Forging Bonds
A few years ago, Steven Soderbergh announced his retirement. Now, he can’t stop making movies. The Christophers, his latest, is Soderbergh’s third film in the last 15 months, after Presence and Black Bag were released within a few weeks of each other last year. All three of those movies are good, different from each other. (The Christophers played at TIFF last fall, so I thought Soderbergh might make it a three-movie year, but this is a 2026 release.)
The latest film, written by Ed Solomon (who also wrote Soderbergh’s Covid-era movie No Sudden Move) and now out in limited release, is mostly a two-hander, set amid the world of art and London. And it offers a glorious acting showcase for Ian McKellan, the 86-year-old actor, giving his best performance in years.
McKellan plays Julian Sklar, an elderly, semi-disgraced artist who lives alone in London, mostly famous, at least among the younger set, for playing the Simon Cowell part on an art-related reality competition show, at least until he got tarnished as a sexist. Now, he makes his living filming cameos and is likely broke or close to it.
He’s known to have a cache of unfinished paintings, called “The Christophers,” named for his long-ago lover and attaining somewhat mythical status, but he’s too hurt and bitter to complete them. Julian’s two horrible adult children (James Corden and Jessica Gunning), looking for a windfall once their dad kicks, decide to hire Lori (Michaela Coel), an artist with a painter’s version of writer’s block and a sideline in forgery, to pose as Julian’s assistant and secretly finish the Christopher paintings in order to enrich them.
The bulk of the movie, and the joy of it, is these two performers vocally sparring with each other, and they’re wonderful, as their relationship has numerous highs and lows. There’s a lot of Julian sharing colorful stories from his past, which include complex romantic entanglements with both men and women. He mentions a woman’s “short-sleeved Tottenham Hotspur shirt,” which I’m into.
You’ve probably never heard Ian McKellan say “oh, poo” before, and he proves just as adept at it as he is at high-minded Shakespearean dialogue. The story also leads up to an ending that’s probably the perfect one for this story to land on.
Coel is best-known for the HBO miniseries I May Destroy You, although the movies haven’t found good use for her, at least until now. I also liked that it used Corden, a performer many people really hate, as a villain for once. The Christophers represents another reason to be happy that Soderbergh's “retirement” was so short-lived.