Side Effects

Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects (US, 2013) - What begins as a barbed satire of our pill-popping, self-medicating society morphs into something intriguingly different in "Side Effects." Steven Soderbergh's elegantly coiled puzzler spins a tale of clinical depression and psychiatric malpractice into an absorbing, cunningly unpredictable entertainment that, like much of his recent work, closely observes how a particular subset of American society operates in a needy, greedy, paranoid and duplicitous age. Discriminating arthouse audiences not turned off by the antidepressant-heavy subject matter should be held shrink-rapt by what Soderbergh, after years of flirting with retirement, has said will be his last picture "for a long time.". 2013BERic. RATING: 7