Steven Soderbergh has been threatening to retire from filmmaking for some time now, but with Side Effects, he really means it. This is the last theatrical feature that the director of some of the finest movies of the past twenty-five odd years (if forced to choose, my Top 5 would probably look something like King of the Hill, Out of Sight, Che, The Limey and The Informant!, but that's leaving out a host of other great films, including sex, lies and videotape and Contagion) will helm for the foreseeable future, as he instead turns his focus to other artistic pursuits, painting and theater among them. (Soderbergh's does have one last narrative feature in the pipeline, the Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, which is scheduled to premiere on HBO later this year.) As a swan song, Side Effects -- which stars Rooney Mara as the pill-popping wife of a disgraced Wall Street turk (Channing Tatum) fresh out of a prison stint for insider trading -- won't join the ranks of Soderbergh's finest achievements, marred as it is by a third act turn into thriller territory that, while entertaining, suffers from a series of too-convenient coincidences and a reliance on one very unfortunate stereotype. Still, the film does effectively encapsulate what has made him one of America's leading directors for almost three decades now... and why he'll be missed now that he's (at least temporarily) gone.

One of the side effects of Side Effects is sadness that Steven Soderbergh is now one film closer to retirement.