Wednesday 20 March 2013

The side effects of Side Effects

1) I enjoyed the Side Effect. It might have been a run of the mill story but the direction that Soderberg took it was very inspiring. I thought that the photography and the music was like where Soderberg was trying to go with Solaris and he he got better at it. I was relieved that Lewd Jaw went for a nearly normal London accent and felt that it was his best performance since eXistenZ, but having said that I am not much one to comment on his performances since I have only seen a handfull of them. But in that light it might be one seemed to make him appear to be a valid actor again after many years.

There might be a few things to say about Lewd Jaw's different accents that are often unkind but it is probably good that he went into acting to try out his variety of different ways of speaking from around the world rather than sit in front of the TV instead practising dodgy ever changing accents. His eXistenZ Canadian accent sounded fine enough.

I liked how Soderberg shoved down the audience's throats lists of psychiatric medication names and their side effects andthe way the way these women were so happily recommending the latest pills as the ultimate thing to the main female character. In the end the products of the pharmaceutical industry are the extreme form of punishment rather than the saviour . Once Lewd Jaw's character found his place, it showed what an evil bastard he could be. I wanted Roony Mara's character to be free, and I thought that Roony Mara and Catherine Zeta Jones started to look nice together, they almost became forgivable. Helmut Newton might have come back from the dead to photograph them together doing interesting things with one another

2) A few days afterwards, I came to terms with the idea that Side Effects must really be about some bored Psychiatrist living out a Walter Mitty type fantasy. It's probably great movie to read too much into in that way without making too much out of it

3) Just for those confused about who Lewd Jaw is, that is the name I give to the actor who goes by the name of Jude Law. Renaming him this way gives the world something to chew over.