Everybody's swooning over Steven Soderbergh lately and with good reason, given this year's Erin Brockovich/Traffic one-two punch and the very exciting prospect of an Ocean's 11 remake. Although he's graduated to "big-name director" status, there was a period there, between sex, lies and videotape and Out of Sight, when Soderbergh sort of slipped off the cultural radar. Recently I checked out two of the five films he made during that period, King of the Hill and Schizopolis. King of the Hill is the more conventional of the two, a Depression-era coming-of-age story. Jesse Bradford plays Aaron Kurlander, a scrappy, bright kid who has to fend for his own in '30s St. Louis. King of the Hill is quite a charmer, a smart, sweet flick with early appearances by Adrien Brody and Lauryn Hill. Schizopolis is quite a different bird: it's kind of an absurdist experimental comedy starring Soderbergh himself in a couple of different roles. The movie's full of gibberish, scenes replayed in different languages, non-sequiturs and a lot of high-minded goofing around. Though slow at times, there's enough hilarity in Schizopolis to make it worth a rental, especially if you're a Soderbergh fan. Or if you just want to see him crouched in a toilet stall, staring at his watch and masturbating.

--Mark Slutsky