A Most Wanted Man (2014)

One cannot watch Anton Corbijn’s ultra-tense “A Most Wanted Man” without mourning Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shocking death. “Most” is Hoffman’s final lead role, a notion that undeniably hovers over every dark frame. This story is rooted in futility and a man facing certain doom, likely eternal loneliness. Hoffman is chain-smoker German spy chief Gunther Bachmann, suffocating under the pressure of his job: Tracking suspected Middle Eastern terrorists in Germany post-9/11. The trick: Bachmann wants his suspects walking free to lead him to larger, more dangerous targets. His latest mark is a maybe innocent son (Grigoriy Dobrygin) of a war criminal who may want to truly dissolve his father’s ill-gotten future. The man brings into his circle a banker (Willem Dafoe) and a lawyer (Rachel McAdams) who quickly realize there are no bystanders in terrorism. More so, Bachmann is being hounded by bureaucrats to make arrests now, forget logistics. Who’s right? Who’s innocent? Nothing matters, and from the John Le Carre book from which this comes, that mindset can only lead to another dark day. The finale is a pulverizing gut punch. Hoffman truly marvels as a tired man crumbling before us. See it nonetheless. A

Side Effects (2013)

Steven Soderbergh’s (apparent) final big-screen bow takes on big pharma and the need for Americans to dope up to get through the day, be it anti-depressants, anxiety pills, uppers, downers, or whatever. And what of the “Side Effects”? Limp libido? Exhaustion? Murderous sleep-walking fit? That’s the ticket here as a married couple (Channing Tatum and Rooney Mara) rocked by hubby’s prison stint for Wall Street sins are reunited only to see the wife slip off her plates after an apparent suicide attempt. Caught in the middle of all this, taking money from on high and prescribing pills to the low, is Jude Law as a psychiatrist, who begins Boy Scout and becomes … less so. I can’t give away anything more, because Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns (both of “Contagion”) take a turn that hit me, well, like a drug at first -- euphoric love, but then a quick and lowly crash as I contemplated all that I saw. How not to spill the pills? Let me say this: The ugly ridiculous denouncement is Family Research Council approved. Pure 1950s. Got it? Mara is great. Tatum, ehh. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays another head shrink, and Pacinos the scenery. B-