Side Effects

It’s not Steven Soderbergh’s best film, but Side Effects helps confirm what a chameleon the filmmaker is. It might be his last theatrical feature film, too, since Soderbergh said back in 2009 he was leaving the studios behind, fed up with the process. However, Sean Penn once “retired” after Carlito’s Way and never really slowed down, so we’ll see how that plays out. If this is it, though, Soderbergh has a lot of fun with Side Effects. He channels Hitchcock’s style, not classic late-’50s Hitch, but the mid-’60s Master of Suspense, who was directing by the numbers at that point. Bad things happen when Emily (Rooney Mara) is under the psychiatric care of Dr. Banks (Jude Law). A new drug he prescribes her to deal with depression backfires and Emily may have unwittingly committed a murder. Then again, there might be more to her story than chemistry.