Contagion

Contagion: Steven Soderbergh to two polar tendencies of consumer entertainment and experimentation to find an almost perfect way of contagion, as the two films is among the most exciting and scary year and a meticulous, extensive use of digital film technology. Seeing the blown film on a giant IMAX screen is not absolutely necessary, but it allows close-ups of cameras RED Epic Soderbergh to accomplish even more creepy-crawly in the film, affects psychological claustrophobia. A disaster thriller stars also got enough talent to hit home, the contagion is good and scary and a total of exciting to see. Contagion begins on day two of a disaster that will soon wipe out a significant percentage of the Earth's population, a disaster that's frighteningly plausible a virus, born of some strange combination of bat and pig DNA that found a human carrier and spread from there. The woman identified as Patient Zero “Gwyneth Paltrow” travels from Hong Kong, stops over in Chicago to hook up with an old boyfriend, and returns home to her husband Mitch “Matt Damon”before dying, suddenly and violently. Before long her son is dead too, and with Mitch mysteriously immune, he's left to team up with his daughter Jory “Anna Jacoby-Heron” to survive in a world that's quickly unraveling. Elsewhere, Marion Cotillard plays a World Health Organization scientist trying to identify how the virus got started in Hong Kong, while at the CDC in Atlanta, Laurence Fishburne is the public face of the organization, Kate Winslet is sent to Minneapolis to figure out how the virus spread there, and Jennifer Ehle and Demetri Martin are the scientists in the muck of trying to replicate this thing and find a cure. To complete the disaster movie-star cast is necessary, we have Jude Law as an unscrupulous blogger newly minted public paranoia, Elliott Gould as a physician working on a cure, and turning John Hawkes and Bryan Cranston as more than digit CDC. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns’ s moves quickly through all these stories and more, and he and Soderbergh is not afraid to drop some things when they are interested in learning more - Cotillard character suffers a bit of a leap in time and Hawkes character seems more a symbol of a real human being. But the enormous palette leaves Soderbergh more room to work on what he does best, allowing lingering close-ups, quick cuts of devastated scenery, or even moments of the blackest humor to economically show the virus's devastation while also giving the audience an icky kind of thrill. Contagion never winks at the audience, and its realistic premise could easily make this a PSA for flu shot season, but Soderbergh knows we're all entertained by being shown our potential extinction. Where Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay would use that knowledge to bombard you with spectacle, Soderbergh uses it to quietly, inexorably get under your skin. That calculated, sometimes clinical camerawork helps Soderbergh avoid sentimentality in some really useful ways  the death of one major character is handled with brutal efficiency and speed  but the ever-reliable Matt Damon manages to sneak it in anyway. Damon can make the best claim to be the main character, and he and Soderbergh's work together to build Mitch as a surrogate audience, which allows him to moments of great humanity to protect her daughter near the point of absurdity, but carefully avoiding molasses, Damon calm and simple is the scene where he learns of his wife is dead, and Soderbergh cutting the time Mitch gets to know his stepson went too. Mitch fit well into the traditional disaster movie, but both Soderbergh and Damon makes both him and yourself a lot of interesting infectious and irritating that the genre usually allows. See, and then watch the rest after the bathroom sink - it is to wash your hands thoroughly than ever.