![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vanillafluffyThis afternoon, I finally got to see "Contagion", which I enjoyed enormously. Yes, it had an awesome cast. And in addition to Jude Law being in the movie, he was in the trailer for "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", which looks ace. In addition to Law, Paltrow and Winslet, there was Laurence Fishbourne as a CDC doctor, Elliot Gould---wow! Haven't seen him in ages!, and of course, Matt Damon. Damon in a dad part---especially as the dad of a teenager---makes me feel old as fuck, since I still think of him as the fresh-faced KID from "Good Will Hunting".
What I really liked was the scope. They did a really neat job of showing where the pathogen came from as well as how it spread. There was a glimpse of the world-wide scale of the epidemic, as well as showing how it affected individuals. There were acts of mindless violence and acts of great courage and generousity, and it was all very believeable. There was less gore than I'd expected, given the nature of the plot, but there's a scene of mass graves that was chilling.
What I liked *most* about it---this is going to sound odd---is what it wasn't. I'm a total sucker for car chases and explosions, and this had neither. Sitting through the credits, there were headings for film crews in various locations across the globe, but almost nothing in the way of FX credits. I think the closest they came was a computer-generated image of the virus, which as computr tech goes, could've been done any time since 1990. This was a story about the people, not the whiz-bang gee-wow bells and whistles.
I enjoyed "Contagion" a lot. It was well-paced and thought-provoking. It didn't follow up on a couple of plotty bits, but on the whole, I'd give it a solid A.
.
What I really liked was the scope. They did a really neat job of showing where the pathogen came from as well as how it spread. There was a glimpse of the world-wide scale of the epidemic, as well as showing how it affected individuals. There were acts of mindless violence and acts of great courage and generousity, and it was all very believeable. There was less gore than I'd expected, given the nature of the plot, but there's a scene of mass graves that was chilling.
What I liked *most* about it---this is going to sound odd---is what it wasn't. I'm a total sucker for car chases and explosions, and this had neither. Sitting through the credits, there were headings for film crews in various locations across the globe, but almost nothing in the way of FX credits. I think the closest they came was a computer-generated image of the virus, which as computr tech goes, could've been done any time since 1990. This was a story about the people, not the whiz-bang gee-wow bells and whistles.
I enjoyed "Contagion" a lot. It was well-paced and thought-provoking. It didn't follow up on a couple of plotty bits, but on the whole, I'd give it a solid A.
.