Listen, I love Steven Soderbergh, and I could easily list well over a dozen standout films he’s directed over his career. Last year, he released two of them, “Presence” and “Black Bag,” both of which received acclaim, and later premiered another independently funded project at TIFF, though, turns out, that one is one of Soderbergh’s weaker efforts.
Soderbergh’s “The Christophers,” which now has a trailer, is a sly little chamber piece—set mostly inside a house—an art-forgery caper that insists on being a meditation on authenticity, mortality, and artistic compromise. It flirts with being witty and urbane, and at moments it is.
“The Christophers” currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 73 on Metacritic—if you ask me, critics have been a little too kind to this stagey film. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue-heavy screenplay, courtesy of Ed Solomon, is expertly rendered by Ian McKellen, the star of the show, and he delivers it with the relish of an actor who knows he’s the whole show. McKellen is the magician here: mischievous, commanding, able to pull laughs from every line he utters.
Here’s what I wrote in my TIFF dispatch:
“Michaela Coel is a woman who holds more inside than she ever releases. She plays Lori, a former artist now juggling art restoration and food-truck shifts, recruited by the estranged heirs of famed painter Julian Sklar (McKellen) to finish his abandoned works and share in the profits after his looming death. Disguised as Sklar’s assistant, she enters his home, only to find her scheme unraveling amid betrayals, shifting loyalties, and unexpected twists.”
“The whole thing has the air of theater. The pacing, at first hampered by talk, only gradually stirs to life, and even then Soderbergh’s direction keeps smoothing over the edges. The script promises titillation and deception—art heists, forged canvases, family betrayals—but what we get is a polite, talky game.”
Neon will debut Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” in New York and Los Angeles on April 10, 2026 followed by a nationwide release later.
It’s no wonder 20th Century decided to dump the movie during the last week of August—a place where movies are set up to die quietly before the fall movie season begins.