Steven Soderbergh, who has voiced interest in using AI in his films. Steven Soderbergh, who has voiced interest in using AI in his films. Why are respected film-makers suddenly embracing AI? I n Steven Soderbergh's beguiling new movie The Christophers, a reclusive artist (Ian McKellen) tangles with the quiet art forger (Michaela Coel) who his greedy children have hired to secretly finish further entries in a well-known painting series. The movie is smart and provocative about the nature of artistry and authorship, exploring what it means to create - and to stop creating.

Steven Soderbergh, who has become admirably prolific in the age of streaming, is a director of paradox. He positions himself as a classical professional who can take on any subject and personalize it with his own style and range of obsessions. But, regardless of his manifest skills and pleasures, the quality of his work fluctuates widely, depending on his connection to the subject matter. Of all current Hollywood filmmakers, Soderbergh is the most physical, the one who comes the closest to the painterly ideal of touching the image. He has long been doing his own camera work (under the pseudonym of Peter Andrews) and also his own editing (as Mary Ann Bernard), and the way that he engages with his subject evokes a bodily music, something like dance--a cinematic swing.