All Critics (170)
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Top Critics (44)
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Fresh (145)
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Rotten (25)
Soderbergh is less interested in making statements than he is in skillfully fulfilling genre expectations.
A crafty teaser that presents itself as one kind of film before gradually evolving into another kind altogether. I, for one, enjoyed both enormously.
Steven Soderbergh is one of our best and most versatile directors.
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.
Side Effects virtually demands a three-word review: Just see it.
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.
A real pill of a movie that packs a serious one-two punch as a detective drama coupled with a cautionary tale about the dangers of trying to pharma-cate our troubles away.
The feature evolves from an icy, haunting tale of depression and abandonment into a squalid, sordid, serpentine Alfred Hitchcock pastiche. That it can glide from these two poles with us barely realising is a testament to Soderbergh's talent.
A story that plays subtle tricks with our moral allegiances.
An effortlessly slick medical thriller that makes no grand statements or summations beyond being effortlessly artful and entertaining.
If this puzzling, often very enjoyable medical thriller were directed by almost any film-maker other than Steven Soderbergh, you would be tempted to diagnose it with genre identity disorder.
It's certainly entertaining if you are willing to suspend your disbelief a little.
Another genre exercise for Soderbergh that he has managed to pull off with the help of his Hollywood friends to entertaining, if ultimately rather underwhelming, effect.
An intelligently crafted story, which is briskly paced and highly suspenseful - until a crude and puerile payoff in the third act.
This movie is pure hokum, just as Hitchcock's great originals are, but you only realise this after - just like all the people in the film - you have been thoroughly hooked and duped yourself.
Thrillers don't get much more enjoyable than this one, which shifts cleverly from an issue-based drama to an intriguing mystery and finally into riotously camp mayhem.
As Burns' screenplay takes yet another dark alternate route, our heavily-medicated contemporary society is fearlessly placed under the microscope.
None of the leading characters is heart-warmingly sympathetic, and this enables Soderbergh to put them through hell without making us feel he's being unnecessarily sadistic.
A very satisfying, entertaining and thought-provoking thriller.
A mischievously enthralling trip ...
A ludicrous thriller disguised as a sociopolitical statement on the US pharmaceutical industry.
What a gripping and disturbing thriller this is. Surely it can't be Soderbergh's last movie. Say it ain't so.
Opts for raucous frivolity over genuine substance. But it's great fun while it lasts.
The instability bleeds into the fabric of the film itself, and until the very end, it is thrillingly hard to prise open its puzzle-box lid.
This final (apparently) film from Steven Soderbergh presses all the buttons.
88%
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Top Critic
