Category: Rooney Mara

WOMEN TALKING

By Marc S. Sanders

In the year 2010, a sect of women must hold congress in the upper level of a barn to debate whether to leave their colony or stand and fight against the oppressive men who rape, beat, and brainwash them into believing they will be denied entry into the kingdom of heaven should they never offer forgiveness and tolerance for the abuse they suffer.  That is the story of Women Talking, written and directed by Sarah Polley, from the novel by Miriam Towes.

From IMDB, Towes based her novel on a true story of vicious serial rapes in an insular, ultraconservative Mennonite community in Bolivia. From 2005 to 2009, nine men in the Manitoba Colony, using livestock tranquilizers, drugged female victims ranging in age from three to sixty and violently raped them at night. When the girls and women awoke bruised and covered in blood, the men of the colony dismissed their reports as “wild female imagination”–even when they became pregnant from the assaults–or punishments from God or by demons for their supposed sins.

Sarah Polley’s film works like a stage play.  She shoots with deliberately dim cinematography as if to have you feel the cold, helpless isolation the women of this fictional community endure.  These women are smart but uneducated in reading or writing.  When they vote for what do, pictures are drawn to display their options.  Two figures with dueling swords are drawn for stay and fight.  A horse is sketched for the choice to leave.  The women cast their ballots by drawing an X under the picture they opt to follow. 

To know that this piece of fiction is inspired by true events is very chilling, and when the film finishes there’s much to ponder and talk about.  It stays with you.  A young educated man named August (Ben Whishaw, in a beautifully reserved performance) from a university is recruited to keep the minutes of the meetings.  Topics of debate include if they should leave with a mass exodus of all the women, do they also take the young boys; most of them products of the numerous rapes they suffered through.  At what age are these boys incapable of trusting they will not be as monstrous as their bastard and abusive fathers?  What about August?  He is harmless and sympathetic to the ladies’ victimizations.  Shouldn’t he be allowed to go too, or because he is a man, is he excluded?  Frances McDormand’s character, whose appearance lives up to the name Scarface Janz, insists upon doing nothing.  She’s convinced they will be denied entrance into heaven by their almighty God.  To not forgive their attackers is a sin.  Is doing nothing an option?    If they stay and fight, how exactly will that be done?  Violence is an unforgivable sin, as described in doctrine.  How else do you fight against the constant attacks of violence, though?

Women Talking deserves an audience.  It’s a very good film because it draws attention to a modern day hardship.  When there are communities like this in the world that most of us are unaware of, how are the members accounted for?  Are they being nourished and educated and living comfortably?  Is everyone safe and protected?  If they are not, then how are they getting the justice they are entitled to, and do they have a chance of survival?  I appreciate when movies can open my eyes to a reality for which I have yet to carry any regard or awareness.  I feel taught having watched a movie like Women Talking. 

When the movie began, before knowing anything of what the story was about, my first presumption was that maybe this is an Amish or Quaker community based on the farm country setting and the simple wardrobes of the characters.  The time frame was uncertain to me as well.  Horse and buggies are shown, but no automobiles.  So, is this the early twentieth century, perhaps?  Only after the first ten minutes of exposition, did I realize this was something else taking place within a more recent time period.  It is astounding how far we’ve come globally with the rights of women, minorities and the overall oppressed.  Yet, there are those who regrettably remain overlooked.

Polley’s script is rhythmic with strong dialogue, and the cast of actresses (Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley) are quick with their retorts when one makes one statement after the other.  There are lots of fascinating arguments at play here, reminiscent of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men.  Again, this is gripping material ready for live stage work. 

I did have a problem with the picture, however. The trajectory of the film works on its dialogue of debates.  The actors deliver lines from Polley’s script perfectly.  This is a smart collection of actors.  Still, it is challenging to keep track of what platform each woman stands upon.  When one gets swayed from one argument over to other side, it is also a little tricky to realize when that has occurred.  Who is staunch in their beliefs is also difficult to keep track of.  The dark photography that Polley layers the film with is meant to be morose.  It works.  It places you in the helpless mood of these afflicted women.  When you consider the practicality of the piece though, it makes it hard to identify who is who and what perspective they have.  Often, the characters don’t stand apart from one another.  It might sound trivial.  I may risk putting a stain on the filmmaker’s art.  Nonetheless, but it got in the way of the movie I was watching.

It is a blessing that Women Talking has received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and for Sarah Polley’s screenplay.  Had it not, the film would likely go unnoticed, and it cannot afford to be.  Sarah Polley’s film deserves attention.  Any one of us may never come upon these very private, hidden, and isolated communities that function under an unfair governance.  However, the film demonstrates the vicious dominance that one sex can have over another which still remains all to common.  No matter how much wiser we have become as a people, there are some who still have never gotten the message.

LION (2016, Australia)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

LION (2016)
Director: Garth Davis
Cast: Sunny Pawar, David Wenham, Nicole Kidman, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara
My Rating: 9/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 84% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A five-year-old Indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple after getting lost hundreds of kilometers from home. 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.


It’s as if Charles Dickens came back to life and concocted the plot of Lion.

In 1986, in Central India, a young boy named Saroo, lives with his family, hovering on the knife edge between poverty and desperation.  He and his older brother, Guddu, steal coal and redeem it for two bags of milk.  Their mother asks where they got it, but they do not answer, and she tactfully does not press the question.  One day, Saroo begs Guddu to take him on a week-long job.  At the train station, Guddu leaves Saroo on a bench while he goes to make sure the job is still waiting.  Saroo dozes off, and when he awakes, the station is empty…and Guddu is nowhere to be found.  Saroo wanders onto a decommissioned train and curls up for another nap.  But when he wakes this time, the train has left the station far behind.  He winds up in Calcutta, 1,600 kilometers from his village, with no way to get home or contact his family.  (The end credits inform us that 80,000 children vanish in India every year.)

Plot-wise, there’s not much to distinguish Lion from any number of similar films.  The dreaded words “soap opera” came to mind as the movie progressed.  We get a nice little wrinkle when, after several months of wandering Calcutta and winding up in a government orphanage-slash-prison, Saroo is adopted by a loving Australian family, John and Sue Brierly (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman), who also adopt another Indian boy, Mantosh, two years after adopting Saroo.  Then we jump to 2008, Saroo is now a strapping young man (Dev Patel) who leaves home to go to university in Melbourne, but the unforgettable smell of a specific Indian pastry brings back memories of his childhood, and he decides to find the family he lost.

So, yeah, just another movie-of-the-week on your basic third-tier cable channel, right?  Not exactly.  What distinguishes Lion is its storytelling.  Just like in comedy, it’s all in the delivery.  This was director Garth Davis’s first feature film, but you wouldn’t know it.  The whole movie feels slick and polished.  The establishing or transitional shots between scenes are intentionally reminiscent of the new online research tool that was all the rage at the time: Google Earth.  It’s very subtle, but it’s there, like it was designed to not be noticed until the movie is almost over.

The performances from the adult cast are all great, but what stood out to me was the boy playing young Saroo.  His name is Sunny Pawar.  He was 8 years old during filming, but he is so small he looks 5 or 6.  His story, from introduction until he grows up into Dev Patel, occupies nearly half of the film’s running time, and during that time he must make us feel sorry for him, empathize with him, and root for him every step of the way.  In the hands of an experienced child actor, we might have viewed his performance as just that: a performance.  But Sunny was a non-actor when he was selected for this part, and that makes all the difference.  The look on his face when he finds himself lost is indescribably real.  There’s a scene where he is trying to make himself understood to a ticket agent (he speaks Hindi, but in Calcutta everyone speaks Bengali).  The adults try to move him out of the line, but for a brief instant, he gets furious and shoves the adult hands and bodies away from him.  The rage in that tiny face and in his body language was utterly convincing.  I think it was that moment when I felt I was watching something a little more elevated than a cable melodrama.


Although the story is a bit trite as far as movies go, there’s something to be said about the universality of its message.  There isn’t a soul who can watch Lion without completely understanding Saroo’s desire to find his real family, along with his desire to keep his adopted mother in the dark about his obsession.  I’m not a parent, but I know some close friends who went the adoption route, and I found myself thinking of them and their children, and how they might feel if they found out their kids were actively searching for their real parents.  Lion addresses this heartbreaking scenario in a marvelous scene between the adult Saroo and his mother, Sue, in which she reveals the real reason she decided to adopt.

Saroo’s girlfriend, Lucy, brings up a terrible, but probable, scenario: what if Saroo completes his search, finds his village, and travels to India…only to find his family isn’t there?  It’s been over 20 years.  He believes his mother and brother searched for him, but he can’t really know that for sure.  Maybe they moved away.  Maybe they’re dead.  Saroo doesn’t care.  For him, that chapter of his life must be closed one way or the other or he will feel lost and adrift for the rest of his life.  Closure is everything.

This is another one of those movies where, as an audience member, we’re put through the wringer for about 100 or so minutes so we can experience the full emotional impact of the film’s climax.  At some point, we can surmise that, yes, Saroo is eventually going to travel to India.  What he finds there, I would not DREAM of revealing.  I think it’s safe to say that many people I know would be reduced to tears by the time the final credits roll.  The finale justifies the overall melodramatic tone of the film, especially because of how well the damn thing was made.

Lion is one of the few true-blue melodramas that I would wholeheartedly recommend, even and especially to anyone who doesn’t think they like soap operas.  Dickens would have approved.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)

By Marc S. Sanders

Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is a visual feast of the macabre set in a Depression era western America.  Every caption caught on film is unbelievable to look at, and while I know del Toro released his picture in black and white to enhance its film noir theme, I was truly delighted with the color version of the film.  With del Toro’s direction and photography designed by Dan Lausten, every dimension and sparkle of color from a sunset to a dreary cloud in the sky to the lights on a Ferris wheel spinning in an open field from the distance is absolutely jaw dropping.  Nightmare Alley is a modern technical masterpiece.  It makes me want to go back and watch the original 1947 version, as well as explore other productions in the film noir category.

Bradley Cooper portrays Stanton Carlisle, a murderous drifter who ends up accompanying a traveling carnival of garish figures who entertain their quirky qualities for townsfolk to be marveled and amazed.  There’s the flexible snakeman, the world’s strongest man (del Toro regular, Ron Perlman), the smallest man alive, the electrical woman, the psychic and the terrorizing, caged “geek” who will eat the head off a live chicken in front of your very eyes.  At first Stanton serves as a heavy meant to carry loads and set up and strike the tents and stages as the show moves from town to town.  He connects though with the psychic (Toni Collette) and the architect behind her façade (David Strathairn).  Soon, Stanton is adopting their techniques of using code words and hand gestures to “read the minds” of the various audience participants. 

He goes even further by redesigning the electrical woman’s presentation. Before she was using teslas to demonstrate her will to generate electrical currents.  Now she can be zapped in an electric chair.  The woman is Molly (Rooney Mara), and a relationship begins that sends her and Stanton on a successful tour away from the carnival where they entertain more sophisticated and wealthier nightclub guests with his psychic abilities.  One attendee, however, is on to Stanton’s devices, a beautifully alluring psychiatrist named Lilith (Cate Blanchett).  She maneuvers Stanton into using his manipulative talents into conning her clients.  She has recorded her sessions and will share confidential information with Stanton. Then, he will use that towards his ongoing psychic advantage as a means to swindle them of their fortunes.  Lilith and Stanton will split the rewards.  The play seems convincing enough for the likes of a wealthy industrialist named Ezra, played by Richard Jenkins yearning to reconnect with his deceased wife at a cost of thousands of dollars for Stanton’s services.

The narrative of Nightmare Alley is so absorbing.  Everything is beautifully staged.  A fun house hall of mirrors has a décor of disturbing imagery.  Stanton enters this place symbolically at the beginning of the film in search of the runaway “geek.”  The surroundings display the seven deadly sins around a large skull and other haunted house imagery.  del Toro demonstrates what Stanton is about to enter, which occupies the remainder of the film.  Stanton performs on the motivations of greed and lust and vanity.  Maybe, pride as well.  At least those are the first couple of sins that come to my mind.  How will his actions reflect back on him later on, though?

The film is also performed by a magnificent cast.  Cooper is doing some of his best work here.  While I feel like I’ve seen Blanchett’s deceitful character before, I don’t mind.  I can’t think of anyone else to play the role.  Curiously, del Toro has Mara, with her snow-white complexion, dressed in red quite often amid a cast of characters and extras wearing blacks and dark greys.  She’s meant to stand out as the innocent.  Molly questions Stanton’s decisions while also trying to convince him to end his charades.  Yet, she only serves as a disturbing pawn in the shyster’s tricks.  Will Stanton corrupt Molly though?  It’s one thing to put on a magic show for a couple of hours each night.  It’s another when you are swindling the massive fortunes of others and toying with their despair. 

Other surprise performers that appear include Willem Dafoe as the showman for the “geek,” and a late appearance by Tim Blake Nelson to close out the film and deliver what’s to come of Stanton. 

Nightmare Alley deliberately moves at a slow pace, but that only allows you to take in its various environments.  From the carnival tents to the nightclubs to the alleyways, to Ezra’s snow covered never-ending garden, and even Lillith’s gold embossed office of cabinetry and furniture are so hypnotic and dark in its intended film noir way.  Again, while I’m sure there’s some striking qualities to the black and white interpretation of the film, I really fell in love with the colors provided by Lausten’s photography.

I won’t call this a favorite film of mine, but I loved the journey of it all.  I appreciated the script by del Toro and Kim Morgan, adapted from the novel by Lindsay Gresham, that depicts a sinful man like Stanton devolve into more sin, until he’s only undone by a smarter sinner than he; a sinner masked within beauty and wealth with a noble and educated profession.  Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett perform beautifully with one another.  They make a terrific pair.  I only hope they’ll do another film together.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

By Marc S. Sanders

Power and knowledge can be a dangerous thing for a kid who is not necessarily as mature as his IQ would suggest. Mark Zuckerberg reinvented the way an entire planet functions from his Harvard dorm room. In the process, he couldn’t have cared less about the antagonism he was generating.

David Fincher’s The Social Network, with a brilliant screenplay by Aaron Sorkin captures kids with too much opportunity to seize, and the hubris they carry when they discover money, jealously, pride, and greed through a winning societal experiment.

The film features one of the best casts ever assembled, at least definitely within the confines of the 21st Century. Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake (should’ve been nominated), Armie Hammer (one of the best twin brothers’ portrayals in film), Rooney Mara, Brenda Song, and of course Jesse Eisenberg. Sorkin wrote the dialogue. It’s another thing to deliver it.

These people talk before they think, and it’s likely what caused them the aggravations of their own success and discovery. Watch the first scene between Eisenberg and Mara, as Zuckerberg and his girlfriend, Erica. Zuckerberg is already too smart for his own good. His failure with dating Erica is destined to be his undoing. He’ll never recover from this moment. Never! This is a kid with his hand on the nuclear button and he can’t stop pushing it. The other characters are all the same. Harvard geniuses with so much to gain, but how much will they lose?

Mark Zuckerberg, Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss (the self-absorbed twins of prestige and legacy), and Sean Parker (inventor of Napster) are prophets of a bigger picture. They foresaw the basic human desire for attention. People’s needs to be noticed are the commodities to monetarily profit from. These kids knew that better than anyone else. Ironically, Zuckerberg’s best friend and financial partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), didn’t know it until he realized he was a large step behind. It cost a lot of money. Ironically, in the process of creating a new means of connecting with friends, it suffered the cost of a friendship, as well.

The Social Network will always be one of my ten favorite films. (Talk about huge Oscar upsets…excuse me The King’s Speech for Best Picture????) I’m always amazed at these kids with power. The knowledge they possess is bigger than anything within the confines of our historical governments, and yet they bicker and steal and betray like toddlers in a sandbox. Switch out “Facebook” for a Nerf football or a Barbie doll, and you can still apply this fast-paced wit of words. Sorkin pounced on that dichotomy. We’ve seen civil lawsuits on film with grand disputes and long speeches in front of arbitrators. We had yet to see college students dominate tables full of lawyers with crackling dialogue exchanged to prove their worth over one another. Amazingly enough, Sorkin used much of the dialogue from recorded transcripts he accessed. These guys actually spoke like this with each other. These technological pioneers gave the planet’s people the attention they wanted. Yet, what ultimately mattered to them was the credit for what they felt entitled to.

I’ll never tire of watching The Social Network, even if listening to Mark Zuckerberg is as exhausting as talking with a stair master.

One of best films ever made.

NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, David Strathairn
My Rating: 6/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 80% Certified Fresh

PLOT: An ambitious carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychiatrist who is even more dangerous than he is.


No good movie is too long; no bad movie is short enough. – Roger Ebert

Nightmare Alley is director Guillermo del Toro’s longest film to date at exactly two-and-a-half hours.  Going by Ebert’s dictum above, I have to say that it was too long by maybe a half hour or more, but that doesn’t make it a “bad” film.  Just a poorly edited one.

The story revolves around a Depression-era drifter with a troubled past who becomes a carny with the kind of flea-bitten traveling circus that tours all the urban hotspots of Iowa and Kansas, and which is almost all sideshows: a psychic (Toni Collette), a giant (played by del Toro regular Ron Perlman), a rubber man, a girl impervious to electrical currents (Rooney Mara), and a geek show, among other things.  What’s a geek show, you ask?  Why, that’s where people pay two bits to watch a man bite the head off a live chicken.  We are shown one such performance in the opening minutes of the film.  It’s hard for me to believe people were entertained by this, no matter how long ago it was.  I mean, the geek did not look like he was having much fun…although he did seem to be having more fun than the chicken.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the carny, named Stanton (Bradley Cooper), befriends the psychic and her husband (David Strathairn) and reveals that he has always been a student of human behavior, and with a few quick observations, he can make factual statements about someone that boggle the mind.  One thing leads to another, and eventually he leaves the carny behind, with the electrical-current girl, Molly, in tow.  Soon he is headlining nightclubs and posh bars with his mind-reading act, with Molly as his assistant.  One night a beautiful psychiatrist with a level-headed gaze (Cate Blanchett) sees one of his performances and suggests a con: she will provide detailed information about her rich and powerful patients on the sly, and he will do command performances for these elites, making them both rich.  What happens next, I leave for you to discover.

(I must be honest: this is not the kind of film I was expecting from del Toro.  A character study of tragic greed and hubris?  Where are the monsters?  The supernatural nightmares of the title?  But I’m always telling people to criticize the movie the filmmakers made, and not the movie you wish they had made.  I press on.)

I’m finding it hard to summarize my thoughts here.  The movie looked great.  I mean, it looked amazing.  At one point, Stanton runs into the carnival’s funhouse looking for someone, and it’s filled with the kind of over-the-top prop demons and fake ghosts that made me hope we would get a later sequence where these things came alive in some horrifying way.  But no, it’s just intended as throwaway scenery, glimpsed once and never seen again.

There is an extended sequence where Stanton tries to revamp Molly’s act as the “Electric Girl”, coming up with new costumes, new props, new patter (patter is important with sideshows), and it’s a relatively lengthy sequence which felt like it was setting something up.  And, yeah, there’s kind of a payoff, but not the kind I felt it was building towards.

The movie left me with a vague sense of frustration throughout.  We are fed gobs of information about the tricks used by sideshow psychics, the sad ploy used to hire the geeks, the psychic’s husband looms large in the story and then abruptly becomes a non-factor, and it just went on and on and on.  Then in the “riches” part of the rags-to-riches story, Stanton has become insufferable, a believer of his own press releases, willing to put his livelihood (and his life) in jeopardy for that one last big job.

This is all very intriguing stuff, on paper.  But as executed and written, there seemed to be unnecessarily long scenes with loads of information being dumped on us with nothing moving the action forward.  I would pay money to watch Cate Blanchett read a Denny’s menu, but even her extended “therapy” sessions with Bradley Cooper felt interminable.  I felt like those random crowds in Monty Python and the Holy Grail periodically yelling, “GET ON WITH IT!”

To be fair, the Stanton character does eventually get his comeuppance, in literally the final ten minutes of the film.  Full disclosure, I will say without spoilers that it is very gratifying, it had me and some random dude behind me exclaiming loudly in the movie theater, and it features some of the best acting Bradley Cooper has ever done.  But…it came long after I had started shifting in my seat and wondering if I would miss anything important if I ran to get some more candy.

I give Nightmare Alley a 6 out of 10, mainly because it looks so damn good.  del Toro has yet to make a movie that doesn’t look masterful (yes, even Blade II is a beauty to behold).  Also, the acting all around is top notch.  There’s talk Cooper may get an Oscar nod, which wouldn’t surprise me.  But it boils down to a very, VERY long drive for an all-too-short day at Denouement Beach.  A ninety-minute movie crammed into 150 minutes.  Alas.

her

By Marc S. Sanders

Director/Screenwriter Spike Jones is a master at adding multiple dimensions to what we always know exists. It’s been evident in his prior films, Adaptation, Where The Wild Things Are, (which I did not care for personally), and most especially in Being John Malkovich. He plants the seeds of fantasy in what we can normally touch, hear and see. Then his elements of fantasy receive a supportive crutch from what his viewers have always been familiar with.

her is another masterwork; a film that takes place in the not too distant future that expounds on our current digital age. If we can already talk to “Siri” or “Alexa” and trick–umm, excuse me, “her” (I mean “Siri”) into making sophomoric dirty jokes, then of course we are bound to approach the stage where we can literally, truly fall in love with her and then she can reciprocate.

With her raspy yet silky vocals, Scarlett Johansson is inspired casting as the voice of “Samantha.” Had she actually had a physical presence in the film I would have totally fallen for her affections. The film hinges on the performance of Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore. If we can’t believe that he loves “Samantha” more than he loves himself (a surefire test of true love as far I’m concerned) then “her” falls apart. Phoenix passes abundantly. He deserved his Oscar nomination.

From the start, you become very accustomed to the banter between Theodore and his electronic device voiced by “Samantha.” Both have personal feelings. Both have personal longings (more especially “Samantha” the computer, of all things!!!).

Spike Jonze explores all the diameters and dimensions of a loving relationship. The ups, downs, and in betweens. What’s different is how all of these layers of a relationship are received in this currently fictional (bound to come true, one day) dynamic of a relationship. Theodore and “Samantha” are affectionate. They argue, they laugh, they even make love. Watch the movie to understand that last point. It happens, and it is perfectly executed with the residual effects of their lovemaking bringing the film into its next act brilliantly.

Jones won the Oscar for original screenplay simply for how innovative this picture is. I’m not sure it’s the most exciting two hours of film, however. Personally, I think other films in this category back in 2013 had sharper and more interesting scripts. her is practically all talk and when it ended, I was ready for it to be over, and it concluded as I expected.

Still, Jones is fortunate that his cast (Johannsson, Phoenix, Amy Adams and Rooney Mara and Chris Pratt) trusts him. If they hadn’t, this movie would have lost its magic by probably how absurd this script must have originally been perceived on paper. Well done work by all involved but credit has to begin with Jones, the screenwriter.

SIDE EFFECTS (2013)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta Jones, Channing Tatum
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A young woman’s world unravels when an anti-depressant prescribed by her psychiatrist has unexpected side effects.


Side Effects is a rare creature indeed: a movie released during the first two months of the calendar year that is not only good, it’s stunningly good.  It’s too bad almost no one even remembers this movie exists.

Steven Soderbergh’s film tells the story of a young woman, Emily (Rooney Mara), who suffers from depression after her husband returns home from serving a prison term for insider trading.  After a series of events where she apparently tries to harm herself, she sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Banks (Jude Law) who prescribes a brand new anti-depressant called Ablixa.  While it is effective, it also comes with some side effects, including sleepwalking.

One day, Dr. Banks gets a call: Emily has stabbed someone to death, and she did it while sleepwalking, which was caused by the Ablixa.  Banks interviews her; she remembers nothing of the incident.  But now the doctor’s professional and personal life is in turmoil as well.

What we have here is a classic Hitchcockian story…actually, two stories for the price of one.  You’ve got Emily, the wrong woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.  She didn’t ask for any of this.  She just wanted to feel better, be a better wife, be a better person.  And the drugs were working: she was feeling better, doing better at work, doing better with her husband…but now, thanks to this drug and its unintended side effects, people think she’s crazy.

And you’ve got Dr. Banks, the wrong man also in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He was doing his job, prescribing medication that he felt would help…and it WAS helping.  But thanks to this unforeseeable tragedy, his practice dries up.  Who wants to see a psychiatrist whose patient killed someone due to medicine he prescribed?  This creates problems in his personal life: he just bought a new apartment, but now his income is severely diminished.  He and his wife fight more than they used to.  And so on.

…and that’s where I’ll leave it because, like all the best films, it’s better if you watch Side Effects cold, not knowing what to expect.  No doubt there are people out there who saw the various twists and turns coming, but I am not one of them.  I was utterly hoodwinked, and I loved it.

We are a culture of pills and quick fixes, the quicker the better.  Side Effects is remarkably even-handed in presenting us with both sides of the worst-case scenario involving this culture.  (Or I guess one of the worst-case scenarios, but I don’t want to get sidetracked.)  Not only is this strategy effective in providing mental fodder while watching, but it’s also a great storytelling device.  Whose side should we be on?  Historically, “Big Pharma” has been one of the handiest movie villains since the Nazis.  The public perception of mega-corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal, dollars that are used to cover up embarrassing media stories and pay off corporate whistle-blowers, is just too perfect not to use in movies.  But Side Effects gives us the other side of that coin, the dedicated physicians and psychiatrists who are committed to helping people using the best available methods.  If a pill can help people, who would blame a doctor for wanting to prescribe it?  …unless the side effects turned out to be a little extreme?

That conundrum is at the heart of the movie.  But on the surface, it’s just a fantastic mystery/thriller.  Soderbergh directs with restraint, using very few camera moves.  Everything we see is presented with a minimum of flash and maximum impact, so when you’re watching the third act of the movie, you can remember everything you saw in the first two acts with great clarity.

It’s a little bit like a Gene Kelly dance routine.  You know he must have worked for hours to get those moves down, but when you see him in action, he barely looks like he’s working at all.  That’s what Side Effects feels like.  The film is telling a complicated story, but it doesn’t feel like it’s working hard.  It’s just gliding along, showing you this scene, showing you that scene, ho-hum, pay attention now, all leading to the fantastic payoff at the end.

I don’t know if Side Effects is available to stream or not, but I heartily recommend it regardless.