Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh, 2013)

[Brian C]

New trailer

Starring Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum, and Catherine Zeta-Jones

I believe it was previously known as Bitter Pill - it's set in the shady world of pharmaceuticals.

[domino harvey]

I'm in as always with Soderbergh but lord what an overwrought trailer!

[mfunk9786]

I know, the tag line was like a cherry on top

[Brian C]

It looks like something that would have starred Kim Basinger 20 years ago. Or Ashley Judd 10 years ago. Or Amanda Seyfried one year ago. Or Emma Watson -3 years ago.

[Forrest Taft]

So this will our last chance to see a new Soderbergh on the big screen?

[domino harvey]

Yep, the Liberace biopic is an HBO flick

[warren oates]

Wow, this new title is even worse than the one before. It's so clearly a comedy title that Woody Allen took it years ago for one of his books. Why does everybody think that a title has to be so achingly obvious and literal? Like if there's no mention of pills or medicine then we won't be able to grasp the concept from the poster/trailer? It doesn't sound or feel like a thriller at all.

[mfunk9786]

Yeah, they should call it Make Your Own Title, You Assholes!

[Brian C]

I'd have called it Roughly the Same Size as Life.

[The Narrator Returns]

So far, 100% positive with eight reviews in.

There are plenty of twists and surprises in "Side Effects" that keep you guessing. The first real movie of 2013 is finally here. Repeated viewings may be necessary. -Cole Smithey

A thriller built around an enigmatic character such as “Vertigo” and “Side Effects” is hard to pull off in a credible manner since by its very nature the movie deals in incredible story material. It’s the singular achievement of Soderbergh and Burns that they manage to pull it off in this movie. -Kirk Honeycutt

It is a bugfu*k crazy yarn, more like what you’d expect out of Brian De Palma, but with that ineffable hum – the Soderbergh snap – the cool camera, exquisite framing, shallow focus and scenes that don’t last a frame longer than they have to. -Film.com

[Murdoch]

Hopefully that's the only time I'll see "bugfuck" in a review.

[Kellen]

Pretty much liked everything about this until the last 20 minutes or so when:

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the rooney and catherine are in love angle comes into play.

[sighkingu]

A shame that this is to be Soderbergh's final theatrical release. It's very much a film I would have preferred to have found flipping between channels late at night. Hoping the Liberace picture is an improvement over this.

[Jeff]

I liked it a lot, and think it's an appropriate closing act for Soderbergh. After all, it's a chance for him to employ his expert craftsmanship in a straightforward genre picture like he has done with the Ocean's movies, Magic Mike, and Haywire. It's a "psychological thriller" potboiler like those that were so prevalent in the early 90s. It can't be taken seriously, and really works on those terms. If it feels like an HBO programmer to watch between Presumed Innocent and Malice, I think that's the point. It's just one that's done really well. The fact that it kind of turns into that sort of film organically when you're not looking makes it all the more fun. I initially had the same reaction as Kellen toward his spoilered revelation, but I think ultimately even that over-the-topness works here. Unnecessary tawdry complications are part of the game. If nothing else, the film proves Rooney Mara is the real deal. She navigates an incredibly complicated role beautifully. I can't imagine Blake Lively pulling it off.

[Professor Wagstaff]

In agreement with Jeff here. It's a fine screenplay by Scott Burns, full of clever turns and sly, understated humor that gave each reversal play like a humorous turn of the knife. It's a shame that Soderbergh and Jude Law only hooked up for two films at the end of the director's career. Law's work in Side Effects and Contagion are among his most mature and effective in a while and what a pleasure it is to see an underutilized actor like him actually get to show those strengths.

[John Cope]

It's a shame that Soderbergh and Jude Law only hooked up for two films at the end of the director's career. Law's work in Side Effects and Contagion are among his most mature and effective in a while and what a pleasure it is to see an underutilized actor like him actually get to show those strengths.

It's also a real shame that Soderbergh never used James Spader again after sex, lies. I have never understood that for, as fine of an actor as he is, that film remains Spader's career high point (and one of SS's, too).

[warren oates]

I take it John Cope has never seen James Spader in Boston Legal, which strikes me as the role he was born to play.

I'll echo Wagstaff and Jeff's endorsement of this picture. It's a very well made and satisfying genre exercise with

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compelling twists that also create interesting shifts in audience identification that recall Psycho or some more contemporary high-end Korean thrillers.

This is maybe the best Scott Z. Burns script yet. So it's a shame to see Soderbergh hanging up his hat so soon now that he's gotten this good, meticulously honing both his team and his working method.

[mfunk9786]

I'll just pretend that the mind-boggling threesome of Contagion, Haywire, and Magic Mike wrapped up Soderbergh's illustrious career, and forget that Side Effects ever happened. The first two acts are so very promising, but the film refuses to stick to its guns and give us either a straightforward story about a doctor trying whatever he has to in order to get his life back, or an ambiguous one about the possible dangers of prescription neurological drugs. The third act is low end DePalma by way of the worst of the Saw franchise, abandoning any reason in order to deliver the most lurid ending that can be conceived of, regardless of any pesky need for logic in its storytelling. Catherine Zeta Jones is shoehorned into a role that is never developed enough (and never performed very well), and any unsettling weight that the very nervy events of the first half of the film had is deflated without any care for what a delicate foundation has been built upon which to construct what could have been any other card in a very satisfying Rolodex of better endings to this film, better things to say and things to do and things to prod at us with. Some of the dialogue is Scott Z. Burns' worst (a frantic 9/11 comparison; a grieving Ann Dowd sobbing "But on the commercials they just show people getting better!"), though it's his plotting late in the film that caused Side Effects' easily diagnosable, easily avoidable problems. It's a shame Soderbergh didn't wait until he was through with making this one to retire - something tells me he was on hold with his 401K broker when he was needed most.

[wigwam]

yeah i checked out once it went from her story to his and the last third's twist-athon was meaningless

i did love the visuals tho, what Star Trek did for lensflair this does for selective focus

[mfunk9786]

yeah what you said

[Finch]

Feel the same as mfunk and wigwam: the film really worked for me until the last 25-30 minutes when the ludicrous twists come into play and made me question the film in retrospect. There is so much promise in the setup that what we finally get isn't anywhere near as interesting, and it deflated the whole experience for me. I think of Soderbergh as a good craftsman who never quite manages to overcome the hurdle of a mediocre screenplay, so yeah, Side Effects sums up neatly his strengths and weaknesses. Thought Law and Mara were great, but, man, I can't stand Catherine Zeta-Jones.

[Reverend Drewcifer]

The Hitchcock and De Palma comparisons I read when the film was initially reviewed are off the mark. Soderbergh is too tasteful, too Helvetica to go off the rails, cackling as the plot twists, a gleeful gleam in his eye as he amps the thrills. He and Scott Burns made a skillful juggling act out of the tone of The Informant, but neither earns the "batshit" moniker here. The closest is the final shot, but there is no deliciousness in the irony, no digestion of the material. It's an atheist's kind of twist ending, with no delight or judgment, and can't fail to be anything but an airless exercise.

[mfunk9786]

An atheist's kind of twist ending?

[Reverend Drewcifer]

Inasmuch as Hitchcock's Victorian Catholicism and De Palma's Catholic-Quaker sensibility underscores the irony with a particular relish, Soderbergh seems incapable of adding the kind of judgment necessary for the kind of ending he was attempting.

[The Narrator Returns]

Coming to Blu-Ray on May 21

Sadly (although it was pretty much just a pipe dream), no final commentary for Soderbergh's final theatrical release, but at the very least, the drug commercials sound like a nice touch, and not the fluff that graced Soderbergh's previous three movies.