As discussed before here, it's the season when one struggles to find something to amuse oneself with, between the NFL season, NCAA tournament, and baseball season.
But there are movies. It is that time of year when Hollywood releases are at least "interesting," if not downright good. Those of us who pay some attention to the rhythm of releases know that Hollywood puts out the big blockbusters (Iron Man, The Marvel Gang) in the summer, starting before Memorial Day. After Labor Day, it is "adult movie" time, when the "serious films" that are supposed to garner award nominations. Then comes November when the artsy blockbusters (think Skyfall, Sherlock Holmes, the Hobbit) come out, with an occasional award hoped for.
After the first of the year is the time when, in a small town like ours, when those smaller films that have garnered award attention arrive and when studios release films that don't fit into those other niches.
Side Effects is just such a film. Starring Jude Law and Rooney Mara, with a side turn by Catherine Zeta-Jones, it's not exactly the makings of a blockbuster. Or quite the big splash for awards season.
That doesn't mean it's not a particularly good thriller. It is.
By the middle of the movie, we wonder about Jude Law's Dr. Jonathan Banks's life and career, and Rooney Mara's Emily Taylor's sanity. In the hands of Ocean's 11, 12, 13 & Traffic's Steven Soderbergh, it's a taught thriller.
I won't give you spoilers here, but it's well crafted, turning the despair into interest, backed, as my movie companion (and delightful wife) pointed out at the time, with a tension-heightening score, and, finally, a resolution that is unforeseen until deep into the end.
It all pivots on the reappearance of Jones as Dr. Victoria Seibert -- it turns out Victoria does have a secret -- a visual and plot wordplay that adds to the cleverness of the film. Any experienced film-goer will know someone like Jones, the third-headliner, will have more than just that one scene that seems almost a throwaway at the time, and she's stellar, if not brilliant, as the stodgy, drug prescription-driven psychiatrist who treated Emily before her life fell apart.
Mara has the real scenery-eating role and she chews it appropriately. You can imagine in other hands it might be more impressive, but maybe there's something profound in the understated approach she has. Maybe all the anti-depressants she's supposed to be taking are working.
Of course, it's Law's movie. Although he's not in a scene until Emily has tried to kill herself, he's in almost every scene thereafter. His compassion shows in his handling of his patient before Emily, then her and he holds onto her as a patient longer than he might because he seems to worry about her edge. As his life unravels, symbolized lazily by a growth of beard, he does a good "life is unraveling and I've lost control." Of course, he's had this same look in recent roles -- whether Repo Men or Anna Karenina. But he's good here -- believable, emotionally vulnerable and excitable, as you'd think someone in his position might be.
So, here's your "between other seasons" treat: see Side Effects. It's a solid treat of a thriller.
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