Side Effects 2013

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Side Effects virtually demands a three-word review: Just see it. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: The director who came into the field with Sex, Lies, and Videotape leaves it with sex and lies shot on video, still surprising us with both the stories he tells and the stories hidden inside them. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: While the plot may be predictable (and more than a little preposterous) in retrospect, Mr. Soderbergh handles it brilliantly, serving notice once again that he is a crackerjack genre technician. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Side Effects is a smooth, shapely suspense picture. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Steven Soderbergh keeps giving interviews confessing that he is bored with movies and promising that Side Effects will be his last one. Not a moment too soon, if you ask me. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The film as a whole is consistently enjoyable and sometimes thrilling, a classic Soderbergh showcase for provocative storytelling and marvelous acting. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "Side Effects" goes to unexpected places, and we breathlessly follow along. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Of the many twists and turns in Steven Soderbergh's vastly entertaining thriller Side Effects, the most gratifying has less to do with the nimble plotting than the fact that it isn't the type of movie it initially appears to be. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: It starts out as one type of film and ends up as another, and manages the transition seamlessly. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The fun of "Side Effects" lies in figuring out what sort of movie it is even as you're watching it. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: This neatly executed mystery is just the sort of thing Hollywood craves from Steven Soderbergh: genre entertainment as cool, clean, and impersonal as a Formica countertop. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Burns' plotting gets a little knotty in the third act, but he's a smart writer, who has a knack for juggling an array of characters of varying intelligence and varying corruption levels. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns maintain a tone of taut creepiness, but the plot's double and triple crosses are more ingenious than believable. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Soderbergh, in what's rumored to be his final theatrical release (don't believe it), jumps from imitating the master to imitating the master imitators. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: "Side Effects" does a nice job teasing current anxieties about depression, medical ethics and class striving with the classic thriller quandary of "Who's playing whom?" Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: In some ways the film is more traditional than you think it will be, becoming a psychological puzzle piece. But Soderbergh lays the puzzle out so neatly, you can't help but be engrossed. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: If this is indeed Soderbergh's final theatrical film, as the director has said he's going into semi-retirement, it's not such a bad way to go out. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Side Effects was shot on digital video that makes it look as if we're peering through dirty glass, but it's still a lavishly dread-fueled suspense movie full of twists, reversals, double crosses, and dangerous liaisons. Read more

Jordan Hoffman, Film.com: It is a bugf--k crazy yarn, more like what you'd expect out of Brian De Palma, but with that ineffable hum -- the Soderbergh snap -- the cool camera, exquisite framing, shallow focus and scenes that don't last a frame longer than they have to. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: It's difficult to escape the impression that the movie is impressed only with its cleverness. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: In trying to merge this alarmist theme with an old-fashioned murder mystery, the filmmakers throw at least one plot-twist sucker-punch too many, leaving the viewer with an "Oh, come on" reaction to the entire film. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: The complexity of emotion, confusion and loss at the film's start gives way to some acrobatic trickery by the end, but "Side Effects" is never less than gripping or entertaining. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: If this does prove to be Soderbergh's final film - and I wouldn't hold my breath - he picked a heck of a one to go out on. Read more

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News: A doozy of a Hitchcockian thriller with Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Effects is a go-for-broke valentine to '80s cinematic psychological potboilers. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: The main thing to keep in mind while watching Steven Soderbergh's playful new thriller is not to take the movie too seriously or else you'll feel betrayed by the end. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: Once Side Effects gets into its crime story, medication is swept aside by movie nonsense. The storyline goes into tangles that have to be dealt with very rapidly if the audience is not to start laughing. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: "Side Effects" has the sleek, chic look of a Soderbergh film -- cool colors, seductive lighting -- but the script, by frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns, is disappointingly clunky. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: [It] will both keep you on your toes and at the edge of your seat. Read more

Mark Jenkins, NPR: The movie maintains its sense of style throughout, but that hardly matters as the story just gets stupider and stupider. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: The movie respects a viewer's intelligence, which should also serve as a warning; don't be lulled into a stupor. Keeping sharp will allow all the fun and menace in this terrific thriller to seep into your head. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: A pill-popping drama that suddenly turns into something entirely different. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Sex, lies, and violence. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: It's the kind of thriller that Alfred Hitchcock might make if he was still alive and active today. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Steven Soderbergh is one of our best and most versatile directors. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Soderbergh came, he saw, he conquered, and now he's moving on. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Side Effects is a hell of a thriller, twisty, terrific and packed with surprises you don't see coming. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: We'd like to believe that our SSRIs and MAOIs will bring us happiness, that love is real, that art or spirituality can offer transcendence. Steven Soderbergh would like to remind us that it's all a trick, and we're on our own. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: It's a gripping, maddening and thoroughly satisfying thriller, made with artfulness and integrity. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Provides a minor but distinct kind of cinematic pleasure: the joy of sitting back and letting a master manipulator mess with your head. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: The film keeps viewers emotionally invested yet intellectually off-balance, suffusing even the most ostensibly straightforward scenes with a sense of free-floating anxiety. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, The Atlantic: Soderbergh is less interested in making statements than he is in skillfully fulfilling genre expectations. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: A crafty teaser that presents itself as one kind of film before gradually evolving into another kind altogether. I, for one, enjoyed both enormously. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: A stylish take on the psychiatric-thriller genre that, despite progressive narrative absurdities, mostly delivers a dose to the pleasure centres. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Side Effects is a cracking thriller that ranks amongst Soderbergh's best, featuring electric performances by Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Channing Tatum. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: Stop reading now, avoid all reviews and blabbermouths, and go see the movie yourself before anyone tells you anything. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: As a thriller in the Hitchcock mould, 'Side Effects' is great fun: its characters are well acted without being entirely likeable, which makes their jeopardy all the more enjoyable while putting us at a clinical remove. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: The emotional depths of the film's first half get bludgeoned by the simplistically lurid twists and turns, which hinge on some egregiously homophobic stereotypes that Soderbergh's clinical touch fails to complicate. Read more

Scott Bowles, USA Today: The movie descends into a TV-grade police procedural, with twists so sharp and a plot so convoluted you may need meds to clear your head. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: Steven Soderbergh's elegantly coiled puzzler spins a tale of clinical depression and psychiatric malpractice into an absorbing, cunningly unpredictable entertainment. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice: Side Effects points out, but never didactically, just how broken our systems have become, whether medical, governmental, or economic. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Like a gel cap in a sip of orange juice, the psycho-pharmacological thriller Side Effects goes down easily, even if its long-term impact turns out to be barely discernible. Read more