Earlier, I saw and reported on a couple of films that didn't really knock my socks off -- "The Congress" and "The Zero Theorem." They were both great in their way, but I didn't really find that they "stuck with me" after watching them. I had watched them primarily because someone was willing to pay me to review them. I did, but I wasn't all that enthusiastic.
Anyway, to get the taste of these two movies out of my eyes, I decided to watch one I'd missed when it first came out, Stephen Soderberg's "Side Effects." I *like* Soderberg, so I remember wanting to see this flick, but it somehow fell off my radar until a couple of days ago. And it was great -- *exactly* the thing I needed to shake off the less-than-satisfied feeling the earlier two movies had left me with. "Side Effects" is well written, well acted, and has a real PLOT -- and a plot that I hadn't seen before in movies or on TV. Tremendous acting by Jude Law, Rooney Mara, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and a completely original take on the Prozac Nation meme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFEou3MBLi4 I thought it was a taut, well-made film. But I'd also heard that it was Soderberg's "last film," because he was retiring from movies. Given the quality of "Side Effects," that made me wonder WHY one would be at the top of one's skills and want to get out of movies. So I looked, and found this interview with Soderberg himself, who answers exactly that question. GREAT fuckin' interview, if you're interested in movies, TV, or just what it's like to be creative: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/steven-soderbergh-interview
