Ian McKellen
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Steven Soderbergh on Making The Christophers With Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen
Twisty as a Hitchcock movie but not a thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers is a two-hander for two great actors. Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler, a serious painter with a side gig as an art forger. Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, an art world star in the 1960s and ’70s who hasn’t made any work of note in decades. Julian’s children, who hate him, concoct a scheme in which Lori is smuggled into Julian’s dilapidated five-story house as a temporary assistant. She is tasked with finding “The Christophers,” a series of portraits that Julian began in his prime but never finished. If […]
by Amy Taubin on Apr 7, 2026 -
Sherlock Sr.: Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes
We’re not in Victorian London anymore. Mr. Holmes takes place in the British countryside in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. Labor leader Clement Attlee holds the reins of power, and a new, heavily socialized country has begun to emerge from the wreckage of the Blitz. Sherlock is no longer searching for clues to a new case and logically deducing from forensic evidence and observation the course of events leading to a crime and holding the perp accountable. This film is not about the incarnation we are familiar with from Arthur Conan Doyle’s books and innumerable […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 16, 2015
