Movie · 2026 · Crime, Comedy · 1h 40m · R · English
Curator score: 6.5/10 (32K ratings)
Art can be copied. Artists cannot.
Overview
The estranged children of a once-famous artist hire a forger to complete his unfinished works so they can be "discovered" and sold after his death.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.5/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.51/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%
Metacritic: 80
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Steven Soderbergh
Production
Department M, Butler & Sklar Productions
Cast
Michaela Coel, Ian McKellen, Jessica Gunning, James Corden, Ferdy Roberts, Tilly Botsford, Lucy McCormick, Le Fil, Daniel Fearn, Dmitri Prokopiev, Dallas Campbell, Stuart Cooke
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, talky art-world caper with real chemistry, strong performances, and more emotional depth than its premise suggests. It plays like a smaller, smarter Soderbergh riff on inheritance, forgery, and the value of art, with enough wit and texture to reward viewers who like character-driven crime comedy.
Best for
fans of clever dialogue and battle-of-wits performances
viewers who enjoy art-world scams and moral gray areas
people looking for a compact, adult comedy with dramatic bite
Soderbergh completists and fans of elegant genre exercises
Skip if
you want high-octane action or big set pieces
you dislike talky, performance-forward films
you prefer straightforward plots without twists
you’re not interested in art, criticism, or inheritance satire
Overview
The Christophers is one of those modestly scaled crime comedies that sneaks up on you by being smarter and warmer than it first appears. A family scheme built around forgery and posthumous fame gives Steven Soderbergh a neat framework for jokes, reversals, and a surprisingly tender look at artistic legacy. It’s a movie about people trying to manufacture value, but it keeps circling back to the messy human need to be seen.
Worth noting
The real pleasure is the pairing of Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, who turn the film into a duel of wit, restraint, and timing. McKellen gets the grand speeches and Coel gets the cool, controlled reactions, and the balance between them gives the movie its spark. Even when the plot is doing something familiar, the performances make it feel freshly alive.
Bottom line
This is not a broad crowd-pleaser or a slick heist machine. It’s more intimate, more literary, and more interested in character than mechanics, which is exactly why it works. If you like your crime stories with intelligence, dry humor, and a little ache under the polish, this is an easy recommendation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
TheRealJohnQ (3.5★) · 1087 likes
I’d be mad too if James Corden was my son.
Patrick Willems · 854 likes
Ian McKellen: *grumble grumble grumble*
Me: *furious applause, wiping away tears of joy*
Chad Hartigan · 649 likes
Had no idea James Corden was in this. Had happily lived my life for 43 years without ever seeing James Corden in a movie and now my streak is broken. Fair play to him, he wasn't terrible. However his not terrible has to stack up against one of the greatest ever to do it, Ian McKellen, acting his absolute face off so in comparison James Corden is, in fact, terrible.
Update: May have to delete this. Sir Ian McKellen didn’t… more
cob (3★) · 499 likes
i could watch michaela coel and ian mckellen riff off each other for hours
i_z (4★) · 499 likes
There are multiple verbal mentions of Google and googling in this but the one time we see a character doing an internet search (which they explicitly refer to later as googling) they are using a website called, if I remember correctly, “Globalscourex”
1987 · Crime, Thriller, Drama · 1h 42m · R · Curator 8.3/10 (25.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A cool, twisty confidence game movie that keeps asking who is manipulating whom.