Prolific moviemaker Steven Soderbergh has said that he’s retiring from making motion pictures, and that the psychological drama Side Effects, will be his last film for the foreseeable future. If so, he’s gone out on a relatively high note, our Dan Lybarger reports, for he’s “managed to deliver a rare character-driven thriller that works without a single car crash.”
Lybarger also interviews Side Effects screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who seems to specialize in movies about people who aren’t quite what they seem.
“I like complicated characters, and I think audiences are liking them more and more,” he says. “When you look at TV shows like Homeland or Breaking Bad, those are characters who are very, very complicated. I think we relate to those people in a more authentic way than we do if people are just black-and-white.”
Don’t expect such subtlety in the week’s other offering though — Lybarger also sat through the Jason Bateman/Melissa McCarthy comedy Identity Thief, a movie of little heart and less brain that seems unlikely to missed after its brief turn in the cineplex is over.