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Alex Heeney / March 21, 2025

Ep. 164 Black Bag directed by Steven Soderbergh: a fun thriller for grownups

On the podcast, Alex recommends Steven Soderbergh’s new film, Black Bag, and discusses why she’s been a Soderbergh fan for 25 years.

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Still of Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in Black Bag, directed by Steven Soderbergh, which Alex discusses on the podcast.
Still of Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in Black Bag, a film directed by Steven Soderbergh, which Alex discusses on the podcast.

It’s not very often that we get a movie for adults that’s smart and fun and screening theatrically. But Steven Soderbergh’s London-set spy thriller Black Bag opened in North American cinemas last weekend. The film features major stars like Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender and major lesser-known talents like Tom Burke and Naomie Harris.

On the podcast, Alex discusses why she recommends Black Bag and why she’s been a Soderbergh devotee for 25 years and how Black Bag showcases Soderbergh at his best.

In The Wrap, Soderbergh described the film as “a lot of peoples in rooms talking, which I like.” That’s one of the hardest things to direct dynamically and one of Alex’s favourite things to see on screen. This is one of the many reasons Alex keeps returning to Soderbergh’s work and recommends Black Bag in particular. She references this interview in the podcast on Black Bag and delves deeper into Soderbergh’s people in rooms talking.

Show Notes on Steven Soderbergh’s film Black Bag

Read our case study on Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane in Beyond Empowertainment

Read our ebook on Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir

Interview with Steven Soderbergh in Men’s Health

Interview with Steven Soderbergh in The Wrap

Related podcast episodes to Black Bag

Bonus 25: This is Going to Hurt and physician mental health

Ep. 118 The Souvenir (starring Tom Burke) and The Souvenir Part II

Ep. 35. Unsane (dir. Steven Soderbergh) and The Invisible Man

Podcast Credits

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.

Follow Seventh Row on Twitter, Bluesky and Instagram. Read our articles at seventh-row.com.

Follow Alex Heeney on Bluesky, Twitter and Instagram. 

An AI-generated transcript for the episode is available on Apple Podcasts.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Alex Heeney podcast, genre

About Alex Heeney

Alex is the Editor-in-Chief of The Seventh Row, based in San Francisco and from Toronto, Canada.

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