Black Bag (2025)

Like most spy thriller movies, I’m sorry to say, excellent or otherwise, Black Bag lost me with its many security levels, espionage protocols, and high-tech gizmos up the ying-yang. I got this far: There’s a leak at the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Counterintelligence officer George T. Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) has been put in charge of uncovering it. There are five chief suspects, two couples and Woodhouse’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). A husband’s suspicion of his wife is a Hitchcockian kind of premise that rarely fails to raise plot stakes quite high. George invites the handful of suspects to a collegial dinner party, dopes the food so their inhibitions are lowered, and plays psychological games looking for insight. He may or may not get much, but violence erupts as infidelities are confirmed. In general, Kathryn is starting to look better for it. Common sense about such plots also makes her more likely for the sake of drama. But that might be misdirection too as down the rabbit hole we go, the investigation deepening. Kathryn is seen meeting (via surreptitious satellite access) with a mysterious Russian in Zurich for reasons unclear. There’s also a mysterious Swiss bank account with millions of pounds in it. By the time of the second dinner party, I was pretty well lost, although, like keeping an eye focused on one cup in the shell game, I followed Kathryn’s movements and interactions closely. However, I still can’t say if I was right—partly because ensuing events became complicated and confusing for me, and partly because I’m dutybound anyway to withhold spoilers. Even mystified as I was, Black Bag was zippy and entertaining. Fassbender disappears into his role in his usual uncanny way, and Blanchett struts the frame and holds attention any time she is in it, as usual. The supporting cast is great too, notably Marisa Abela as Clarissa, one of the suspects. Director Steven Soderbergh has an affinity for this kind of pseudo-intellectual cat and mouse thriller, often involving spies and even more often complicated plots that people like me have a hard time following, even if we’re enjoying the way it rolls. I enjoyed the way Black Bag rolls even when I lost track of who was designing what on whom. It’s good to see Soderbergh coming out of retirement to make a couple of stalwart, flashy ones the past year or two, Black Bag and Presence. Good stuff.

Presence (2024)

Director Steven Soderbergh continues active in his so-called retirement since 2013 with the star-studded spy movie Black Bag and this somewhat unusual ghost story. Lucy Liu is impressive as Rebekah, the mama bear head of this family unit of four. She has a decided, unhealthy preference for their son Tyler (Eddy Maday). She’s doing everything she can to launch him into life with all the advantages, including buying a home and moving into a school district that will work better for him. The dynamic forces husband and father Chris (Chris Sullivan) to take on defending their daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who recently lost her best friend to a drug overdose and has begun showing signs of misbehavior due to the grief. Chris keeps suggesting things like new therapists, new treatments, new drugs, but Rebekah insists what she needs is time. She might be right, in a way, but mainly she doesn’t really seem to care. They have bought the haunted house (not knowing it is haunted, which even the realtor doesn’t seem to know, though she might be lying) because it puts Tyler in a school district where he can compete more effectively as an athlete—Rebekah’s idea. What makes Presence unusual is that it is largely told from the point of view of the ghost. It takes a little while to figure out. At first the swirling camera just seems like the restless camera Soderbergh has frequently resorted to, but gradually the conceit becomes more obvious. It’s a pretty good story about a dysfunctional family, though as a ghost story it’s somewhat cliched, turning to grief and trauma as the single source of all the supernatural business. And there are convenient and familiar plot developments we’ve seen a lot, such as a serial killer with a fiendish manner of killing. But Soderbergh has skills, and Presence builds to a high peak of intensity that makes it a reasonably good movie overall (likely helped a little by a short running time under 90 minutes). I’m a little tired myself of the grief and trauma freight train running through so much horror these days, but I’d say Presence is worth a look—more for the dysfunctional family, harrowingly detailed, than the clumsy and helpless ghost, which mostly comes to feel like a device.

Unsane (2018)

The latest from Steven Soderbergh (wait, I thought he retired?) is something of a stunt movie, shot entirely on an iPhone—shot by Soderbergh, in fact. As with many of his pictures, he not only directed but also shot and edited. The tale this movie has to tell is on the order of a paranoid thriller, shading over into horror, that is so by the numbers it verges on comic. Giving Soderbergh the benefit of the doubt, I think it may be intended to be taken that way, as slightly funny. Nervous young Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) is a professional woman who works in an upscale if claustrophobic office as a data analyst. Troubled, seeking psychotherapy, she slips into the hold of a treatment center that is operating a scam on insurance companies. The treatment center's screening process is set up to find pretexts to hold people legally. The therapeutic stay is then extended using every excuse, especially when a victim acts out, and the whole thing keeps going until the insurance money is cut off. Back in the ward, it's a random smorgasbord of drug addicts, other victims, and maybe even some mentally ill. They all have a bed on the ward but there is no evident organization or separation by pathology or even gender. They don't even have privacy curtains around their beds. They are monitored by camera but a lot can happen. So all that is unlikely right there but so was Shock Corridor, whose ghost tepidly haunts the look and feel of some of these scenes. But there's more. On top of that Sawyer has a stalker—it's the reason she moved away from Boston, as we learn when her backstory begins to unfold—and on top of that the stalker is working at the treatment center now. And on top of that—well, you get the idea. Unsane goes on overtopping itself for some time with little regard for likelihood—in general it's best to not think much about these plot developments. Unsane gets started quickly, and moves along at such a good clip, that the gaping plot holes are only marginally distracting. I've got enough of my own paranoia that I can be a sucker for a story like this and I was quickly on Sawyer's side and pulling for her all the way. If you can accept the cat and mouse game at face value, or if you just like the way Soderbergh works, you'll probably get along pretty well with Unsane. Just don't expect to believe a thing you see.

Traffic (2000)

Germany/USA, 147 minutes
Director/photography: Steven Soderbergh
Writers: Simon Moore, Stephen Gaghan
Music: Cliff Martinez
Editor: Stephen Mirrione
Cast: Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, Don Cheadle, Luiz Guzman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Dennis Quaid, Erika Christensen, Topher Grace, Amy Irving, Albert Finney, Clifton Collins Jr., Tomas Milian, James Brolin, Steven Bauer, Miguel Ferrer, D.W. Moffett, Peter Riegert, Harry Reid, Orrin Hatch, Viola Davis, John Slattery

However permanent it may or may not turn out to be, Steven Soderbergh's scheduled exile from filmmaking has motivated me to pile on his surprisingly big output as a director (and editor, and cinematographer) and do some catching up. He has had his prolific periods. Traffic, which I saw when it was new, was a part of a rush of work he released at the turn of the century, with The Limey (still my one favorite by him, despite its unfortunate influence), Erin Brockovich, and Ocean's Eleven, all released within a year or two of one another.

Traffic may be the most self-consciously "serious" of them, pretty close when all is said and done to what used to be called a "message picture." The societal issue under discussion is public policy on recreational drugs, and the message is "the War on Drugs is not working." It helps that I am heartened to see the issue taken on and that message delivered, but it helps even more that the movie, though not without flaws, is also a pleasure to watch, a great big snack cake of a movie, with a relaxed confidence about knowing what it is and what it can and cannot do, packed full of memorable performances, and deftly managing the subtleties and nuances not just of the characters and their interactions, but perhaps more importantly (for me, in this instance) of the sensitive, complex, and explosive issue at its core.