‘The Christophers’ Review: Steven Soderbergh’s Chamber Drama Is a Riveting Meditation on Art

About midway through “The Christophers,” director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film from a script by his frequent collaborator Ed Solomon, there is a scene where an artist is driven not to create something beautiful, but to destroy it in favor of something ugly.

The artist in question is the aged painter Julian Sklar, played by a witheringly good Ian McKellen, and watching on is his faux assistant Lori, played by the always magnificent Michaela Coel, who comes into his orbit when hired to steal then finish via forgery some of his most iconic yet incomplete works. However, as should be known with any recent Soderbergh film, the initial premise of…