“Erin Brockovich” (2000)
It may have been the “Norma Rae”-ish Oscar trappings that got Julia Roberts involved in this true story adaptation of a lawsuit involving polluted water and the highly inexperienced miniskirt-wearing legal assistant who brings the case to light. But while Roberts won the Oscar, she has to thank Soderbergh for taking, on the page, a rote triumph-over-adversity narrative and turning it into a slick but still edifying studio picture. Soderbergh never sacrifices the gravity of the core story, but also never creates a dulling civics lesson, letting the characters’ natural colors bleed out onto the screen in glorious detail, showing an affection for the essential humanity of the sufferers and the sometimes-comic frustration of our heroes. As solid as Roberts is, in a career-best turn, she’s matched by a completely game Albert Finney, who brings crusty warmth to the role of Brockovich’s beleaguered boss, flustered by his hot-to-trot employee and her dogged pursuit of justice. Soderbergh’s influence can be felt throughout in what may be the most humanist film from a director considered “cold” by his detractors — it’s hard not to be won over when the tacky genre construct of perfect tough-guy boyfriend, here played by Aaron Eckhart, is allowed to have just as human a heart, and just as much of a sense of humor and inner life, as the rest of our heroes. [A-]
“Traffic” (2000)
The second of Soderbergh’s 2000 double-whammy (and the one for which he won Best Director at the Academy Awards, despite being nominated against, among others, himself), “Traffic” was a remake of a British TV mini-series, penned by former drug addict Stephen Gaghan, which tells the story of the war on drugs through, ostensibly, three different storylines: an honest Mexican cop who discovers that the general he’s working for is in league with the cartels; a judge appointed to be a drug czar, only to discover that his own daughter is an addict; and a pregnant housewife who learns that her husband is a drug lord. Widely acclaimed on release as Soderbergh’s masterpiece, while patchworky in nature, its color-coded treatment is an innovative way to present its interwoven narrative. Perhaps the best part is the Mexico-set section, anchored by a fierce and charismatic Oscar-winning turn from Benicio Del Toro, one that maybe gives the best sense of the futility of the war on drugs. The Zeta-Jones scenario in which the wife who becomes involved in the business doesn’t have as strong a storyline, but gets more fun when it focuses on Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman‘s cops. While naked in its polemic, the Michael Douglas section is also a bruising reminder of the hypocrisy of politicians and the pervasiveness of drugs into the personal corners of our lives. Consistently gripping, beautifully acted, and notable for truly cementing the aesthetic that would dominate Soderbergh’s career in the years to come — this is the first film on which Soderbergh, under the pseudonym Peter Andrews, served as his own director of photography, something that’s remained the case for every subsequent film. And while its grainy, textured, over-contrasted and experimental flash-filmed techniques failed to earn a Best Cinematography nomination that year (it earned 5 nominations in total), this unorthodox visual palate is perhaps one of the most bold and unconventional ones to come out of a mainstream Oscar-contender in some time. [B+].
“Ocean’s Eleven” (2001)
There’s a fantastic moment in “Ocean’s Eleven” where two of the biggest stars in the world, George Clooney and Brad Pitt, walk unmolested past a host of fans who are oohing and aahing… over Topher Grace. It’s the finish to a fantastic, fizzy early scene from a movie that actually deserved its nine-figure take at the box office — a rare compliment. Soderbergh had already taken on the sleek, stylish heist movie genre with “Out of Sight,” but here he ups the ante with more and bigger stars in his casino caper: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Bernie Mac, Carl Reiner, Andy Garcia, Elliott Gould, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck and Scott Caan (plus the lesser-known, but equally enjoyable Eddie Jemison and Shaobo Qin). With all that wattage, this remake of the Rat Pack classic was almost certainly a surefire blockbuster, but Soderbergh never solely relies on his cast to carry the weight, not that they’re slacking. Affleck and Caan are hilarious with their I’m-not-touching-you brotherly banter, Clooney and Pitt have better chemistry than most romantic couples, and Reiner and Gould bring the appropriate element of old-school Hollywood. However, the witty, intricate script from Ted Griffin, swinging score from David Holmes, and above all the direction and cinematography from Soderbergh contribute to a film that is almost as much fun to watch as it surely was to make. [A-]
“Full Frontal” (2002)
Soderbergh’s career has been marked by his willingness to work fast and without a safety net — essentially eliminating and filtering out the noise and innumerable barriers that exist when one has to translate an idea in one’s head into an image projected onto a screen in the dark. Becoming his own director of photography was one crucial part of that filtering equation; shooting digitally was another. While he’s become a pioneer of shooting digitally with films like “Bubble” (2005) and the two-part “Che” (2008) that used the RED cameras that David Fincher and Peter Jackson now employ regularly, Soderbergh was well ahead of even his own curve with “Full Frontal.” Starring Julia Roberts, Blair Underwood, David Hyde Pearce, Catherine Keener, Mary McCormack, David Duchovny, and character actors Nicky Katt and Enrico Colantoni, ‘Frontal’ is an ensemble piece about Hollywood via characters all connected to a well-liked film producer who is about to turn 40 (Duchovny) currently making a film called, “Rendezvous.” Underwood is an untested and uncommercial actor who co-stars, and Roberts plays a journalist in the movie-within-the-movie that’s directed by David Fincher and also stars Brad Pitt (both men cameo as themselves briefly). Circling around this hemisphere is Pearce as a struggling screenwriter, Keener as his estranged wife (a film producer falling in love with Underwood), and McCormack as a lovelorn masseuse who gets far more than she bargained for. While it was once described as a spiritual sequel to “sex, lies, and videotape,” given the similar themes of sex, power and voyeurism, it just doesn’t possess the same charge. More a series of encounters than much of a plot — and perhaps influenced by the Danish dogme movement of the ‘90s that included Von Trier and Vinterberg aesthetically — if “Full Frontal” is Soderbergh’s “Day For Night” it doesn’t quite click, but there is a new kind of energy within and at the very least it’s another interesting experiment in connecting lives and in quick production. [C]
“Solaris” (2002)
Initially, Steven Soderbergh and James Cameron‘s take on Andrei Tarkovsky‘s beloved 1972 adaptation of Stanislaw Lem‘s novel (Soderbergh directed, Cameron produced) was envisioned as a heady mixture of “2001” and “Last Tango in Paris,” featuring graphic sex sequences in a dreamy sci-fi setting. Somewhere along the way this idea was dropped (the finished product features precious little sex) and it is largely remembered now as the movie that was threatened with an R-rating because you could see George Clooney‘s bare ass for a few fleeting moments. This does a great disservice to both Clooney’s performance, as a psychologist recruited by a shadowy corporation to investigate some mysterious happenings on an orbiting space station, and the movie itself, a haunting, super-spooky, ultra-emotional sci-fi classic (or you could call it an existentialist romance picture set in space) that has gone largely unnoticed by audiences. The story unwinds after Clooney’s character gets to the space station, where he’s confronted by the apparition of his wife who committed suicide several years earlier; it seems the titular planet the station is orbiting has the ability to manifest dead loved ones, which has caused many of the astronauts to go bonkers (or worse). Clooney gets sucked into this pseudo-relationship with willful abandon, and one of the movie’s chief virtues is that it beautifully portrays the way that memory works, particularly within relationships, and portrays a tantalizing what-if situation: what if you could have a do-over on a doomed relationship? Soderbergh’s chilly photography (and the eerie score by frequent collaborator Cliff Martinez) counterpoints the movie’s emotionality, embodied by Clooney as a clinical professional giving in to wild desires. The movie is a gorgeous, nuanced take on the material, deftly plotted but luxurious in its exploration of the darker sides of the human heart. One day “Solaris” will be appreciated and remembered, right alongside the original, at about the same time people stop talking about Clooney’s butt. [A]
