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Bruce Hall: He'll be back. I think it was last year at the Venice Film Festival that he revised his announcement and specifically characterized his impending "retirement" a "sabbatical". He wanted to devote time to other creative pursuits, such as painting.

Sounds to me like a man who needs a break. Soderbergh strikes me as a man who made the kinds of films that HE wanted to see. Not in a self indulgent way, bit in the way of a person with diverse interests who happens to have the ability to explore them on film. That's what makes his catalogue so eclectic and undefinable. There's no Soderbergh "brand", because with each project he dove into a subject that intensely interested him, made an honest, intelligent movie out of it and moved on.

So when people call Traffic a "prestige picture", they're not just lumping it in with the slew of vanity films that appear near awards season, with one eye on the Academy and the other on the box office. It's just that good, and it's his own talent and honest desire to challenge himself that makes it that way.

In other words, not every film he made was great, but they were made by a great filmmaker.

My favorites include: Traffic, Sex Lies, Out of Sight, Solaris

The ones I can live without: Ocean's Thirteen, The Good German, Full Frontal

Max Braden: When I think of Soderbergh's style, I'd describe it as being a little casual, loose, and cavalier. Things are never out of control in his films, but it feels like he's trusting that the movie will work out rather than driving it with a tense hand on the controls. Come to think of it, that's a characteristic of a lot of the main characters in his movies. At his best, that makes for lighthearted, fun movies. I love the image of Jack Foley waving at the U.S. Marshal who's trying to put him back in prison, and the non-verbal communication between Clooney and Pitt in the Oceans series (though I really only like the first one). At his worst, though, that style becomes lazy and boring. Solaris nearly put me to sleep for its lack of exposition, The Girlfriend Experience was like watching the day in the life of nobody important, The Informant expected you to laugh when it wasn't that funny, and the street jogging chase in Haywire felt endless. In most of his movies, though, there are some great set up shots for the camera.

Soderbergh may not have the must-be-number-one gene that drives someone like Michael Bay, but I can't believe that someone who loves movies like he must would just give them up when the option to make them is still available. Maybe some time off will spark some interesting vision for future projects.

Kim Hollis: I also would be surprised if this were a real retirement, but I can also easily imagine that he's grown weary and that his artistic focus and interests have shifted. Like many others have commented here, I admire but don't necessarily love Soderbergh's films as a whole. It's true that there is something clinical about them, similar to what can occasionally bother me about Clint Eastwood's movies. With that said, though, there are a few of Soderbergh films that I truly enjoy, including Out of Sight, The Limey and Ocean's Eleven, and to a somewhat lesser degree, Solaris. I disliked Traffic and The Girlfriend Experience (ho-hum), and although I didn't hate Ocean's Twelve, I found it to be the weakest entry in that series.

Kim Hollis: Top Gun 3D opened in 300 theaters this weekend and earned $2 million. What are your thoughts on this result as well as on the subject of the movie Top Gun itself?

Brett Ballard-Beach: It's just about on par on a per screen average with the limited engagement IMAX run of Raiders of the Lost Ark last year (ahead of its Blu-Ray release) although this had the added financial bonus of 3D. It's only playing through Wednesday (before Die Hard sweeps in to the IMAX screens) so this was just a little frosting on the cupcake. My best friend of 20 years went and saw this on Saturday, because this is her alpha and omega and has been her "origin story" film since seeing it back in '86.

I didn't see it in the theater, and in fact had not seen it in its entirety until catching a repertory engagement just before Thanksgiving four years ago (coming down with a cold, streams of mucus exiting my nostrils for the duration at something between a gush and a geyser as I worked through an entire box of Kleenex). I had heard pretty much every quotable line (from my friend) prior to going in so it was a redundant (or self-fulfilling?) experience. But hey, it's silly fun, has a great looking young cast about to break out and a great gathering of older character actors for gravitas. To each his own, I know, but the fact that this became the defining (recruitment) film for a generation mystified me as much when I was age 10 as it does now I am on the near side of 40. I was never the target audience, although I can appreciate a) that a lot of people were, b) That Simpson, Bruckheimer and Scott had a PG film in them and c) that writer David Sirota does an awesome analysis of it and other '80s gung-ho fare like Red Dawn in his book "Back to our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now."

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