Thanks For Sharing

Stuart Blumberg's "Thanks for Sharing" isn't exactly as searing a portrait of sex addiction as Steve McQueen's "Shame," but it's true enough to its subject to earn our goodwill, and rewards us by getting appreciably better - smarter and funnier - as it goes on.

Iron Man 3

Ask somebody who likes the "Iron Man" franchise what makes Iron Man a great character and I suspect he'll be at a loss for words. It's really not an especially interesting character; without the tremendous goodwill Robert Downey, Jr. brings to the table, Iron Man would be (ahem) leaden. And, as one who doesn't like the franchise, I'm here to report that Downey is again not enough. "Iron Man 3" is loud, dark, severely bloated at about two hours and twenty minutes, and not very much fun.

"Contagion": Come on in, the water's fine...

Steven Soderbergh would seem to have the right impersonal, clinical detachment required to make "Contagion" taut, gripping and seminal - the kind of issue movie that makes the cover of Time magazine. (Certainly the thought of a biological weapon such as the film's mutant bat-pig virus strain is deeply frightening.) Unfortunately, cinematizing even the most epidemic subject matter involves some choice of characters through whom to tell the story, and Soderbergh has created several uninteresting ones.