Side Effects
Mara Rooney, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones - Dir: Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh has said this will be his last film as director (although his Liberace biopic, made for television, has emerged since). If true it would be a shame since he has continually proved himself one of today's most versatile and interesting directors, equally adept at mainstream fare, be it light (the Oceans trilogy) or serious (Traffic), and small experimental outings (from Sex, Lies and Videotape to Bubbles). He can do issues (Ellen Brokovich), action (Haywire) and politics (Che).
Side Effects is something of a pharmaceutical drama, a look at the unintended consequences of anti-depression medication as a suicidal Mara consults Law's ambiguous shrink and tries a pile of different pills. But are the pills perhaps part of the problem?
That's the question when a genuinely shocking act changes the film's direction and it segues into a twisting psychological thriller. It's an unusual structure that keeps you on your toes.
I enjoyed this immensely. It's unpredictable and raises a host of ethical and moral issues in an intelligent way without distracting from the main story arc. The cast are good and Soderbergh's direction, the mix of filming styles and use of colour - again very European - is masterful. Well worthwhile.

Beautiful Creatures was not a film I was especially looking forward to, what with its tag as a 'Twilight for teen boys”. What did those boys do to deserve it? Actually, I thought it was much better than that, keeping the soppiness to a minimum as young Ethan, bored with small town Bible Belt America, meets mysterious new schoolgirl Lena. She's a witch (by another name) and, approaching her sixteenth birthday, must turn to either the dark or light side. Silly, but extra marks for Jeremy Irons hamming it up as the family patriarch and some amusing business with fundamentalist Christians.

Hitchcock isn't the greatest but, if you've ever taken pleasure from the Master of Suspense or enjoyed watching Psycho, it's a lot of fun. Anthony Hopkins plays Hitchcock, looking weird but getting the voice perfectly: it's a pleasure to watch his impersonation. Helen Mirren is, of course, a delight as his sharp-tongued wife Alma. Kudos too to James D'Arcy for his remarkable Anthony Perkins. The film itself is a combination of two oft-told staples: director battling studio and artist realising how much he needs his cherished collaborator. For dark and nasty psychological stuff wait for 'the other Hitchcock film”, The Girl, which moves on from Psycho to The Birds, with Toby Jones as Hitch.

ParaNorman is yet another in the current line of animated kids movies with horror themes. Think Hotel Transylvania and Frankenweenie. This one comes from the same stable as Coraline and uses the same stop motion technique. It involves young Norman, who can see dead people (all over the place) and is, understandably I guess, a bit of a horror nut. He has to free the town from an old curse which sees zombies rising from their graves to threaten the townsfolk. There are some good lessons learned and – like Coraline - some surprisingly intense moments. Perhaps that's why the (under 8-year-old) kids I tried it on were too frightened to watch.

If we judge the world by movies there is a serial killer lurking around every corner. The latest comes in the form of Kevin Sorbo in the preposterous Julia X, which squanders any thought of being connected to reality and plunges straight towards crazed exploitation. There's something disturbingly cynical in the filmmakers' wholesale embrace of film geek tropes, exemplified by Sorbo's listening to The Carpenters and his string of cutesy one-liners. Problems arise for him when his latest victim fights back and, although the big reveal is signposted early on, further plot turns and the casually brutal violence might send this into cult territory.