OUT OF SIGHT
Starz!, 6:53 p.m. ET
It’s been 22 years since this well-made crime caper and character study was released, in 1998. But my, does it hold up: great story, sizzling romance, quirky characters, and a thrilling, unpredictable climax. Almost everyone teaming for this crime drama saw their stock rise afterward: director Steven Soderbergh, stars George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez (who make a great screen pair here, as smoky-sexy as Bogart and Bacall), and author Elmore Leonard, who wrote the book on which Out of Sight is based. Leonard’s writings subsequently inspired the brilliant FX series Justified, while Clooney and Lopez continued to achieve and hold onto movie-star status during the intervening decades. The supporting cast is top-notch, too: Steve Zahn, Catherine Keener, Don Cheadle and Ving Rhames all contribute significantly to this movie, which, as is Elmore Leonard’s trademark, has as much fun with its fringe characters as with its leads. And Soderbergh, of course, has directed several films that hold up extremely well to the passage of time – not only this one, which is a crisp and funny movie, but Erin Brockovich, all three movies in the Ocean’s 11 franchise, and, most uncomfortably timely of all, 2011’s Contagion.