Film Review: Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects

As we were leaving the theater, after a screening of Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects, my wife turned to me and said that Soderbergh sure knows how to make a creepy movie, even if nothing really creepy happens.  Can't really argue with that.  Though nothing overly creepy happens in the film, save for perhaps one sudden act of violence - the way Soderbergh moves his camera, the music choices he makes, or perhaps the lack of music in some cases, the way he choreographs a scene to make it more intense than it otherwise would be, all make for something on the level of a modern day Hitchcockian thriller - something that the great master of suspense would make if he were alive and kicking and making motion pictures still.  A film that, with very little really, grabs a hold of you and squeezes tighter and tighter with each and every plot twist and turn - and turnaround.  Squeezes you, that is, until Soderbergh thrusts forward, what I thought to be a cop-out twist ending - but more on that later.

According to Soderbergh, Side Effects is to be his final theatrical release.  After the HBO airing of his Liberace biopic sometime this year, the director claims he will retire - to concentrate more on his painting.  Now since first making this rather bold proclamation, the prolific and esoteric filmmaker, has back-tracked just a bit, now claiming it will probably be more a sabbatical than a retirement, which is a relief to this long-time Soderbergh fan.  Whatever the case may be, whether this is his theatrical swan song or not, Soderbergh has created yet another unique piece in the divergent puzzle that is the auteur's oeuvre.  Playing at peculiar obscurities (Kafka, Full Frontal), flashy popcorn flicks (Out of Sight, the Ocean's films), convoluted actualities (Traffic, Che), formal biopics (Erin Brockovich), bizarre docudramas (King of the Hill, The Informant!), cinematic performance pieces (the Spaulding Grey films, Grey's Anatomy, And Everything's Going Fine), action (Haywire), sci-fi (Solaris), gangster films (The Limey), and a few films that act as a miscellaneous category (Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience).   Soderbergh is probably the most eclectic, the most enigmatic director since Howard Hawks was last behind the camera, so if this were to be his final film, he is appropriately going out on a film that is unlike anything he has done before.

From the trailer, it appeared that Side Effects was going to be nothing more than a retread of the director's 2011 biohorror thriller Contagion - one of the few Soderbergh films I am not a fan of - but, save for a frantic Jude Law appearing in both, this film is really nothing like that film.   Starring Rooney Mara as a depressed and supposedly suicidal young woman, and Law as the psychiatrist who takes her on as a patient after a failed suicide attempt, the film is actually less about the titular side effects that cause even more havoc in this woman's already precarious life, and more about the things people will do when they are backed into a corner by the actions they have taken, or the actions they have thrust upon them.  It is about the lengths some will go to to, in order to escape the things they have done.    Not to give too much away - we want to keep Soderbergh's aforementioned twists and turns intact for their full narrative impact - Law's rather arrogant psychiatrist, while working on the side as a tester for a pharmaceutical company, prescribes questionable drugs to his new patient, which leads to tragic circumstances.  It is these tragic circumstances that lead to both Law's doctor and Mara's patient starting to frantically search for a solution out of their quandaries.  Both Law and, especially Mara (proving her kick-ass performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was not a fluke), give strong performances here, as does Catherine Zeta-Jones in a supporting role, but it is Soderbergh and his ability to put, as my wife alluded to upon leaving the theater, the creepy into the story, that makes this film as palpable as it is.

But then we get to the final act of the film, and the unraveling of a perfectly thrilling thriller.  Again, not to give anything away, Soderbergh builds a suspenseful narrative through his story (script by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote The Informant! and Contagion) and his editing and his actor's work, and then hands us one of the cheapest, cop-out endings in a long long time.  Okay, maybe the ending here isn't to the ridiculous level of an M. Night Shyamalan film, but it still was bad enough - silly enough even - to warrant an upset grimace from this critic - not to mention an unverbalized WTF when it all came down.  The ending may not have ruined the entire experience for me, but it was certainly enough to make me wonder what Soderbergh was thinking.  Trite and quite unworthy of a Soderbergh-helmed film, this ending - which incidentally takes the whole idea of delving into the misuse and misdiagnosis of psychotropic drugs, and tosses it out the proverbial window - is pure let down, after watching a wonderful, and suspenseful - and creepy, of course - lead-up to such an ending.  That being said, I hope this ending, save for the eventually released HBO Liberace thing (with Michael Douglas, no less), isn't really the last taste we will get of the "retiring" director.

Best of 2012

It is that time of year again.  That time when all we film critics (and all those who claim to be film critics) churn out our annual best of the year lists.  So, without further ado, here are my choices for the best films of 2012.

1. Django Unchained - I am kinda biased when it comes to Tarantino.  I think they guy is just the living end.  To die for, in a cinematic idol worship kinda way.  Can't get enough of the guy's often quite politically incorrect attitude, or his violence-drenched and self-referential playfulness. Of course, with this said, it should come as no surprise that this blood-splattered, inappropriately heee-larious Spaghetti Southern sits atop my list of the best of 2012.  My review can be read here.

2. The Master - Like QT above, Paul Thomas Anderson is another one of those auteur's that seems to be unable to do any wrong in my book.   Also like Tarantino, PTA has made a film that is easily one of the most divisive of the year.  But then again, I have always been a fan of those films that make everyone else a bit woozy in the head.  Oh yeah, and Joaquin Phoenix gives the performance of a lifetime.  My review can be read here.

3. The Turin Horse - Somber, distressed and morose.  Sorrowful, sick and mournful.  Dreadfully sad.  So sad, that one may not be able to even make it through this black and white, incredibly slow-moving, and even more incredibly sad, Hungarian film.  Yet, Bela Tarr, in what the director claims is his final film, makes even the most despairing of tales, a thing of rapt and terrifying beauty.  My review can be read here.

4. Zero Dark Thirty - There is controversy galore over this film, with a lot of conservatives bitching that too much confidential information was given to the filmmakers and liberals whining about a supposed condoning of torture, but whatever one thinks of such things (and I think such allegations, from either side of the political spectrum, to be bullshit), Kathryn Bigelow's military thriller is an enthralling, brilliant movie.  My review can be read here.

5. Cosmopolis - This makes four out of four in films I adore, yet are hated by just as many as love them.  David Cronenberg's Odyssean take on capitalism and greed, is an abrasively methodical film, that beats with a cadence that forebodes and foretells the very downfall of man, all the while making the viewer uncomfortable in their seats, as they wait around every corner for the ball to drop on the action.  My review can be read here.

6. The Cabin in the Woods - I am kind of a sucker for the writing stylings of Joss Whedon (film, TV, comicbooks - whatever), and this twisted, Escher-esque mindfuck of a horror film - one that takes all the tricks and tropes of the genre, and flips them on their arse - co-written with director Drew Goddard, is one of his most intriguing screenplays.  My review can be read here.

7. Killer Joe - When a film comes with the tagline, "A totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story," ya just know it's gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.  A rip-roaringly hilarious movie about a cool-as-ice hired killer, the idiots that hire him but cannot afford to pay him, the innocent teenage girl they give to him as collateral, and the most interesting thing ever done with fried chicken on the big screen.  Oh yeah, and Matthew McConaughey is, as the kids are saying, off the hook, yo.  My review can be read here.

8. Haywire/Magic Mike - These two intriguing films, from the always versatile Steven Soderbergh, are the best one two punch from any director since Soderbergh did the same thing three years ago with The Girlfriend Experience and The Informant.  These films, a spy thriller-cum-genre experiment, and a good ole boy, male stripper tale, are like the proverbial day and night of cinema, and that just goes to show that Soderbergh can do just about anything he puts his mind to.  My review can be read here and here, respectively.

9. The Kid With a Bike - Probably the most humanistic, and quite possibly the most humour-filled, of any of the Dardenne Brothers' films, this tale of - you guessed it - a kid and his bike, harkens back to a simpler time in cinema, and to films like the obviously influential The Bicycle Thieves, and, with its no-frills poetic realism, is a simply beautiful film to watch.  My review can be read here.

10. Compliance - A story so unbelievable, so impossible sounding, so implausibly ridiculous, that it just has to be true.  Telling the crazy tale of a fast food manager who is duped by a prank caller pretending to be a cop on the other end of the phone, and the poor young employee who is demoralized, humiliated, and much much worse, this subtly brilliant little film is one of the biggest revelations of the cinematic year.  My review can be read here.

11. Prometheus - Many of my fellow critical compatriots called this film a dismal failure.  I suppose it was a bit of a failure in certain, perhaps a too-high expectations category (in anticipation of its coming release, I had expected it to eventually make my top three), but the film, though not the desired second coming of Blade Runner, is still quite enjoyable to watch.  At least it was for this critic.  My review can be read here.

12. Damsels in Distress - It has been thirteen years since Whit Stillman's last film, the sardonic Last Days of Disco, and the director is finally back with another quite acerbic, yet also quite fun-loving, look at the emotionally messed-up lives of his lovable but distressed characters.  I have talked with many a cinemagoer who did not understand this film, and therefore disliked, or even hated it, but all I can say to those people is, hooey.  My review can be read here.

13. Les Misérables - My love of this film kinda caught me off guard.  I mean, I love the musical genre, but that love is usually reserved for the old Hollywood style of musical, not the splashy, over-the-top Sondheimian kind, but this newer, stagier version pretty much blew me away anyway - and all you haters can go on hatin'.  My review can be read here.

14. Hit & Run - Written and co-directed by Dax Sheppard, and starring the actor-turned-director, his girlfriend (and every nerd's wet dream) Kristen Bell, and several of their clsoest friends (Bradley Cooper, Tom Arnold), this crazy comic chase film may not be your typical high end artistic cinema piece, but damn, it is a hell of a lot of fun.  My review can be read here.

15. Holy Motors - Bizarre and beautiful, this French comedy(?), drama(?), action film(?), thriller(?), satire(?), whatever(!), is another one of those films that the masses will never understand, but that this critic, in all his own bizarre and beautiful tastes, just loves to see.  I am still not able to confidently explain what the damn thing is about, but I still like it.  My review can be read here.

16. John Carter - Yeah, that's right.  I liked this film dammit.  So much hatred, and pure and despicable hatred, formed not by the critically intentioned folk who come down on the films that top this list, but by a bunch of silly pedantic bullies, has been spewed toward this film, but I do not care a wit for them, nor for their priggish criticisms.  The film is fun dammit.  Pure, unadulterated fun.  My review can be read here.

17. Amour - Harrowing.  Terrifying.  Unflinching and quite disturbing indeed.  All the things that make, for better or for worse, a Michael Haneke film, a Michael Haneke film.  But what this film has that no other Haneke film has had, is a streak of humanity, and it is in this quite unexpected humanity, that we are sucked in, and spit out an emotional wreck.  My review can be read here.

18. Little White Lies - It may have taken nearly three years to finally make its way to these shores, but this French dramedy was, as they are prone to saying, well worth the wait.  Written off by many as a mere Gallic Big Chill (and there are blatant similarities, though I doubt if they were necessarily on purpose), this film is actually quite stirring, in the emotional arena of things.  All that, and you get Marion Cotillard too.  My review can be read here.

19. The Avengers - Written and directed by the always able Joss Whedon (haven't we already been here?), this mega billion dollar smash hit (top grossing film of all time, that is not directed by James Cameron), takes this critic back to his long lost youth, when the monthly arrival of Marvel Comics' titular superhero team, was a must read moment in the life of this then ten year old future film critic, and lifelong comicbook reader.  My review can be read here.

20. Beasts of the Southern Wild - Granted, it has its faults, but once one gets past its rather cliché storyline, the remarkable visual beauty of the film, in both its uplifting, awe-inspiring moments and tragic realistic ones, and the surprising powerhouse performance of six year old Quvenzhané Wallis, make for a pretty darn good movie.  My review can be read here.

Ten Runners-Up (in no particular order): Bernie, The Deep Blue Sea, Flight, 21 Jump Street, Attenberg, Moonrise Kingdom, Miss Bala, Turn Me On, Dammit!, Savages, Chico & Rita.

Film Review: Magic Mike

Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors, much like contemporary Richard Linklater or their historical precursor Howard Hawks, that you never know what is coming next.  Jumping all of the cinematic board, from political thriller to revisionist western to literary doo-dad to mainstream pop, Soderbergh has seemingly titillated just about every genre fan out there, from the casual multiplexer to the hardcore cinephile, and everyone in between.  With Magic Mike, the prolific director's twenty-fifth film in just twenty-four years, Soderbergh has created a film that may just titillate both ends of this aforementioned moviegoing spectrum.

Much like the director's other film out this year, Haywire, where the action genre was deconstructed to show its smooth inner workings, Magic Mike, with its male strip club storyline, tears apart the idea of sexuality and masculinity and shows its own bare boned inside stuff.  The film stars Channing Tatum (with roles in both Haywire and the director's upcoming The Bitter Pill, he plays at being Soderbergh's new it boy) as the titular exotic dancer who plays mentor to Alex Pettyfer's young up-and-comer in the Tampa's glitzy, seedy strip club world.  Based in part on Tatum's own early life as a male stripper in the Florida city (with Pettyfer ostensibly playing the real-life Tatum role), we are given a quick glimpse into a world most of us know nothing about, and much like Soderbergh's controversial 2009 film, The Girlfriend Experience, this world of sex is shown in a cool and calculating manner that gives the film an almost analytical style.  Oh yes, there is quite a lot of prerequisite grinding (though no full frontals ladies) but the film is not about stripping so much as it is about coming to terms with your own life and your own limitations and gaining the knowledge and courage to change one's life. 

But as analytical as the film gets - and it never gets to the point of dry dissertation that GFE did (a film about a high end prostitute, in turn played by an actual porn star, that never shows the act of sex?  WTF!?) - there is great fun indeed.  With allusions to Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and in turn Ferarra's Go Go Tales, the stage productions are both elaborate and quite hilarious, and with Soderbergh's beloved red camera weaving its way through the strobed and glittering nightlife, as well as garish and harsh daylights of the Florida town, Magic Mike ends up being a film that will please both that so-called multiplex crowd that would flock to an (inevitable?) Ocean's Fourteen (not to mention the middle age ladies crowd), and all those cinema geeks that are always on the lookout for another Sex, Lies & Videotape.  Of course the highlight of the film comes from Matthew McConaughey, an actor who after years of rom-com purgatory, has suddenly decided he wants to do good movies again (just take a look at the recently released Bernie and the upcoming Killer Joe) and here plays the club's head honcho, almost as if he were a natural extension of David Wooderson from Dazed and Confused.  Alright alright.   In the end, Magic Mike, much like Haywire, is not only one of the most esoteric films of the year, but also one of the best.

Retro Review: The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, 09)

The following is part of a series where I bring back some of my "older" reviews (those written during my 2004-2010 tenure at the now mostly defunct The Cinematheque) and offer them up to a "newer" generation.

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Before tackling this film, the twentieth of Steven Soderbergh’s quite eclectic career, perhaps one should know just what the titular girlfriend experience is. A GFE, as it is called in those circles that know of such things, is a service provided by the highest of high-end call girls in which, in lieu of the typical wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am of prostitution legend and lore, they essentially act as a proxy girlfriend for their rich, and most probably lonely clients. I must admit to having had no idea about the existence of such a service-provider before first hearing of the imminent release of the film and reading up on the subject. According to interviews, Soderbergh himself had never heard of such a thing either, before hitting upon the idea while sitting in a bar with a somewhat more knowledgeable buddy of his whom gave him the whole skinny. Well known or not, like it or not, this is what Soderbergh’s twentieth film is all about.

And on top of such an unconventional movie idea, Soderbergh has done himself one better by casting an honest-to-goodness, flesh & blood, ass & tits porn star in the lead role. And then on top of all that, perhaps to keep us on our proverbial toes, he goes and chooses Sasha Grey, a twenty-one year old arthouse film fan who, according to her MySpace page, counts Jean-Luc Godard, David Lynch, Gus van Sant, Gasper Noe, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater, David Gordon Green, P.T. Anderson, Harmony Korine, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Monte Hellman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Agnès Varda, Terrence Malick, Louis Malle, William Klein and (appropriately enough) Steven Soderbergh, among her filmic idols. She even claims to have tossed around the idea of using Anna Karina as her stage name.

Nicknamed the Erotic Enigma, Ms. Grey has stated that she considers what she does as something beyond mere porn, something akin to performance art. This quirky outlook on her career - a career that includes an Adult Video Award for best blow job in her resume (performance art or not) - combined with her arthouse desires, has made Ms. Grey the almost perfect host for this reality show-cum-experimental cinema piece that Soderbergh has concocted and put together after the aforementioned few drinks with his more "street-hip" pal. Here, playing a high end call girl or not, Ms. Grey finds herself in her first legitimate role, playing a GFE who goes by the name of Chelsea.

Soderbergh, who has made such disparate films as the festival favorite sex, lies & videotape, the big budget, star-filled crime caper Danny Ocean films (11, 12 & 13), the Oscar winning Traffic and Erin Brockovich, the minuscule digital video experiment Bubble, the epic two part Che Guevara biopic from a few months, back as well as the upcoming Jazz age retelling of Cleopatra. The film is shot guerrilla style, mostly by Soderbergh himself, using a hand held digital camera precariously positioned and re-positioned and re-re-positioned to act as a voyeuristic eye for the unwittingly passive viewer. This peekaboo motif of Soderbergh's works to turn this already taboo-seeming subject matter into something that seems even dirtier by our being no more than a peeping tom on the unsuspecting, and surprisingly human, Chelsea.

Showing five days in the life of Chelsea (as well as chronicling the days leading up to President Obama's glorious victory) and wavering back and forth in what it shows and how and when it shows it (the film is purposely non-linear) GFE swings effortlessly between Chelsea's $2000 an hour clients and her A-type personality boyfriend. Grey is perfect in the role. Not due to any great acting breakthrough (ala Meryl Streep emerging from a brothel) but due to her lack of such. Grey is a perfect stone cold dead fish in the role. Whether this is on purpose or just merely the girl can't act I am not sure. It could very well be a combination of both, after all she looks realistic enough for me in her porn poses on the internet! And I think she may very well have deserved that aforementioned AVN award. But I digress.

The real casting coup though is also Soderbergh's own little in-joke about his relationship over the years with critics. It is the casting of one of our very own in the role of, what else, a critic. Real-life film critic Glenn Kenny portrays a sleazy escort critic, who playing his mostly ad-libbed part in the most Rabelais of fashions (seemingly wallowing in his own filth) is the dark comic relief of the film. It is Kenny's Erotic Connoisseur, and not Grey's Chelsea (ironically she only has one brief nude scene) that plays out the dirty sexual wordplay and innuendo. A sort of fuck you and fuck me to the critical profession. Kenny's casting, and that of Grey, is integral to the idea surrounding Soderbergh's film. A sort of fuck you and fuck me to his own profession and to the Hollywood landscape that surrounds him.

Soderbergh peels away the veneer of Chelsea's profession but at the same time he reveals the fallacy around his own as well. Showing the corrupt world of the escort business, with its cutthroat necessities and back-stabbing realities, Soderbergh also shows, as thinly veiled allegory, the equally corrupt movie business, with its cutthroat necessities and back-stabbing realities. Soderbergh has always been the most passive of auteurs. Acting more as tour guide, or voyeur if you will, than director. Perhaps it is this very passiveness that gets the filmmaker through the nasty world that is Hollywood USA and allows him to make the movies he wants to make without much interference from the corporate world that has pretty much taken over the filmmaking industry. It is the same passiveness that we see in the stone cold dead fish eyes of Sasha/Chelsea.

In the end, with all his wrangling of genres and styles, Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience has taken the filmmaker full circle. From his debut twenty years ago, sex, lies & videotape, where the participants were obsessed with the camera, to now, where the participants are seemingly unaware of the camera, almost as if it had always been there - and I suppose in this day and age, it has been. The Girlfriend Experience is part cinema verite, part reality television, part socio-political allegory and part performance piece. There you go Sasha. Above all else though, this is a unique spectacle of filmmaking and well worth being sought out wherever one can find it. 

[Originally published at The Cinematheque on 07/02/09] 

Film Review: Haywire

The first and last words spoken in Steven Soderbergh's new action thriller are the same word - shit.  And it is a world of shit that our intrepid kick-ass heroine is put into by planned circumstance, and it is a world of shit that she in turns puts her enemies into.  In much the same way that Quentin Tarantino brilliantly cast Zoe Bell as herself in Death Proof, never having to cut or turn the camera away or replace her with a stunt double (that was really Bell on the hood of that speeding Dodge Challenger), Soderbergh has placed mixed martial arts champion and former American Gladiator Gina Carano front and center in his new rough and tumble action thriller, Haywire.  And yes, that is really Carano leaping tall buildings, running up walls and generally kicking major league ass, from Channing Tatum to Michael Fassbender to Ewan MacGregor.  No need for a body double here.  She would probably only kick their asses too.

Taking the recent mainstream penchant for kick-ass women who highlight a whole new breed of feminist action flicks that were born from Ripley and the Alien franchise (Angelina Jolie in Salt, not to mention the comatose Tomb Raider series, Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld series, even Kick-Ass itself with tween Hit-Girl Chlöe Moretz), Soderbergh creates a new piece for the sub-genre and does it in a way that can only be described as, well...as Soderberghian.   The director does not give us the outlandish set pieces that usually, for better or for worse, come with the moniker of action movie.  We do not get the Michael Bay-like blowing ups and knocking downs.  We do not get the tired catchphrases of old (a thing that recalls some of the best of the genre but much of the worst as well).   We do not get the stupidity of out of proportion posturing so linked to the genre. What we do get is a solid action movie that never goes for the cheap thrill so inherent in the genre.  As I said, what we get is Steven Soderbergh's idea of an action movie.

With a slow, methodical cadence that may irritate the average moviegoer who expects explosions and impossible car chases every few minutes, Haywire is a twisting turning story of deceit and double-crossing in the world of gun-for-hire espionage.  Escaping the genre conventions, much in the same way the director did in films like Out of Sight and The Limey, Haywire is a straight forward, square-jawed punch in the face.  With muscled knock-out (and I mean that in both connotations of course) Carano as the centerpiece for his action thriller, Soderbergh hands us a very realistically stylized work of cinema.  Behind his beloved Red camera, and giving the fight sequences a reality all their own (the director cuts any and all music with each first punch thrown, so we hear nothing but the grunting, crushing, bone-breaking sounds of the fight), and since we are not dealing with a trained actress, the success of Soderbergh's film relies almost entirely on the believability of Carano's hired muscle.  Much like porn icon Sasha Grey being cast in Soderbergh's oft-maligned but quite cunning The Girlfriend Experience, Carano, not a great actress by any stretch (luckily she doesn't need to be) comes through with flying colours - and in turn, so does Soderbergh's movie.

The Cinematheque Reviews: Contagion (+ A Soderbergh Top 10)

For ramshackle Hawksian auteur Steven Soderbergh's 22nd film (23rd if you were to count Che as two films, but who would do that?) the director has created a rather scintillating look at an epic viral pandemic that threatens to devour the whole damn world.  Contagion is the kind of film that gets people thinking about such seemingly innocuous things as touching one's face and reaching into a bowl of pretzels at a bar.  Scary stuff indeed, but not scary like horror movie scary, but scary in a way way existential way - which is better in this guy's book.  My review of said scary existential film is currently up and running over at The Cinematheque.

Read my review of Contagion at The Cinematheque.

Since we are here, and I do love me a good list, here are my choices for the 10 best Steven Soderbergh films.  I must preface this list with the sad, but soon to be remedied, fact that this critic has never seen King of the Hill, Full Frontal, The Good German nor Schizopolis.  With that said, here are my ten favourite Soderberghs.

1. Che
2. Sex, Lies, and Videotape
3. The Informant!
4. The Girlfriend Experience
5. Traffic
6. The Limey
7. Contagion
8. Bubble
9. Solaris
10. Kafka

The Informant! is Reviewed at The Cinematheque

Okay, okay, I'm really late on this one.  I saw the film waaay back on September 20th and here I am on Oct 13th finally posting my review (that I actually wrote on October 3rd - but who's counting?).  So sue me, I procrastinate.  Anyway, the film in question is Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (exclamation point by auteur!).  Sort of a formalist experiment, Soderbergh's new film is yet another different avenue the eclectic auteur has taken in his career.  An experiment many have not well enjoyed it would seem.  One woman, upon leaving the theatre, was overheard by my lovely wife commenting on how she did not like Matt Damon in the movie.  "Why does he have to look like that?  Why can't he just look like himself?" was her query.  Ummm, he's an actor and he's playing a character?  Actually the film has been blown off by many critics and regulars alike, but there is no need to talk on the subject here when my review is anxiously waiting over at The Cinematheque.  

Read my review of The Informant! at The Cinematheque.