Toro, as well as the ones by Don Cheadle and Catherine Zeta-Jones. (It's also fun to spot Viola Davis making a solid impression in a tiny part as a social worker.) And Soderbergh's direction deservedly won the Oscar, along with Steven Gaghan's screenplay and Stephen Mirrione's film editing. I would, however, fault Gaghan for the sentimental and melodramatic resolution to the story centering on Michael Douglas as Robert Wakefield, the newly appointed czar of the War on Drugs: It stretches credulity to have Wakefield break down in the middle of his acceptance speech and abandon his post, and the scene in which Wakefield and his wife (Amy Irving) beamingly support their drug-addicted daughter (Erika Christensen) at a twelve-step-program meeting is pure schmaltz. The film also pulls its punches a bit where the wasteful War on Drugs crusade is concerned, even to the point of featuring cameos by real-life politicians William Weld (a Reagan-administration appointee who supervised the Drug Enforcement Administration) and Senators Barbara Boxer, Orrin Hatch, Chuck Grassley, and Harry Reid.

[filmsnobreviews]

Review: Black Bag

Title: Black Bag MPA Rating: R Director: Stephen Soderbergh Starring: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Marisa Abela Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins Continue reading Review: Black Bag

[rawstorys]

The late Nikki Cat, who stole scenes for Soderbergh and Nolan and more

Stephen Soderberg Lazy It extends for 89 minutes, which is a truly full and broken crime movie from an older man who is investigating the death of his daughter, from a way out of his operation. (Soderbergh placed two features in 2025, and its common length is almost the same Batman or Avengers: the end of the game.) In this context that was edited without mercy, it is somewhat surprising that the…

[anothermillennialreviewer]

The Presence: A New Take On The Haunted House Film

Summary Stephen Soderbergh tries to do something new with the haunted house film. So would I call this film a horror? No Was it marketed as a horror film? Yes It is essentially a drama film with supernatural aspects, it is a drama film in so much as it is about a family that is fraying at the scenes and that interpersonal drama takes up a lot of the film’s bandwidth. The supernatural element…