Video
Special 'Effects'
Like a gel capsule in a sip of orange juice, the psychopharmacological thriller "Side Effects" goes down easily.

A medical thriller wrapped around a social-issue picture suspended within a potboiler, Steven Soderbergh's cautionary drama glides along at a brisk clip. From the swooping crane shot that opens the film to the moment when the camera settles on a trail of bloody footprints, the audience's interest is suitably piqued. The film, written by Scott Z. Burns, cannily portrays the epidemic of overprescribing in America. Soderbergh handles the switching of gears with characteristic smoothness, even if the result is one part "Thank You for Smoking," one part "The Snake Pit" and one part "Spellbound," with a dash of "Basic Instinct" for titillating good measure.

The DVD and Blu-ray (Universal, $30-$35) include featurettes and commercials for the fictional drugs Ablixa and Intenin.
Washington Post

Also out Tuesday

Movies: "Beautiful Creatures," "The Last Stand," "Lego Batman: The Movie — DC Super Heroes Unite," "Parker," "Stand Up Guys," "Struck by Lightning."

TV: "Laverne & Shirley" (Season 6), "Perception" (Season 1), "Return to Nim's Island," "Saving Hope" (Season 1), "Teen Wolf" (Season 2), "True Blood" (Season 5).

Blu-ray debuts: "The Burning," "Captain America" (1990), "Howl's Moving Castle," "My Neighbor Totoro," "National Lampoon's Vacation," "The Town That Dreaded Sundown," "Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics" (Warner), "Vegas Vacation."

App

A new fix for Home

Facebook Home was introduced with much fanfare one month ago. So far it has not lived up to the hype. The app for Android smartphones has a two-star rating in the Google Play store. And the HTC First phone — the first to come preloaded with the Home software, which is available in the United States through AT&T — was recently slashed from $99 with a two-year contract to 99 cents.

Facebook recently previewed upgrades designed to address the chief complaint from users, who have said Facebook Home makes their other apps hard to find. So it plans to create folders of apps within the launcher. Facebook also will add a dock at the bottom of the home screen to give quick access to key apps such as e-mail and maps.

No word yet on when Home will be available on more smartphones. Facebook did discourage the practice of installing a hacked version of Home on unsupported Android smartphones, estimating that more than 10,000 people had done that so far.

Los Angeles Times

Gadget

Tiny but mighty

WD (www.wd.com) has announced its pocket-size My Passport Ultra portable hard drive. The drives (3.25 by 0.5 by 4.25 inches) are available in 500 gigabytes ($100) and 1 terabyte ($130), with a 2TB model expected out this year. The drives are built with fast USB 3 speeds, but also are backward compatible with USB 2.0 and 1. With the innovative hard drives, WD SmartWare Pro back-up software can automatically back-up up to five computers to the drive and will even integrate with cloud services such as Dropbox for backups. Everything stored on the hard drive can easily be protected with a password along with hardware encryption.

McClatchy News Service