SIDE EFFECTS

What a refreshing delightful treat it is to see a movie without gun play, car chases, phony romantic scenes and comic book characters. Though i enjoy those movies too! (with lots of blood and gore.) This movie has a  great story that was tense right from the beginning with delicious Hitchcockian twists and turns and with good solid acting.

I'm not going to be able to give much of a review because the turns in the plot happen pretty early on. Here's the bare bones:
Rooney Mara is Emily the wife of Martin (Channing Tatum who is getting better and better in his movie roles) who has just gotten out of jail for insider trading. She is having a harder time than he adjusting to his release and becomes really depressed and attempts suicide.

Enter Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law in a very unrestrained emotional role), psychiatrist, who begins treating Emily. At this point, its easy to think the film will focus on the cavalier prescription of mood-altering drugs and the demand by people to feel different or better and the greed of the drug companies and doctors being wined and dined by big Pharma and paid big bucks to participate in drug studies which are supposedly going to be neutral evaluations of a new medicine. However, the movie starts shifting focus at this point and the winding story line really takes off.

Catherine Zeta-Jones plays a psychiatrist who has treated Emily in the past and she's great in her role of cool and arrogant and all together professional.

and the film stayed exciting until the very last scene which is unusual in my opinion.

Bill gave it  an 8 and i gave it an 8.75 because of the cleverness of the story and the fact that my assumptions about what the movie was about kept shifting.