What in the cotton pickin’ hell took so long? Mississippi just got around to ratifying the 13th Amendment and residents there mostly have the film “Lincoln” to thank… Via NYPost reports : Abraham Lincoln’s historic battle to end slavery has finally ended, 148 years after the 13th Amendment was first passed. The landmark event happened earlier this month when Mississippi became the final state to officially ratify the amendment, which ended slavery. The remarkable oversight was found because Dr. Ranjan Batra, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, saw Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and was inspired by the film’s message. Batra returned home and started researching when each individual state ratified the 13th Amendment and was shocked to learn that Mississippi was the only state that had failed to do so. Batra shared the horrifying discovery with his friend Ken Sullivan, who then went and saw “Lincoln” for himself. “People stood up and applauded at the end of it. That’s the first time I ever saw an audience do that,” Batra told the Clarion-Ledger. “I felt very connected to history.” The strange part for Sullivan was that he remembered when the state ratified the amendment in 1995, when he was a senior in high school. Apparently, state Senator Hillman Frazier introduced a resolution to ratify the amendment in 1995, which unanimously passed both the Mississippi Senate and House, only for the resolution to never become official because then-Secretary of State Dick Molpus never sent a copy of the resolution to the Office of the Federal Register. The state’s mistake was finally corrected on January 30th when the office of current Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann filed the official paperwork. On February 7th the director of the Federal Register, Charles A. Barth, wrote back, “With this action, the State of Mississippi has ratified the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” “We’re very deliberate in our state. We finally got it right.” Frazier said at the news. Better late than never, we guess… Shutterstock
Girls actor Alex Karpovsky is pretty great at conveying simmering annoyance with his tomahawk-like face, and he has plenty to be annoyed about in this exclusive video clip from the dark comedy Red Flag, which he wrote and directed. I hope the song that actors Onur Tukel and Jennifer Prediger are caterwauling in the car was improvised by them during filmmaking because it would be crap-tastic even if Adele sang it. (Please don’t tell me Adele does sing it.) Here’s the official synopsis for the film: A laugh-out-loud road trip comedy, starring writer/director Alex Karpovsky (“Girls”) as Alex Karpovsky, a newly-single indie filmmaker who hits the road with an old friend (Onur Tukel) to promote one of his films. As the pair travels from one half-empty theater to the next, pursued by an adoring fan (Jennifer Prediger) who drives them into an exceptionally uncomfortable love triangle, Alex-as-Alex is forced to suffer an endless series of humiliations, each one more absurd than the last. I’m totally guessing here, but I bet Henry becomes even more annoying after he goes into that casino and loses that misshapen wad of money he’s flashing. The answer will be available on Tuesday when Red Flag and another Karpovsky-directed title, Rubberneck , premieres on VOD and then opens theatrically on Friday, Feb. 22. And if that song that Tukel and Prediger are butchering is an actual song, can someone please tell me what it is so I can mock it more specifically? Thanks. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
With less than two weeks before the Academy Awards , the Oscar conversation is veering from “What now?” to “What if?” Amid all the talk of frontrunners and inevitabilities, some pundits are pondering the inscrutable. What if Oscar voters suddenly ignore all that Argo mojo (which got a further boost last weekend with Best Picture and Best Director wins at the BAFTAs)? What if the Best Supporting Actress race isn’t fait accompli , but instead, as Roger Ebert observed, asserts, as in years past, its independence as the category “where the voters like to throw a curve ball?” What if a BAFTA win earned Emmanuelle Riva a little Oscar Amour ? Let’s check out the Gold Linings Playbook to see how the pundits are calling the races this week: Academy Award For Best Picture A producer, an actor and a director — that sounds like the beginning of a joke, but this anonymous trio shared their Oscar ballots with The Los Angeles Times ’ Glenn Whipp. The results are another indication that several of the major Oscar races are at this late date, too close to call. They also hint that Oscar voters might want to, in the words of the Director, “reward the wealth of great work.” For Best Picture, the producer chose Zero Dark Thirty , the Director Argo , and the Actor Silver Linings Playbook . The latter should please Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, who this week issued a provocative call to arms against Argo to Oscar voters: “At this stage of the game, a vote for Lincoln or Pi is effing wasted…. Why stick to your guns at this stage? To what end? So you can say to yourself “I refused to budge!…I stuck by my principles!”? That and $1.75 will get you a bus ticket (Editor’s note: I checked with Metro and $1.75 won’t get you on the Silver Line—insert your own Playbook pun here). If you want to make a difference you need to stand up, man up, give it up and cast your vote for the one movie that has a real chance of stealing the Best Picture Oscar away from Argo. …” Wells’ ideal choice would be Zero Dark Thirty , but he puts it in the same “can’t possibly win” boat as Lincoln or Pi, and so he suggested Silver Linings Playbook for the block. This did not sit well with a good portion of commenters to his post. which Wells acknowledged the next day (“My suggestion was mocked, spat upon. But at least it was honest and constructive….”). Which brings up the role of the Oscar pundit: Is it to objectively track the ebb and flow of the Oscar race, or to act as advocate? I asked Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone, one of the first of the Oscar bloggers 14 years ago. She graciously emailed back: “Job one for an Oscar blogger is to read the race as accurately as possible…Every time an Oscar blogger pretends to know what all of the Academy are thinking God kills a kitten. Usually that information is coming from a publicist — an old trick that rarely works anymore. But sometimes it comes from someone like Anne Thompson who really works the beat, goes to the parties and screenings and talks to members. I don’t think it’s a foolproof way of producing reliable results but I usually take Anne’s word over just about anyone else’s because I know she’s in the thick of it.To survive in today’s (competitive) climate, you have to be a little of both: someone who can read the race and someone who advocates when necessary.” Discuss. 1. Argo 2. Lincoln 3. Silver Linings Playbook 4. Life of Pi 5. Zero Dark Thirty 6. Beasts of the Southern Wild 7. Les Miserables 8. Amour 9. Django Unchained 2013 Academy Awards: The Best Director Nominees With Ben Affleck , Kathryn Bigelow and Tom Hooper not even nominated, this category seems the most elusive. “It’s an exciting twist that leaves the Oscar race almost unprecedentedly free of bellwethers, as the five men in the running have won scarcely any major precursor awards between them,” writes In Contention’s Guy Lodge. In the aftermath of the BAFTAs, Vanity Fair ’s Julie Miller offered some tips for adjusting your Oscar pool ballot. She, too, seems stymied by this category. “The safe bet is on [Steven] Spielberg ,” she suggested, “for rallying Daniel Day-Lewis and screenwriter Tony Kushner and commandeering a decades-long production to make Lincoln .” Once again, the anonymous Academy voters who shared their ballots with Whipp were all over the map when it came to the Best Director race. The Director chose Benh Zeitlin for Beasts of the Southern Wild (“just floored me in the originality of his vision”), the Actor David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook , and the Producer Spielberg, but only because he couldn’t vote for the snubbed Kathryn Bigelow (It has come to this for Lincoln : On Abe’s birthday this week, the Associated Pr ess interviewed several filmgoers who reported falling asleep during the film). 1.Steven Spielberg ( Lincoln ) 2 David O. Russell ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 3. Ang Lee ( Life of Pi ) 4. Michael Haneke ( Amour ) 5. Benh Zeitlin ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ) 2013 Oscar Nominations For Best Actor Another award and another awesome acceptance speech. Daniel Day-Lewis was in self-deprecating mode at the BAFTA awards poking fun at his painstaking and meticulous method and character preparation. In accepting his Best Actor award, he remarked that he had “stayed in character as myself for the last 55 years” in anticipation of winning a BAFTA.” Cannot wait to hear what he will say at the Oscars. 1. Daniel Day-Lewis ( Lincoln ) 2. Hugh Jackman ( Les Miserables ) 3. Bradley Cooper ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 4. Denzel Washington ( Flight ) 5. Joaquin Phoenix ( The Master ) 2013 Academy Award Nominations For Best Actress Is a BAFTA upset win for 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva really a game changer? Deadline Hollywood’s Pete Hammond and The Wrap’s Steve Pond think so. And there is some precedent. BAFTA-winner Marion Cotillard went on to win the Oscar without the benefit of a Golden Globe or SAG Award. The last two Best Actress Oscar-winners, Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman , were also BAFTA recipients. Oscar voters might also be swayed, not just by her devastating performance, but also by the fact that the actress whose screen breakthrough was in 1961’s Last Year at Marienbad would become the oldest Academy Award winner (she turns 86 Oscar night). When she attends the ceremony, it will be her first time in Los Angeles. Will Oscar voters be able to resist that backstory? Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain did themselves no favors by agreeing to appear on Zach Galifianakis ’ Funny or Die diss-com series, Between Two Ferns . The “Oscar Buzz Edition” premiered online this week, and it was a hit and mostly miss bag. Anne Hathaway , playing drunk, Christoph Waltz , Sally Field and Amy Adams acquitted themselves nicely, though. Adams, especially, should be given at least an honorary Oscar for the gravitas she brought to the line, “Don’t you ever fart on my tits again.” Me; I prefer Jiminy Glick. 1. Jennifer Lawrence ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 2. Emmanuelle Riva ( Amour ) 3. Jessica Chastain ( Zero Dark Thirty ) 4. Naomi Watts ( The Impossible ) 5. Quvenzhane Wallis ( Beasts of the Southern Wild ) 2013 Oscars: Best Supporting Actor Nominees Here, too, something may be in the air: a groundswell for Christoph Waltz, who earned a BAFTA award last weekend and also won a Golden Globe. He hosts Saturday Night Live this weekend and the mostly male, presumably Quentin Tarantino -loving writing staff will most likely be more inspired than they were for Jennifer Lawrence. While SAG-winner Tommy Lee Jones remains the frontrunner without doing any campaigning (he’s Ebert’s pick in his Outguess Ebert contest), Vanity Fair ’s Julie Miller reminds that ”the only time that Jones has triumphed in the category at a major awards show this season was at the SAG Awards, where Waltz was not nominated.” Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company is going full Scorsese for Robert De Niro (whom the Producer and the Actor picked on their Oscar ballots). In addition to the ad reminding voters that DeNiro hasn’t won an Oscar since Raging Bull , Glenn Whipp reports receiving a targeted ad which replays DeNiro’s recent emotional appearance on Katie Couric’s talk show. Over the top? That’s what they said about Melissa Leo’s self-produced glamor ads on behalf of The Fighter. And she still won. 1. Tommy Lee Jones ( Lincoln ) 2. Christoph Waltz ( Django Unchained ) 3. Robert De Niro ( Silver Linings Playbook ) 4. Alan Arkin ( Argo ) 5. Philip Seymour Hoffman ( The Master ) 2013 Academy Award Nominees For Best Supporting Actress The aforementioned director and producer both picked Anne Hathaway (the Actor went with “underappreciated” Jacki Weaver ). She is the near-unanimous choice among 24 out of 25 of the Gold Derby pundits and the unanimous pick of the Gurus o’ Gold, who include Thompson, Hammond and Pond. New York magazine’s trendspotting Vulture column asked it best this week: “If Not Anne Hathaway, Then Who?” The question is moot (but this being an historically “gotcha” category, one hastens to add the qualifier, “or is it?)” 1. Anne Hathaway ( Les Miserables ) 2. Sally Field ( Lincoln ) 3. Helen Hunt ( The Sessions ) 4. Amy Adams ( The Master ) 5. Jacki Weaver ( Silver Linings Playbook ) Last Week on Oscar Index: Killing ‘Lincoln’ Is All The Rage As Academy Voting Begins Follow Movieline on Twitter .
At the risk of sounding ungrateful for a fresh Die Hard sequel, Russia needs its own John McClane movie the way Uncle Sam needs a bright red babushka. On the flimsiest of pretexts, Bruce Willis’ obstinate hero travels all the way to Moscow to find trouble in A Good Day to Die Hard , teaming up with his never-before-seen son to stop a generic terrorist from stealing weapons-grade uranium from Chernobyl — a subpar plot that feels suspiciously like someone tried to plug McClane into a preexisting screenplay. Fox’s shaky bid to boost this installment’s international appeal could backfire domestically. Between this and 2007’s PG-13-rated Live Free or Die Hard , the studio seems determined to test audiences’ definition of a Die Hard movie. Is it enough to air-drop a bruised and bloody Bruce Willis into any old action movie and hope fans follow? Can the series keep trotting out half-forgotten family members — a daughter played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the last one, and now Jai Courtney as McClane’s estranged son Jack — to draw him into the fray? Enticed by either the attractive Russian market or the even more appealing incentives Hungary dangled for shooting in Budapest, someone decided to send McClane abroad, where the NYPD detective has no jurisdiction — and no qualms about using his usual brute-force tactics to stay alive. Considering the original Die Hard pitted its modern-day cowboy against a squad of arch Nazi stereotypes four decades after World War II ended, perhaps it follows that the series should dredge up an old Cold War adversary this time out, conveniently ignoring the fact Chernobyl is as far from Moscow as Three Mile Island is from Detroit. And so the pic, which runs a full reel shorter than its predecessors, sends McClane to the former Soviet Union with a ridiculous plan to spring Jack from jail. (McClane literally saunters up to the courthouse at precisely the moment huge armored vehicles arrive to blow the place apart.) Little does he realize that Jack has things under control, having been arrested as part of an elaborate CIA mission to arrange the defection of a well-connected political prisoner, Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch), who claims to have a file with incriminating details on high-ranking government officials. Though not much of a MacGuffin, it’s more than enough to get things rolling, and director John Moore ( Behind Enemy Lines ) delivers an elaborate, logistically daunting car chase around the capital, featuring Jack and Komarov in a van, a squad of heavily armed assassins in pursuit, and third-wheel John bringing up the rear — a surly papa bear determined to protect his endangered cub, whether Jack wants his help or not. The entire sequence works like gangbusters, giving the new Dolby Atmos super-surround system (debuted on Brave ) a real workout, though it borrows a bit too heavily from other films in which Westerners have laid waste to rival cities. Generally speaking, the action elements aren’t the problem here. They’re certainly loud enough. It’s the obligatory intra-family squabbling and preposterous plotting that threaten to derail this nonsensical sequel, especially a series of swapped allegiances between Komarov and his daughter Irina (Yulia Snigir), a lethal stunner with her own share of daddy issues. Things go bang, the McClanes get their share of battle scars and the trauma of it all proves the perfect bonding experience to heal old wounds. “Need a hug?” dad sarcastically asks his stand-offish son, who seems to have inherited his sense of humor from the other side of the family. Willis still packs that rapscallion charm, balancing his wisecracking, reluctant-hero shtick with the unstoppable, all-American quality that earned the original film its title. But the chemistry between him and Courtney is nonexistent, with the younger thesp, who makes co-star Cole Hauser look expressive, adding so little to the equation, one can only hope the studio doesn’t plan to pass the franchise on to him. Watching this expendable, action-packed sequel, it’s impossible not to think in such cynical terms. To Fox’s credit, the series is permitted to return to its original R rating, which means McClane can once again cuss freely. (Oddly, cutting back on language, rather than violence, earned the previous pic a PG-13.) Still, the closest thing to a new catch-phrase screenwriter Skip Woods can muster is the exasperated, “Some fuckin’ vacation!” — a line that openly contradicts the reason the film sent him to Russia to begin with. What vacation? If this is McClane’s idea of time away from the office, they’d better send him back to work before he hits retirement age.
The day before A Good Day to Die Hard hit theaters, fans in New York City sat through a marathon screening of the first four films at the AMC Empire 25 — and were rewarded with a visit from John McClane himself, Bruce Willis, before seeing the new film. Jai Courtney, who plays McClane’s grown-up son in the film, was also in attendance, and both actors agreed their characters share a common trait: stubbornness. “Just like most guys,” said Willis, “he thinks he knows everything and…doesn’t.” I also asked Courtney if the stunts in Die Hard films, or at least this one, are as old school as they look. “We blew things up. For real.” Courtney bragged. “There’s over a hundred cars being crashed, for real.” Check out my full red carpet interview below, and watch more than one hundred fans blowing out their lungs as they scream for the return of this 25-year-old franchise: Follow Grace Randolph on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Southern goth-chic gets a swoony supernatural makeover in Beautiful Creatures , a teen franchise-starter that suggests what Twilight might have looked like with a reasonable budget, a competent script and halfway-decent special effects, but still saddled with next-best source material. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s book, the first of four, reps a calculated synthesis of proven YA-lit elements and recent publishing success tactics, which makes for ingratiating storytelling on the page. Fortunately, writer-director Richard LaGravenese has jettisoned most of the novel and refashioned its core mythology and characters into a feverishly enjoyable guilty pleasure, unapologetic in its mass-market rebel ‘tude. Though Beautiful Creatures has what it takes to support a series — a “gifted” girl, a smitten guy and powerful evil forces determined to keep them apart — the film could face trouble winning over cynical young auds who view it as the latest shameless attempt to cash in on the fantasy craze, which of course it is. And yet, now that the Twilight and Harry Potter series have run their course, the timing seems right for a soapy romance in which a sensitive small-town hunk (Alden Ehrenreich) falls hard for the new girl in town, not really minding that she’s a witch — or “caster,” as they prefer to be called here. With a dark-haired, pale-skinned look more likely to inspire 1920s audiences than today’s supermodel-obsessed tastes, Alice Englert ( Ginger and Rosa ) brings a refreshingly relatable quality to the role of 15-year-old Lena Duchannes, who’s moved to dead-end Gatlin, S.C., after things got out of control at her last school. Lena wants to keep a low profile while counting down the days until her 16th birthday, when a family curse predicts she will be “claimed” as a dark witch, but Ethan recognizes her as the mysterious girl he’s been dreaming about for months, and insists on getting to know this melancholy stranger. The best young-adult offerings tap into deeper themes that resonate with teens, but this one trades mostly in dopey wish fulfillment, granting magical powers and a devoted admirer to girls who imagine themselves as outsiders. It’s about feeling different, having a secret and discovering that special soulmate in whom one can confide. With his heavy brow knit in an expression of deep concern, Ehrenreich looks the way a young Orson Welles might if cast on a CW series, with a plucky Southern accent in place of a sonorous radio voice. Though the film preserves the idea of Ethan as narrator, it ditches the novel’s off-puttingly snide tone, allowing the popular girls — led by self-righteous ex-g.f. Emily (Zoey Deutch) — to damn themselves, while saving the amusing putdowns for Gatlin. Nearly everything about the book has been streamlined for the screen, which may rankle fans (who are likely to miss the ethereal song that binds Ethan to Lena, at least), but it makes for a far cleaner plot. While Lena spices up a traditional teen courtship with doses of magic — as when she caps a date by conjuring snow out of thin air on a muggy December afternoon — her powerful dark relatives (a vampy cousin played by Emmy Rossum and shape-shifting undead mom Sarafine, played with lip-smacking relish by Emma Thompson ) arrive to demonstrate what happens when witches go bad. The film goes out of its way to forge memorable character introductions, which will serve the series well, should sequels follow (more confusing is a scene toward the end when Ethan, a sophomore in the book, is shown leaving for NYU). By granting LaGravenese the freedom to refashion the novel as he sees fit, Warner Bros. gives Beautiful Creatures an edge over other recent hit fantasy-series adaptations, which have often shown stiff, gospel-like fidelity to their source material. By contrast, this project comes across as downright blasphemous — and not only against the potboiler that inspired it; LaGravenese’s script takes on Bible-beaters, book-banners and all who invoke God to justify small-minded prejudice. In one particularly campy scene, Sarafine goes head-to-head with Lena’s guardian ( Jeremy Irons , the picture of drawling Old South gentility) in the local church, dabbing holy water behind her ears like perfume as she dismisses the superstitious townsfolk’s notions of religion. Considering how little it takes to get certain groups riled up about what their kids are reading, the film goes awfully far out of its way to align itself with blacklisted literature, offering up Viola Davis’ voodoo “seer” (and resident librarian) as its high priestess. Garcia and Stohl clearly saw To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye as models for the series, although Beautiful Creatures demonstrates few of their insights into human nature, hewing closer to Judy Blume and Twilight fan fiction. Likewise, while Ethan and Lena turn one another onto Vonnegut and Bukowski, throwing their names around for punk credibility, either writer would surely recoil to see himself quoted in this context. The film ultimately plays like so much teenage girl poetry, heavy on the angst, endearingly naive in its notions of love and yet brought vividly to life by a game cast, evocative locations (both indoors and out) and stunning anamorphic lensing. Louisiana works nicely for Civil War-obsessed Gatlin, suggesting a tween-friendly True Blood . RELATED: ‘Beautiful Creatures’ NYC Premiere: Twi-Hard With A Vengeance? Follow Movieline on Twitter.
‘It’s so funny how everything in my life connects,’ she teases to MTV News on red carpet, where Oprah Winfrey gushed over the film. By Rebecca Thomas Beyonc
Heck No, Them Maid Roles Gotta Go! Just in case you didn’t believe her the first time she said it, Viola Davis is speaking up LOUDLY about how modern cinema needs to portray black people — as something other than maids and slaves! Via Salon.com : Viola Davis, nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her role as a maid in the Civil Rights Era-set movie, “The Help,” will most likely never play a maid again. She recently told CNN, “I’m tired of that,” explaining, “Me and Octavia [Spencer], Aunjanue Ellis, Roslyn Ruff – we all played maids in ‘The Help’ and it was fabulous. It’s a fabulous story because we were personalized and all of those things, but I think that people need to see an African American in the 21st century integrated in the life of this town and family who’s not in servitude.” Except that in “Beautiful Creatures,” the book that Davis’s next movie is based upon, her character Amma is, again, a maid. She told the Hollywood Reporter that “[Director] Richard LaGravenese forbade us from reading the book. He said, “Do not touch the book.” (Naturally, Davis then got the book). “I read half of it and then I put it down because Amma is a maid, and I just said, ‘Ok, there’s nothing I can learn from this.’ ” But then LaGravenese changed the character for the film adaptation, who became a hybrid of Amma and a local librarian who has magical powers. Davis called it “a total reimagining of the character,” and said that even though it veers from the original text, the change makes sense in the greater context of the movie: “I’m going to be confident and bold and say I like it because, listen, I understand and I respect the book and I think the book is wonderful but this is 2013 and I think that when black people are woven into the lives of characters in 2013, then I think they play other roles than maids. I think that that needs to be explored and I hope that the audience is willing to suspend their disbelief and embrace what Richard LaGravenese has given them.” The movie explores the budding romance between Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) and Lena Duchaness (Alice Englert), a mysterious newcomer with supernatural powers, set in a fictional South Carolina town. So basically she’s a maid who got promoted to a librarian with magic powers? AND they still made her wear dashikis — so is that really any better? We realize this is no joking matter and we’re glad Viola Davis has finally come to her senses. Black actresses have played enough maids for all time. They’ve also played enough hoes and dope dealers. When will Hollywood get the memo though?
Spring Breakers has the formula for free media attention down pat, just slowly release promos pictures of Selena Gomez , Vanessa Hudgens , Ashley Benson , and Rachel Korine frolicking in bikinis and we lap it up happily. We’re just helpless in the face of such a dastardly marketing scheme! Even through Selena Gomez has the only non-nude role in the film, her camel toe in the latest round of photos has left us feeling much like this guy ! Closer skinspection reveals Selena appears to groom her downtown in the Brazilian manner. More pics after the jump!
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.” Establishing a mood of grim foreboding with a brief glimpse of a blood-spattered domestic scene, the film rewinds three months to the incident that sets things in motion. Emily Taylor ( Rooney Mara ), a New Yorker in her mid-20s, awaits the prison release of her husband, Martin ( Channing Tatum ), a former business exec who has just finished serving four years for his involvement in an insider-trading scheme. But the couple’s happy reunion is complicated not only by Martin’s period of readjustment and unemployment, but also by Emily’s ongoing struggles with anxiety and depression. The story is thus immediately rooted in an easily recognizable and, for some, relatable world of financial difficulty and pharmaceutical overreliance. After Emily’s condition declines to the point of attempting self-harm, she sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Jonathan Banks ( Jude Law) , who puts her on a try-this-try-that regimen of drugs that include Prozac, Zoloft and Ablixa. The names of these antidepressants and their assorted side effects are rattled off with cheeky proficiency in the well-researched script by Scott Z. Burns (“Contagion,” “The Informant!”), and soon Emily starts to manifest the byproducts of so much medication, including nausea, a heightened libido and a disturbing habit of sleepwalking. Soderbergh’s sinuous HD camerawork (done under his usual pseudonym, Peter Andrews) maintains an unnervingly intimate focus on Emily in these early passages, dominated by breakdowns and consulting sessions. Yet even in intense closeups that enable Mara to vividly register Emily’s panic, fear and vaguely suicidal impulses, the direction has a certain cool-toned detachment that keeps the film from becoming a wholly subjective portrait of mental instability. That distanced quality persists even when Emily’s behavior, under the influence of Ablixa, takes a shocking turn for the worst. At this point, the dramatic perspective shifts to Banks, who suddenly finds himself professionally compromised as a provocative question comes to the fore: If a patient is not responsible for actions taken under the influence of a powerful drug, does the liability shift to the doctor who prescribed it? But as Banks launches himself into an increasingly obsessive quest to clear his name, leading him into private conversations with Emily’s former therapist, Dr. Victoria Siebel ( Catherine Zeta-Jones ), the peculiar feeling persists that not everything about the case may be what it seems. The very title of Side Effects — a suggestion of unintended, undesired consequences that distract from the matter at hand — provides a clue as to the level of narrative misdirection Soderbergh and Burns are up to. Suffice to say that what the film is actually about, and the specific social malaise being diagnosed, suddenly seem to shift beneath the characters’ feet, as the story turns its attention from chemical dependencies and shaky medical ethics to the dark recesses of the human mind. The rapid-fire twists, reversals and flashbacks that crowd the third act may strain plausibility to the breaking point, but by the end, viewers are likely to feel as though they’ve been craftily but not unfairly manipulated. The casting of Soderbergh alums Law, Zeta-Jones and Tatum lends the picture a somewhat valedictory feel, and if Side Effects is indeed the final chapter of at least one phase of the director’s career, it gets the job done in modest but assured fashion. Thematically, this efficient genre piece feels entirely of a piece with Soderbergh’s prior work; no less than Magic Mike and The Girlfriend Experience , it’s keenly invested in the material question of how individuals operate in an economy that leaves them with fewer and fewer honest options. The film’s careful attention to the details of its psychiatric milieu compels fascination above and beyond the characters, and indeed, Soderbergh’s typical disinterest in conventional audience identification has rarely been more pronounced. Mara’s chilly yet vulnerable quality, exploited so effectively in her films with David Fincher, keeps the viewer at a sympathetic distance; Law makes Banks seem weaselly and pompous even when he assumes the role of protagonist; and Zeta-Jones, as usual, plays her part with a slyly seductive allure. Of all the actors, Ann Dowd ( Compliance ) rings the sole notes of earnest emotion in a small role as Emily’s mother-in-law. Editing is sharp and precise, and Thomas Newman’s churning score amps up the story’s intensity. Expertly chosen locations and Howard Cummings’ production design create an offhandedly diverse snapshot of New York, ranging from a high-security mental institution to a table at Le Cirque where Dr. Banks and his colleagues talk shop. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
