‘Black Bag’ May Be the Apotheosis of Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Little’ Films. It’s Time for Him to Take a Bigger Swing

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Certain movie directors — Hitchcock and Tarantino come to mind — constitute a genre unto themselves.

Steven Soderbergh was never like that, at least not until he started making his “little” films: the cleverly plotted low-budget indie palate cleansers that he got into the habit of directing in between his more deluxe features.

He did it as a way to recharge his batteries, and to remind himself that moviemaking is supposed to be fun. You could say that Soderbergh’s first official “little” film was “Full Frontal” (2002), an all-star Hollywood satire made for $2 million, or you could say that it was “Bubble” (2005), a Middle American existential crime drama that also happened to be the first day-and-date release.

In a way, though, the original Soderbergh “little” film was “Schizopolis,” the aggro experimental doodle he made all by himself and released in 1996, as a way to clear his pipes after what he characterized as the miserable experience of directing “The Underneath.” At the Toronto Film Festival that year, I had breakfast with Soderbergh, and our chat stretched on for hours, powered by the joy he felt at having gone back to his kid-with-a-camera roots in “Schizopolis” — and, at the same time, at having signed on to make “Out of Sight,” the film he was about to start directing.