Director Steven Soderbergh has a habit of confounding expectations. After his win at Cannes and subsequent commercial success with "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" in 1989, Soderbergh released a series of increasingly opaque films, culminating in 1996's crackpot "Schizopolis." This nearly ended his career, but he made a strong Hollywood comeback with "Out of Sight," which also launched his fruitful partnership with George Clooney.
Soderbergh managed to land dual Best Picture Oscar nominations in 2000 with "Traffic" and "Erin Brokovich." ("Traffic" would take home the statuette), and then cemented his commercial bankability with "Ocean's Eleven" in 2001.
And yet, at the peak of his success, the director chose to do a remake of an obtuse art-film by Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. "Solaris" was brooding and brilliant, a deep-space meditation on loss and obsession, "Vertigo" re-imagined as sci-fi. It bombed at the box office, though — presumably due to lack of lightsabers — and Soderbergh went even further out there with "Full Frontal," a star-studded but diffuse and convoluted look at celebrity.