Last updated on October 4, 2013
Side Effects – Steven Soderbergh decided, for some reason, that Side Effects should stand as his last film (before his upcoming painting “sabbatical”) and the testament to his career. Whatever, I’m not complaining, as Side Effects take what could function like a generic B-movie thriller and infuses it with panache and spectacle. If I had to label it with a term, I’d call it “exploitation”, as it throws lies, sex, and video tape (plus a little bit of psychological buffonery on the side) right at the viewer to create a rather tense, and then a rather preposterous, thriller.
I hate to spoil anything, really, but the common byline should suffice. Emily Taylor, despite being reunited with her husband from prison, becomes severely depressed with emotional episodes and suicide attempts. Her psychiatrist, Jonathan Banks, after conferring with her previous doctor, eventually prescribes an experimental new medication called Ablixa. Ablixa contains some…unintended side effects, which constitute the whole of the film. Seriously, to tell you anything past that little description will completely spoil it. Just go and watch it; as of the time of this writing, the film just appeared on Netflix, so hop to it.
But that really doesn’t say much, does it? So I imagine I’m just going to throw this SPOILERS tag out and hope that you quit reading this before you SPOIL the film for yourself. Got it? Get it? Good. Stop reading now or you will not like it!
So Soderbergh’s film Contagion criticized world governments, and people in general, for being horrible at solving global disease crisis, and The Informant! bothered to criticize businesses, so you’d imagine Side Effects’ target would lie in the psychology industry. Wrong, somehow. Dead wrong. Instead, it starts out that way as a complete and utter misdirect! The whole structure of the film and the way it portrays characters misleads you with cinematic sleight-of-hand, and you’re none the wiser. Frankly, when Emily murders her husband, you don’t look at the subtle cues that she might not be sleepwalking, nor do you ever suspect until the last (admittedly crazy) half hour of the film. In that respect, Side Effects brilliantly performs the task of a good piece of entertainment by keeping you guessing.
However, I can imagine people angry at this sort of plot. Jude Law convincingly plays as an conspiracy theorist for the entire second act, and we think he’s crazy. Heck, we don’t even know that this man, who we see about ten minutes into the film, is the actual protagonist! Then things turns hairy as Rooney Mara becomes an evil sociopath who concocts a crazy plan with her psychiatrist to steal money through the failure of a drug. Also, murdering her husband worked on the side, I guess. Then the “evil lesbians” plot point gets thrown in, and Soderbergh makes us watch this campy narrative like we want it. Which we do, because we’re already invested. Who cares what happens? I just want to know it.
So, other than the film turning into Wild Things/Basic Instinct right at the end, and getting somewhat absurd (if enjoyable), I recommend it. Just watch out for the sex scenes and the like; the content advisory on IMDB will tell you whether or not you will watch it or not
Project Gotham Racing – After the drubbing I gave Project Gotham Racing last week, I figured that I would never play the game again, or never really get it. Boy, did I prove myself wrong.
For whatever reason, playing PGR3 first actually helped! Not that either game contains a tutorial or hints of any kind, but the racing in this game somehow made it more accessible. If anything, I’d call PGR an enjoyable, if extremely unintuitive, racing game. It requires using the gas, the brake, and the handbrake in different combination to get around hairpin turns and corners. In general, you’ll need to find the correct speed before every corner; that just requires trial and error, admittedly, but you’ll get the sense of it over time. Second, you use the normal brake to take wide turns and make narrow corner more palatable. Lastly, you use the handbrake to turn fast around narrow areas of the track, slide across a wide area at high speeds, and generally look rather awesome doing it.
Now, I’m simplifying things for the sake of explanation, but you’ll need all of these various function in tandem, whether to brake into a 90 degree turn and throw the back end of your car around using the handbrake, or finding that perfect angle by which to roar around a particular area with the least speed lost. Even then, you’ll find yourself ramming the car straight into walls, prompting an instantaneous restart on your part. The click-click-click of various triggers on the Xbox 360 controller sounds and, more importantly, feels like you’re racing an honest-to-god race with incredibly dangerous courses with incredibly fast cars. If most arcade racers eschew realistic controls completely, then Project Gotham Racing at least tries to make arcade racing into something akin to an actually fun (gasp!) simulation of the real thing.
The Kudos system, for my part, still doesn’t do that much for me. Doing “cool” things in a race mostly comes down to drifting well and at the right times, and only at higher difficulties will the player need to pay attention to it. Does it provides a strange “score attack” incentive for many people? I bet it does! Yet, I find the constant push-pull between both sides a little annoying. This isn’t a snowboarding game, if you get what I mean, and “tricks” in car terms just look like fast cars racing fast. Again, the system’s well-designed for the purpose of most individual races, but the system appears arbitrary in light of a racing’s game goal.
So, my initial impressions of “unintuitive racing game” proved true. BUT (and that’s a big BUT), Project Gotham Racing inspires that racing fever that forces the player to strive for perfection. In that sense, I can’t fault it one bit. I like it!
