Director Steven Soderbergh’s career has a few recurring motifs - heists, flashbacks, lies and coincidences - but you never quite know what you’re going to get with his next film. His latest, Black Bag, is a typically cool espionage thriller starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender - its two leads join a long roll call of A-listers who have benefited from Soderbergh’s freewheeling film-making imagination.
Here’s our pick of Steven Soderbergh’s ten best movies from an outstanding back catalogue… and keep scrolling for a full guide to where you can stream them.
Traffic
A multi-layered deep dive into the bewildering complexities of the “war on drugs”, with its three interlocking stories immediately distinguishable thanks to Soderbergh’s clever use of colour grading, this is the high point of the director’s career in terms of critical acclaim and Oscars: Traffic won five Academy Awards, including Best Director for Soderbergh and Best Supporting Actor for Benicio del Toro. Thoughtful and political without tipping over into finger-wagging, the film showcases Soderbergh’s film-making talent but is also a testament to his ability to provoke fine performances from big names: Don Cheadle, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones all shine.
Erin Brockovich
Soderbergh was the boss of the 2001 Oscars: in the Best Director category he beat himself, having been nominated for Erin Brockovich as well as the winner, Traffic. Erin Brockovich boasts a powerhouse - and indeed, Oscar-winning - performance from Julia Roberts as a (real) lone campaigner for justice, taking on a big corporate foe. Focused squarely on the gripping true story and on Roberts’s expert blend of wit, determination and vulnerability, this proved that Soderbergh, once seen as a god of disruptive independent cinema, could capably deliver a mainstream crowd-pleaser.
Ocean's Eleven
As sleek and stylish as a heist film can be, Ocean’s Eleven is nothing but entertainment, delighting in fiendish plotting and the ability of its super-starry ensemble to carry off as much rakish Rat Pack wit as the script can throw at them. A team of preposterously charismatic con artists plan a ridiculously daring theft on an impossibly fortified Las Vegas casino: from there it’s just non-stop coolness, with the solidly A-list cast - Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt - visibly enjoying each other’s company and the effortless cleverness of the script. It spawned sequels that weren’t as good but were still pretty damn great.
Out of Sight
Many of the elements that made Ocean’s Eleven such a phenomenon were present in this earlier Soderbergh film, the one that signalled his move from indie upstart to major multiplex player. George Clooney is present and correct in his first collaboration with Soderbergh, here delivering romantic chemistry rather than the boys’ night out vibes of Ocean: his career criminal has electric rapport with Jennifer Lopez’s US Marshal, who is at first determined to bring him down but then becomes his lover and ally. Calmly laying out its story via a fractured timeline, Out of Sight has real style.
The Limey
A gritty revenge thriller starring Terence Stamp - at a time when the 1960s icon was not an obvious leading man - as a British hard nut who travels to the US seeking justice for his daughter’s death. A fragmented narrative is combined with more challenging techniques such as mismatched sound and pictures - the visuals of one scene with the audio of another - and, outrageously, the use of Ken Loach’s 1968 film Poor Cow for flashback scenes, because Stamp’s character there works as the younger version of the man he plays here. All that innovation stopped The Limey being a hit, but it was a hell of a calling card.
Contagion
Released in 2011 and then, effectively, re-released in 2020 when Covid arrived and viewers realised how prescient it was, this chillingly realistic portrayal of a global pandemic has a similar structure to Traffic, drawing on multiple characters as they navigate a chaotically dangerous situation. Soderbergh’s clinical approach lends the film the necessary tension and urgency, while the extensive scientific research carried out by screenwriter Scott Z Burns pays off handsomely - especially for post-Covid viewers, for whom much of the terminology and detail is eerily familiar. As usual with a multi-stranded Soderbergh special, the cast of Contagion is impeccable: Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Jude Law, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne.
Side Effects
Soderbergh switches to intense, politically aware mode again with a febrile psychological drama that stares hard at the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry, via the story of a woman (Rooney Mara) whose life spirals out of control after taking a new antidepressant, and takes the equilibrium of her doctor (Jude Law) with it. But Side Effects doesn’t get too bogged down in making a point: really it’s a Hitchcockian thriller centred on a deceitful, unknowable anti-heroine, with twist layered upon twist. It’s taut, malevolent and wickedly entertaining.
Magic Mike
Very much at the top of the list of Steven Soderbergh Films You Probably Didn’t Realise Were Directed By Steven Soderbergh is this huge cult hit, a comedy drama about male stripping that perhaps has its cake and eats it a little: it’s actually a pretty sensitively drawn portrait of daft young hunks - led by Channing Tatum, who was drawing on his own pre-fame experiences - who drift into sex work for want of a better opportunity in life, but it’s one that boosted its box-office takings by attracting rowdy female audiences who didn’t mind the eye candy.
Logan Lucky
A comedy heist film set in the world of Nascar racing, following a family of outsiders as they attempt a daring robbery, this film saw Steven Soderbergh come out of what was meant to be retirement. He delivered an earthier, cheekier Ocean’s Eleven - so cheeky in fact that Ocean’s Eleven exists in the universe of this film, because someone references it in dialogue - that keeps the smooth, clever storytelling of Soderbergh’s glossier work but gives it a much more relatable charm. Channing Tatum again leads the cast, backed by an on-the-up Adam Driver and an against-type Daniel Craig.
sex, lies, and videotape
When this won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989, nobody would have foreseen that Soderbergh would go on to make movies like Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven: following his debut he became the darling of a growing independent cinema movement, one that prized minimalist film-making and brutally honest stories. sex, lies, and videotape is a raw but nuanced tale about unhappy people in bad relationships, with James Spader wonderfully mercurial as Graham, the old friend who lodges for a while with a married couple and, via his hobby of interviewing women on camera about their sex lives, helps to destroy them. Bold, original and confrontational, it announced a major new talent.
Where to watch the best Steven Soderbergh movies streaming online
Check out our guide below on where to find the best Steven Soderbergh movies available to watch on the most popular streaming platforms!
