Side Effects
Di Bonaventura Pictures
106 minutes
If you walk into “Side Effects” looking for a gritty, realistic treatment of what it’s like to go on and off of psychiatric meds, you’re walking into the wrong theater. If you come looking for a critique of Big Pharma’s marketing practices, you’ll leave perplexed. But if you see “Side Effects” to get lost in Jude Law’s baby blue “trust-me” eyes and to indulge in Catherine Zeta-Jones’ skillful portrayal of a hyper-sexual psychiatrist in silky business casual, you’re definitely in the right place. Indeed, the film makes it easy enough to OD on psycho-thriller kitsch. (Read more…)
Steven Soderbergh’s latest (and possibly last) film in fact begins with a keen picture of deep-seated modern malaise. Emily Taylor, played by Rooney Mara, is a graphic designer in her late 20s—an artist with dreams deferred by her marriage to Martin (Channing Tatum), who’s just been let out of prison after serving time for insider trading. Emily finds herself overcome by crushing depression upon reuniting with Martin in the real world, and after a suicide attempt she finds herself in the care of Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), a warm, sentimental psychiatrist who consults Emily’s former shrink, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, about treatment. Eventually, as recommended by Zeta-Jones’ character, Dr. Banks prescribes his patient Ablixa, a fictional SSRI with some very disturbing side effects. Or that’s what viewers are led to believe, until the second half of the film gets sucked into a senseless plot wormhole and implodes.
[VIA MoJo Blogs and Articles | Mother Jones]
