Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

Steven Soderbergh takes the heist movie to the art house with his “Ocean’s Eleven” remake.

 

“Ocean’s Eleven” was when Steven Soderbergh took the art house to the mainstream. It wasn’t Oscar bait like “Traffic” and “Erin Brokovich,” and it wasn’t gritty and experimental like “Sex, Lies and Videotape.” It was just pure Hollywood fun in the biggest way possible, which is probably the reason why most critics were unkind to it. To see such a gigantic studio picture with no lofty ambitions come from an otherwise serious director was like a concert pianist pounding out a little honky-tonk, as Roger Ebert put it in his 2001 review.

But to see how much it gets right, how different it feels and how unique it looks at every moment in comparison to similar Hollywood capers like it is to realize that “Ocean’s Eleven” is a great film after all, and a fun one. Continue reading “Ocean’s Eleven (2001)”

Review: Contagion

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise, engaging and squeamish thriller about living in the modern age.

In a modern age of Twitter, text messaging and round the clock news, information can spread like wildfire. In the epidemic thriller “Contagion,” it merely takes one blog post to incite riots and one text to put a life in danger. And you wonder why these things are called “viral.”

Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” is a precise thriller that charts the rapid spread of a highly contagious and lethal virus, one that jumps from Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) as she returns from Hong Kong to quickly spreading across the globe.

It’s an engaging and squeamish thriller that makes you anxious to touch your face or move your foot on the sticky movie theater floor. And it’s because this is the sort of mass panic that would happen today. Continue reading “Review: Contagion”