There are specific genres of films, certain themes, that I find highly appealing, and one of those is apocolyptic events. From the daft The Happening to the cheesy The Day After Tomorrow, if the world's ending, if we're all facing extinction as a species, if something really terrible is going to happen, I'm interested. I think this started with classic old sci-fi like The Day of the Triffids and The Day the Earth Caught Fire, but that's another story.
One of the most powerful - and frightening - of these film themes is global pandemics. Diseases already seem to spread without us fully understanding or being able to control them, and given that they rapidly evolve to become resistant to our defenses, it's not much of a leap to see a very bad future or to imagine that they might be bioweapons or even alien life forms. My favorite film in this genre is the original 1971 thriller The Andromeda Strain, a film that's still anxiety-provoking 40 years later.
That's why I was perfectly primed for Contagion, though was a bit disappointed how cerebral and unthrilling it was for a film marketed as a tense action thriller. Filmed in a documentary style (think District 9) and with an interesting, if occasionally complicated timeline that jumps back and forth, the film is a fascinating primer on how an illness can spread rapidly and how difficult it is to identify, contain and cure.
The film initially focuses on international traveler Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) who returns from a trip overseas to her home in Minneapolis and then, in front of her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) collapses and soon dies. Who did she interact with? What did she touch? How is the as-yet unidentified disease transmitted?
Contagion then moves to the Centers for Disease Control, as represented by Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) and Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) and the World Health Organization and its field specialist Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard). Their job: figure out the transmission vector, slow down the spread of the disease and ultimately come up with both a cure and a vaccine. To do that, however, they need to be able to replicate the disease (shades of The Andromeda Strain), which proves very difficult to accomplish.
Meanwhile, people are dying and Alan Krumweide (Jude Law) is causing trouble and creating even more paranoia with his wild conspiracy theories about drug company schemes to make millions, even as he double-deals and insists a homeopathic treatment is the only cure for the H1N1-like disease.
It's not a thrill ride with amazing special effects, but I found Contagion to be a tense and alarming medical mystery with great verisimilitude and a style well matched for its cool presentation of the spread and consequences of a pandemic that rapidly spreads around the globe. And yes, I thoroughly washed my hands afterwards.
Sequels are rarely as good as the original, but Iron Man 2 is one of the few exceptions. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but it's sure darn fun and engaging, and the new story twists, the health issue that Tony "Iron Man" Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) faces and the half-baked but disturbing archenemy Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), all add up to create a film that's sure to be the first summer blockbuster.