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Saturday 9 March 2013

Steven Soderbergh has declared that Side Effects is his last movie.

Jude Law stars as a psychiatrist quick to hand out anti-depressant pills in Steven Sondbergh's film Side Effects, which turns into a thriller with a nicely twisting plot

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Films of the week Side Effects (15), Robot & Frank (12A), Oz The Great And Powerful (PG) Reviewed by Demetrios Matheou

The director of such fantastic and diverse films as Sex, Lies And Videotape, Out Of Sight, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Solaris and Oceans 11 apparently wants to paint. He will be missed.

Side Effects is not the spectacular or self-important swansong others may have strived for, but it does represent the kind of smart, tricky, character-driven, genre-busting film that first drew the director towards a mainstream audience. This one also has a topical issue attached: having tackled illegal drugs in Traffic, Soderbergh now considers those troublesome legal ones – anti-depressants.

Martin Taylor (Channing Tatum) is about to be released from prison, where he has served four years for insider trading. His wife Emily (Rooney Mara) has loyally stood by him – quite a feat, given the world's hatred of Wall Street hoods. It is only when he arrives home that the built-up pressure seems to crash down upon her. And so Emily finds herself in the care of a psychiatrist, Dr Banks (Jude Law), a conscientious fellow but too quick to medicate – prescribing her an anti-depressant that is new on the market and, when she reports certain side-effects, merely adding another to balance the effects of the first. The way the film is set up, we feel we are embarking on an issue-based drama, one in which a well-meaning but misguided doctor walks into scandal. But Soderbergh and his screenwriter Scott Z Burns have something else planned for us. Once they trip us up, the film segues into thriller territory, the plot twisting and turning deliciously until the end. The result is intriguing, handsomely shot and highly enjoyable. Mara, previously seen as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and clearly a chameleon actress, is perfectly cast as a character who keeps us on our toes, Catherine Zeta Jones is wonderfully arch as a rival shrink, and Law a likeable, flawed anchorman.One tries to refrain from using the overused word "gem", but since the protagonist of Robot & Frank is a former cat burglar, I think I can here. It's certainly a wonderful film, marrying ingenuity with a big heart. It is set in the near future, one at once familiar and novel. Frank (Frank Langella) lives alone in upstate New York, stoically fighting the onset of dementia. His son Hunter (James Marsden) visits each week, until his growing concern leads him to purchase a "healthcare aid" – namely, a robot – to take care of dad. At first, Frank rebels, desperate to find the concealed off switch, until he realises the robot has a particular skill set – including an ability to compute a safe's many combinations at speed – that will make him an excellent accomplice as he comes out of retirement.What ensues is often very funny, its humour that of any buddy movie – the sparks between two very different personalities. And this robot, voiced with a sweet deadpan by Peter Sarsgaard, most definitely has a personality, as he tries to carry out his programme to care for the old man, while indulging his dangerous habits. "You're starting to grow on me," says the irascible Frank, to which the smooth-voiced droid replies, "Thank you, Frank. It's time for your enema." At the film's heart are two perennial themes – ageing and parent-sibling relations – that are treated with thoughtfulness, poignancy and originality. While the former career criminal has not been much of a father, he suddenly finds himself able to bestow his profession on a sort of surrogate son, without having to worry about the morality of it. Ironically, while his own memory fades, the robot's computer memory holds the evidence that could send him back to prison.It is a brave man who revisits one of Hollywood's most beloved classics, The Wizard Of Oz. Spider-Man's Sam Raimi clearly has the cojones, and is a good director, but with all its 3D special effects and charm, Oz The Great And Powerful can't fill the original's ruby slippers. A prequel to the 1939 movie, this does offer something that neither the previous film nor any of Frank L Baum's 14 Oz novels did, namely a back story for the charlatan wizard. Thus we find Oz (James Franco) as a magician in a travelling circus, an illusionist on stage, a shallow conman and philanderer off it. Whisked by a tornado to Oz, he is immediately mistaken as the prophesised saviour who will save the land from the wicked witch – playing along because of the promise of gold.There is some cute character development leading to the revelation of which of the three witch-sisters – played by Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams – will become the hooked-nosed and cackling Wicked Witch Of The West, who caused us to shudder so as children. And I like the way Raimi not only follows the original's move from black and white, in Kansas, to glorious colour for Oz, but frames those earlier scenes in the same academy ratio that was used in the 1930s. The director is undoubtedly sensitive to his source. But the film suffers from a stifling absence of narrative drive. Franco both overacts and underwhelms, dragging the film down with his performance. And of the witches, only Williams has an innate otherworldliness. Ultimately, the film lacks the very thing we associate with Oz: magic.

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