Not Just Presence: 5 Best Steven Soderbergh Films With 90% and Higher RT Scores
An honest coming-of-age story, the most important indie film in history, and a biopic about an eccentric pianist.
Over the course of his 30-year career, Steven Soderbergh has done it all: invented independent cinema, won Cannes and the Oscars, and temporarily retired from filmmaking.
Now he's back with a new work in the horror genre called Presence – and it's a reason to remember his other films.
1. King of the Hill, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%
Steven Soderbergh's third film, based on A. E. Hotchner's autobiography about the author's impoverished childhood in St. Louis in the 1920s, is almost forgotten now.
It also grossed very little at the box office – just over a million dollars. But Soderbergh has made a very mature movie about the world through a child's eyes.
The 12-year-old character of Jesse Bradford encounters hunger, death and the still incomprehensible but attractive world of adults for the first time. King of the Hill may be one of the best adult movies about childhood ever made.
2. Traffic, 2000
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%
Soderbergh proved that he could entertain people while making them think – he made three stories about the war on drugs that included tragedy, hypocrisy, and double standards.
The film won four Oscars, including Soderbergh's own for directing – which is especially valuable considering he made Erin Brockovich the same year. 2000 was clearly the best year of his career – it is extremely rare for a director to be nominated for two films in the same year.
3. Sex, Lies, and Videotape, 1989
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
Few films in the history of cinema are as important as Soderbergh's feature debut, which, unexpectedly for its 26-year-old author, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Cesar for best foreign film, and many other awards.
It was the seemingly melodramatic story of the relationship between a sweet provincial girl whose husband is cheating on her with her sister and a man who has come to town and likes to film sexual confessions that made the word "independent" the key word in the movie industry for the next decade.
4. Behind the Candelabra, 2014
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
Ten years ago, Soderbergh announced his (temporary, as it turned out) retirement from filmmaking after every Hollywood studio passed on his biopic about the eccentric pianist Liberace and his relationship with his own assistant.
The film eventually aired on HBO, garnering record ratings at the time and winning two Golden Globes – for best TV movie of the year and for Michael Douglas' fearless performance as the show business legend.
5. Out of Sight, 1998
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
After spending the 1990s experimenting with non-commercial genres, Soderbergh finally made a crime comedy based on Elmore Leonard's novel, featuring some of the funniest and most romantic dialogue of the decade between fugitive criminal George Clooney and FBI agent Jennifer Lopez in the trunk of a car.
Out of Sight received two Academy Award nominations – for writing and editing – and grossed $77 million.