‘The Christophers’ Review Thread

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Certified Fresh

Critics Consensus: A sly caper carried off with director Steven Soderbergh's characteristic panache, The Christophers is a superb two-hander featuring Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel at their very best.

Metacritic: 78 (26 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

David Sims, The Atlantic – The Christophers doesn’t waste an ounce of its limited resources; the director always knows exactly how to keep the viewer on the hook while allowing the story’s emotions room to breathe.

Bob Mondello, NPR – A film that could have settled for being a masterclass in technique, but instead goes deeper, exploring questions of artistry, authorship, legacy.

Thelma Adams, AARP Movies for Grownups 4/5 – Largely an entertainingly witty two-hander between McKellen and Coel, the film still delivers emotional payoff.

Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine – The Christophers is a wily little movie. It’s not trying to be about anything, which means it somehow ends up being about lots of things.

Scott Tobias, The Reveal 4/5 – Hums with the tension of two crafty characters trying to outmaneuver each other but develops into a work of genuine emotional depth.

Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal – Mr. McKellen delivers yet another marvelous late-career highlight. Intimidating and brilliant, his Julian Sklar is by turns amusingly viperish and not quite successful at concealing the softness of age.

Peter Travers, The Travers Take 3.5/4 – An electrifying Ian McKellen hits a new career peak and takes an early shot at Oscar in Steven Soderbergh’s unmissable tale of an artist and his forger, played by the brilliant Michaela Coel.

Alison Willmore, New York Magazine/Vulture – For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.

Amy Nicholson, Los Angeles Times – Out of magnanimity, I’ll liken this trifle to a Rothko. The more I think about "The Christophers," the more I imagine it has interesting layers. But I won’t fault anyone who just sees a simple square.

Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times – I have rarely enjoyed watching two actors’ rapport the way I loved watching McKellen and Coel; it could have gone on forever and not been long enough.

Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com 3/4 – Simple pleasures like these are why movies were created.

Elizabeth Weitzman, Time Out 4/5 – The best thing about The Christophers may be the fact that it exists at all. At a time when any good news is welcome, Steven Soderbergh has reminded us that, yes, old-school artistry is still valued and viable.

Justin Chang, The New Yorker – “The Christophers” is a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.

Matt Singer, ScreenCrush 8/10 – The film becomes far richer than a simple crime story.

Seth Katz, Slant Magazine 3/4 – The film brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on.

Melissa Anderson, 4Columns – With his Lear-like dudgeon, McKellen clearly relishes the outrageous lines written for him. Coel, a model of Gen Y impatience with geezer entitlement, nicely demonstrates the fortitude required to repel such gale-force verbiage.

Ty Burr, Ty Burr's Watch List (Substack) 3.5/4 – The Christophers is a charming and challenging tennis match between two opposing acting styles, one of them confident with the certainty of youth and the other with the mastery of old age.

Chase Hutchinson, TheWrap – In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you.

Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com – What works best about 'The Christophers' is embedded in the performances and characters played by McKellen and Coel, coming at each other with entirely different temperatures.

Robert Daniels, Screen International – In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.

David Ehrlich, IndieWire B – I never would have guessed that the answer to Soderbergh’s listlessness might be an 86-year-old man, but Ian McKellen is so full of vim and vigor in “The Christophers” that he threatens to revitalize his director by osmosis.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter – Few are going to rate The Christophers as top-tier Soderbergh, but it bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle. \

Benjamin Lee, Guardian 4/5 – It’s another exhilarating late career opportunity for McKellen to really bare teeth, following on from The Good Liar and The Critic, but this time he has a script that’s actually able to match him.

Mark Asch, Little White Lies – McKellen makes a feast of a verbose and expansive part, holding forth with a Lear bass rumble catching on wet lungs.

Peter Debruge, Variety – A crackling original drama about artistic legacy in all its facets.

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast – With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs.

SYNOPSIS:

A mainstay of the London art scene since his starry breakout in the creative explosion of the 1960’s, Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) has drifted into a cluttered, self-imposed seclusion. His two estranged children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning) enlist Lori (Michaela Coel), a young painter and sometime-forger, to pose as a prospective assistant and gain access to a fabled series of unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in his home studio, in a deceptive bid to secure an inheritance for themselves.

CAST:

• Ian McKellen as Julian Sklar
• Michaela Coel as Lori Butler
• James Corden as Barnaby Sklar
• Jessica Gunning as Sallie Sklar

DIRECTED BY: Steven Soderbergh

SCREENPLAY BY: Ed Solomon

PRODUCED BY: Iain A. Canning, Jim Parks

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Michael Schaefer, Mike Larocca, Corey Bayes

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Peter Andrews

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Antonia Lowe

EDITED BY: Mary Ann Bernard

COSTUME DESIGNER: Eleanor Baker

MUSIC BY: David Holmes

CASTING BY: Carmen Cuba

RUNTIME: 100 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2026 (Limited) / April 17, 2026 (Expansion)