Soderbergh, Steven

Ocean's Trilogy (Ocean's Eleven / Ocean's Twelve / Ocean's Thirteen)

All three of the "Ocean" films are included in this set.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/CONS & SCAMS UPC: 085391182511 Manufacturer No: 118251

Ocean's Twelve

They're back. And then some. Twelve is the new eleven when Danny Ocean and pals return in a sequel to the cool caper that saw them pull off a $160 million heist. But 160 million doesn't go as far as it used to. Not with everyone spending like sailors on leave. Not with a mysterious someone stalking Danny and crew. It's time to pull off another stunner of a plan?or plans. With locations including Amsterdam Paris and Rome the direction of Steven Soderbergh and the original cast plus Catherine Zeta-Jones and others Twelve is your lucky number.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085393894825 Manufacturer No: 38948

Like its predecessor Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve is a piffle of a caper, a preposterous plot given juice and vitality by a combination of movie star glamour and the exuberant filmmaking skill of director Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, The Limey). The heist hijinks of the first film come to roost for a team of eleven thieves (including the glossy mugs of Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Bernie Mac, and Don Cheadle), who find themselves pursued not only by the guy they robbed (silky Andy Garcia), but also by a top-notch detective (plush Catherine Zeta-Jones) and a jealous master thief (well-oiled Vincent Cassel) who wants to prove that team leader Danny Ocean (dapper George Clooney) isn't the best in the field. As if all that star power weren't enough--and the eternally coltish Julia Roberts also returns as Ocean's wife--one movie star cameo raises the movie's combined wattage to absurd proportions. But all these handsome faces are matched by Soderbergh's visual flash, cunning editing, and excellent use of Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome, among other highly decorative locations. The whole affair should collapse under the weight of its own silliness, but somehow it doesn't--the movie's raffish spirit and offhand wit soar along, providing lightweight but undeniable entertainment. --Bret Fetzer

Traffic

Featuring a huge cast of characters, the ambitious and breathtaking Traffic is a tapestry of three separate stories woven together by a common theme: the war on drugs. In Ohio, there's the newly appointed government drug czar (Michael Douglas) who realizes after he's accepted the job that he may have gotten into a no-win situation. Not only that, his teenage daughter (Erika Christensen) is herself quietly developing a nasty addiction problem. In San Diego, a drug kingpin (Steven Bauer) is arrested on information provided by an informant (Miguel Ferrer) who was nabbed by two undercover detectives (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán). The kingpin's wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), heretofore ignorant of where her husband's wealth comes from, gets a crash course in the drug business and its nasty side effects. And south of the border, a Mexican cop (Benicio Del Toro) finds himself caught between both his home country and the U.S., as corrupt government officials duke it out with the drug cartel for control of trafficking various drugs back and forth across the border.

Bold in scope, Traffic showcases Steven Soderbergh at the top of his game, directing a peerless ensemble cast in a gritty, multifaceted tale that will captivate you from beginning to end. Utilizing the no-frills techniques of the Dogme 95 school, Soderbergh enhances his hand-held filming with imaginative editing and film-stock manipulation that eerily captures the atmosphere of each location: a washed-out, grainy Mexico; a blue and chilly Ohio; and a sleek, sun-dappled San Diego. But Traffic is more than a film-school exercise. Soderbergh and screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (adapting the British TV miniseries Traffik to the U.S.) seamlessly weave the threads of each separate plotline into one solid tale, with the actions of one plot having quiet repercussions on the other two. And if you needed more proof that Soderbergh takes unparalleled care with his actors, practically all the members of this cast turn in their best work ever, the standout being an Oscar-worthy Del Toro as the conflicted moral conscience of the film. While no story is fully resolved in the film, you'll be haunted by these characters days after you've seen the film. By far one of the best movies of 2000. --Mark Englehart

Out of Sight (Collector's Edition)

Out of Sight scored critical raves, but its title sums up the theatrical fate of Steven Soderbergh's coolly comic crime caper and misfit romance based on Elmore Leonard's novel. But this is the sort of buried treasure home video was created to rescue.

George Clooney comes into his own as a leading man in the role of inveterate bank robber Jack Foley. Incarcerated, he uses another inmate's prison break as a cover for his own escape. Waiting for him, according to plan, is his partner, Buddy (Ving Rhames). Also waiting for him, not according to plan, is federal agent Karen Sisco (the ravishing Jennifer Lopez). She finds herself disarmed in more ways than one when she is deposited in the getaway car's trunk with Jack. But that doesn't stop her from joining the task force created to capture him, while he plans "one last heist."

Out of Sight is a rich, entertaining film, stylish without being showy, faithful to the integrity of Leonard's potent dialogue and quirky characters, and seamlessly acted by a dream ensemble. Standouts include Albert Brooks as convicted insider trader Richard Ripley, who while in prison brags to the wrong people that he has $5 million in uncut diamonds hidden in his house; Don Cheadle as Maurice (don't call him "Snoopy") Miller, with whom Jack warily teams up to steal said diamonds; Dennis Farina as Karen's protective father (his idea of a birthday gift is a Sig-Hauer .38); and, in unbilled cameos, Michael Keaton, reprising his Jackie Brown role as FBI agent Ray Nicolet, and Samuel L. Jackson.

If you liked Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, you'll find this, well, Out of Sight. --Donald Liebenson

Out of Sight was one of the best movies of 1998, but ironically this superior crime comedy was a box-office disappointment. Fortunately the movie can enjoy a long life on home video, where it can be savored by anyone who missed its original release. Making his best film since 1989's sex, lies, and videotape, director Steven Soderbergh pays tribute to the signature wit and intricacy of Elmore Leonard's novel, brilliantly adapted by Scott Frank, the gifted screenwriter who previously adapted Leonard's Get Shorty. The movie's a prime showcase for the talent and chemistry of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, respectively playing a career bank robber who's escaped from jail and the federal agent who falls for his charms while tracking him down. Soderbergh directs with confident visual flair, shifting time- lines (à la Pulp Fiction) to weave together subplots and maintain vivid focus on Leonard's splendid characters and smooth-as-silk dialogue. While the sexy repartée between Clooney and Lopez recalls the vintage interplay of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Ving Rhames and Steve Zahn add ample comic relief as Clooney's accomplices. Dennis Farina is memorable as Lopez's father, and Albert Brooks is almost unrecognizable as a Wall Street crook whose mansion--and a cache of uncut diamonds--provides the setting for the film's climactic caper. As orchestrated by Soderbergh, the film offers a feast of plot twists and surprises, but it never loses track of its delightful characters and the clever wit that brings them so vividly to life. The Collector's Edition DVD includes commentary by Soderbergh, deleted scenes, production notes, theatrical trailers, and more. --Jeff Shannon

Ocean's Thirteen (Full-Screen Edition)

It's bolder. Riskier. The most dazzling heist yet. George Clooney Brad Pitt Matt Damon and more reteam with director Steven Soderbergh for a split-second caper that stacks the deck with wit style and cool. Danny Ocean again runs the game so no rough stuff. No one gets hurt. Except for double-crossing Vegas kingpin Willy Bank (Al Pacino). Ocean's crew will hit him where it hurts: in his wallet. On opening night of Bank's posh new casino tower The Bank every turn of a card and roll of the dice will come up a winner for bettors. And they'll hit him in his pride making sure the tower doesn't receive a coveted Five Diamond Award. That's just the start of the flimflams. The boys are out to break The Bank. Place your bets!Running Time: 122 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/CONS & SCAMS UPC: 085391189282 Manufacturer No: 1000027368

George Clooney is one, Brad Pitt is two, Matt Damon three... well, let's just assume there are 13 collaborators in this installment of Steven Soderbergh's profitable caper franchise. We're back in Las Vegas for Ocean's Thirteen, where the boys plot to shut down the brand-new venture of a backstabbing hotelier (Al Pacino) because the guy double-crossed the now-ailing Reuben (Elliott Gould). If you look at the plot too closely, the entire edifice collapses (hey, how about those Chunnel-digging giant drills?), but Soderbergh conjures up a visual style that swings like Bobby Darin at the Copa. Other than the movie-star dazzle, the main reason to see the film is Soderbergh's uncanny feel for how the widescreen frame can float through the neon spaces of Vegas or sort through groups of characters sitting in hotel rooms talking (he shot the film himself, under his pseudonym Peter Andrews).

The film doesn't give enough time to goofballs Casey Affleck and Scott Caan (whose riffs made Ocean's Twelve worth seeing), although it provides comic stuff for a fun roster of actors, including Eddie Izzard, David Paymer, and Bob ("Super Dave") Einstein. Meanwhile, Ellen Barkin makes a fetching assistant for Pacino, and Pacino himself, his hair dyed Trumpian orange, is content to gnaw on some ham for the duration. Biggest puzzle about the two sequels is why George Clooney seems content to retreat from centerstage. Still, his Hemingwayesque conversations with Pitt are an amusing form of male shorthand, and even as the movie overstays its welcome during a long finale, Clooney's easy sense of cool makes it all seem acceptable. --Robert Horton

sex, lies, and videotape

Winner of the Palm d'Or and Best Actor awards at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, sex, lies, and videotape transformed the independent film industry and turned writer-director Steven Soderbergh into the envy of aspiring filmmakers everywhere. Sly, seductive, and coolly intelligent, the movie explores the sexual shenanigans and personal preoccupations of its four central characters, revolving around a selfish lawyer (Peter Gallagher) who responds to his wife by having an affair with her free-spirited sister (Laura San Giacomo). But when the lawyer's college roommate (James Spader) arrives for an unexpectedly extended visit, the neglected wife (Andie MacDowell) is surprisingly responsive to his seductive hobby of videotaping women as they describe their sexual fantasies. It's his way of compensating for impotence, but the curious wife considers this a sexual challenge, and Soderbergh turns sex, lies, and videotape into a fascinating chamber piece that puts a decidedly different spin on the consequences of infidelity. Balanced on a risky and finely tuned performance by Spader, the film delivers frisky passion and emotional intrigue, and yet much of its allure is found in the exchange of secrets and the hidden mysteries of sexual desire. --Jeff Shannon

Solaris

A curious mix of science fiction and metaphysical love story, Solaris centers around Chris Kelvin (George Clooney), a psychologist sent to investigate why a space station orbiting an alien planet has stopped communications. The planet has the power to delve into human psyches and re-create lost loved ones--in Kelvin's case, his dead wife (Natascha McElhone), whom he then wants to bring back to Earth. Director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich) fills almost every shot with faces and bodies, as if to emphasize the human soul rather than outer space as the movie's true subject. Unfortunately, the vagueness of the environment--combined with a script that implies more than it shows--serves to dislocate our ability to engage with the characters, rendering Solaris emotionally inert. Jeremy Davies, as a lingering crew member, brings a hint of humor to the otherwise serious-minded proceedings. --Bret Fetzer

Superstar George Clooney turns in a stellar performance in this "brilliant sci-fi movie" (New York Daily News) from Academy Award winners Steven Soderbergh (2000 - Best Director, Traffic) and JamesCameron (1997 - Best Picture, Titanic). Aboard a lonely space station orbiting a mysterious planet, terrified crew members are experiencing a host of strange phenomena, including eerie visitors who seem all too human. And when psychologist Chris Kelvin (Clooney) arrives to investigate, he confronts a power beyond imagining that could hold the key to mankind's deepest dreams?or darkest nightmares. Co-starring Natascha McElhone and Jeremy Davies, Solaris is "mind-bending!" (Rolling Stone)

The Limey

Steven Soderbergh's follow-up to his sexy thriller Out of Sight is an equally stylish but far more austere crime drama, a work of memory that mixes flashbacks, flashforwards, and ruminations on the present into an invigorating cinematic quilt. Terence Stamp is Wilson, an aging cockney criminal fresh out of prison who flies to Los Angeles to search for his daughter's killer. She died in a car wreck, but he suspects that her lover, a music industry mogul named Valentine (Peter Fonda), knows more than he's telling. Wilson is a fish out of water indeed, a cool, cruel London thug on the airy, sun-bright street of L.A., a silver-haired criminal taking on street punks and hit men with the relentless drive of a man possessed. It's like Get Carter channeled through Point Blank, a hard-edged revenge thriller steeped in sorrow and regret, trading the warmth of Out of Sight's romantic heat for a more contemplative remove. Fonda beautifully plays off his cinematic history of 1960s hippies and rebels as a nervous, cowardly millionaire sellout in white cotton peasant shirts and a deep California tan. Luiz Guzman and Lesley Ann Warren costar as Wilson's "adopted" guides through modern L.A., and Barry Newman is excellent as Valentine's tough, terse head of security, another aging pro blindsided by Wilson's relentless single-mindedness. Soderbergh quotes from Ken Loach's 1967 film Poor Cow (sadly not available on video in the U.S.) for Wilson's flashbacks as a fresh-faced teenage thug. --Sean Axmaker

Oscar nominees Terence Stamp (Billy Budd) Lesley Ann Warren (Victor/Victoria) and Peter Fonda (Ulee s Gold) team up with the director of Out of Sight and Sex lies and videotape for this critically acclaimed thriller that Newsday called "a lean and mean treat for savvy action lovers."British ex-con Wilson (Terence Stamp) arrives in Los Angeles to investigate the mystery of his daughter s "accidental" death. His prime suspect the wealthy heavily guarded music promoter Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) is no easy target. Propelled into an increasingly brutal search for truth Wilson with single-mindedness and terrifying precision moves unstoppably toward revenge.System Requirements:Starring: Terrence Stamp Peter Fonda Luis Guzman Barry Newman and Lesley Ann Warren. Directed By: Steven Soderbergh. Running Time: 89 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 Artisan Live Entertainment.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 012236607502

K Street - The Complete Series

K STREET is an experimental fusion of reality and fiction--an entertaining fly-on-the-wall look at government filmed in and around the corridors of power in Washington. The series ventures inside the world of powerful political consultants--a world that few people ever experience first-hand. Produced on location in Washington D.C. the largely improvised ten-episode series combines fictional characters with appearances by real-life political figures all centered around the biggest political news of the week.Running Time: 300 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 026359885426

What a weird and wonderful creature is this thing called K Street. Named after Washington, D.C.'s "fourth wing" of political power and coproduced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, this beguiling, problematic HBO series ran for only 10 half-hour episodes, each aired immediately after blistering five-day production schedules during which Soderbergh, as director, editor, and videographer (under his nom de camera, Peter Andrews) combined fact and fiction within Washington's corridors of power, casting savvy actors alongside real-life D.C. power brokers, journalists, lobbyists, and political consultants. The result is one of the most unusual hybrids in television history, in which top-drawer consultants (and bipartisan celebrity couple) James Carville and Mary Matalin work for a fictional firm run by a reclusive billionaire (Elliott Gould), where they must endure FBI scrutiny for doing business with a Saudi organization that might be a front for terrorists. As this crisis approaches meltdown, Soderbergh's fly-on-the-wall approach (first tested in Traffic) grows increasingly fascinating (especially for Beltway insiders, many appearing as themselves) and potentially mystifying for less-informed viewers. There's no hand-holding here, no back-story, no glossary or who's-who, and (most regrettably) no DVD supplements to guide the political layperson. What you get instead is a privileged glimpse of backroom politics in action, quasi-factual, semi-fictional, and never less than riveting. --Jeff Shannon

The Good German

Who knows what American journalist Jake Geismer (George Clooney) expected to find in postwar Berlin? Peace maybe. Or at least a story. But certainly not Lena (Cate Blanchett) his beautiful embittered one-time love. And not the trail of secrecy and deception that leads from Lena to the scheming young corporal (Tobey Maguire) who's her new lover...and to a murder no one seems interested in solving. Except Jake. Steven Soderbergh directs three of today's top talents in this zigzag thriller that's both an atmospheric homage to 1940s filmmaking and a deft modern film noir. The Good German is "haunting and hypnotic it's pure moviegoing bliss" (Peter Travers Rolling Stone).Running Time: 108 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 012569736672 Manufacturer No: 73667

Despite its flaws, The Good German is a welcome gift for every film lover who laments that "they don't make 'em like they used to." Steven Soderbergh's affectionate, knowing tribute to the black-and-white melodramas of Hollywood's golden age may lack the emotional depth and romantic passion of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca--the 1946 classic it intentionally emulates--but as Soderbergh approximates Curtiz's studio style, he delivers a shimmering, shadowy reminder that movies can be enjoyed for the sheer pleasure of their craftsmanship. Once again serving as his own cinematographer (credited as "Peter Andrews"), Soderbergh went to great lengths to technically and aesthetically re-create the look and feel of a Curtiz production, and Joseph Kanon's source novel (adapted by Quiz Show screenwriter Paul Attanasio) provides a twisting plot set around the historical Potsdam conference in post-World War II Germany. An American military journalist, Capt. Jake Geismer (George Clooney) is in rubble-strewn Berlin to cover the event, and is quickly drawn into a murder plot involving his appointed driver (Tobey Maguire), an old flame-turned-wartime prostitute (Cate Blanchett) and her missing husband, a scientist who possesses pivotal secrets coveted by Americans and Russians in a pre-Cold War bid for power.

Violence, sexual content, and salty dialogue make it clear that this R-rated drama is a brashly contemporary homage to films of a bygone era, and not a slavish attempt to copy the past. This yields mixed results in terms of the film's overall appeal; it's gorgeous to look at, but the plot and performances exist in a vacuum, and the entire film feels oddly disengaged from any sense of genuine human emotion. It's probably fair to say that Soderbergh had more fun making the film than most people will have watching it. And yet, as Clooney's character is repeatedly beaten and deceived on his path to cynical enlightenment, The Good German has many qualities that make it recommendable, not the least being the pleasure of following a talented director as he indulges his penchant for bold experimentation. --Jeff Shannon