Like last year’s Logan Lucky, this is a project that’s left critics cheering the end of Soderbergh’s short-lived - and obviously premature - retirement.Įaster Sunday is right around the corner, which makes this weekend a perfectly fine time for a faith-based drama - and writer-director Andrew Hyatt is here to oblige with Paul, Apostle of Christ, a look at the last days of the titular biblical figure (played by James Faulkner) as he reflects on his life while awaiting execution in the prisons of Roman emperor Nero. For the most part, the reviews agree it’s a move that paid off here: the movie’s intimate aesthetic works well with the story, adding to the overall creepy tone and making it harder to draw the line between fantasy and reality. Unsane isn’t the first mainstream release to be made this way - Sean Baker‘s Tangerine is another example of smartphone technology being brought to bear on modern filmmaking - but given the resources at Soderbergh’s command, this was clearly a creative choice not purely driven by financial need. It’s a straightforward enough story, but Soderbergh has told it in somewhat unusual fashion instead of filming with the traditional array of professional gear, he opted to shoot the picture on the sly with an iPhone. That streak continues with his latest outing, Unsane, a mystery thriller about a young woman (Claire Foy) who’s institutionalized against her will and undergoes major trauma - perhaps real, perhaps imagined - while she’s locked up. On the other hand, it’s got giant robots and giant monsters punching each other into oblivion, so if you’re in the mood for that, everything else might not matter.įor decades, Steven Soderbergh has been known as a filmmaker with an uncommon knack for using technical gimmickry in service of a solid story.

Unfortunately, none of that is enough to counter an unfortunate drift toward assembly-line action that lacks its predecessor’s signature del Toro quirk and leaves all that high-stakes, end-of-the-world drama feeling awfully loud and ordinary. While the original Rim wasn’t exactly a critical darling, reviews promised a cheerfully undemanding good time unsurprisingly, Uprising delivers more of the CGI-fueled set pieces that drew crowds the first time around, with the added benefits of a pair of likeable leads in John Boyega and Cailee Spaeny. DeKnight taking the reins from Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro for another round of large-scale mayhem with the fate of the human race hanging in the balance.

After you’ve racked up hundreds of millions in box office grosses by pitting giant robots against giant monsters, what’s your mandatory next move? A sequel, of course - and that leads us to Pacific Rim Uprising, which finds Steven S.

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