Traffic Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Finest Hour in the Mainstream

✯✯✯✯✯

This is arguably director Steven Soderbergh’s finest hour in Hollywood, not only because it is the film for which he had finally won a Best Director Oscar, but alongside Erin Brockovich it helped him break into the more mainstream territory. But even as we talk about how it only continues to make him one of the most fascinating filmmakers of his own kind, it’s also amazing to think about how this film does not allow confine itself to the conventions of popular cinema at the time, because it also feels like a film that breaks down against the very system which even allowed it to get made. Soderbergh, having already established a firm ground for himself starting up a new movement of independent filmmakers with sex, lies, and videotape, has also found himself stretching beyond normal once again in a film about the drug trade.

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Unsane – Review

✯✯✯✯½

Being an autistic 19-year-old college student, watching Unsane felt so much more uneasy than I would have suspected. What I knew about Unsane prior to walking into the theater was that it was Steven Soderbergh’s own shot at the horror genre, with the added twist of being shot entirely on an iPhone. I knew Soderbergh would be the sort of filmmaker who could do so much more as he works with the fact that the film is shot entirely on an iPhone, but I did not expect that said aspect would not only be present as a mere gimmick but in order to encompass everything about Unsane that allows it to work so beautifully.

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