Contagion (2011)

I’m starting to feel like I’ve been living under a rock because in the past while, I haven’t really known much about any of the movies I watch. Usually, I just do that for B-horror and this isn’t one of those.  Honestly, I never had a doubt about Contagion because Steven Soderbergh (who I love) directed it and the entire cast is pretty strong so there were high expectations for this one.

Now, just to see if they actually lived up to my expectations 🙂

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bryan Cranston, Chin Han, John Hawkes

When Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) comes home from a business trip feeling ill, the following day she has a seizure and ends up dying.  Shortly afterwards, her son is also infected and her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) is quarantined.  At the same time, multiple people around the world also start falling ill and dying with similar symptoms.  Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) is brought in to take care of what seems to be an epidemic and with the help of Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) to find out what this virus is exactly; Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to go out into the field to contain and help set up facilities for the widespread virus and treatment and Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) to Hong Kong to investigate where and how it all began.  They are racing against time to figure out the vaccine that will save the lives against the constantly changing lethal virus.  While at the same time, they are up against the turmoil in the public along with people doubting their motives such as Alan Krumweide (Jude Law).

Contagion is a drama thriller as you would probably expect with the topic on hand: epidemic and racing with time.  I love thrillers and I believe since Outbreak I haven’t quite found one about spreading virus that has quite as much impact.  Funny enough, I have never reviewed Outbreak.  These movies tend to be heavy and I spread out the viewings.  But, I will do it soon.  With that said, Contagion 1-ups Outbreak.  I’m going to tell you a little story of what happened while I was watching this.  I turned this on Saturday night after dinner and I was sitting in my room and then Gwyneth Paltrow enters and shortly leaves because she dies fairly early in the flick (is that considered a spoiler?) It becomes obvious that coughing is a symptom and then as they were going through this intense part of infected people around the world sweating, coughing, hazy vision and then they go back to Laurence Fishburne and the other doctors talking about it and then right then when its more silent and tense, my mom starts coughing.  I kid you not, I jumped out of my chair and I tensed up really quickly.

Contagion was a kick-ass thriller.  I have nothing but good things to say about it.  The opening sequence, Gwyneth Paltrow, the buildup of the virus, the balance of chaos and tension, the whole tone of the movie: everything worked well together. The only thing was that they involved so many characters that at times, I needed to recall who those people were and a lot of times, it didn’t give the space to relate to them much.  The one person would be Marion Cotillard’s character who pretty much is dismissed at the second half for a good part until she resurfaces for just a small part.  Some characters, like Matt Damon, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle had more impact on the movie as they were the main leads of the whole operation on different sides of the situation. Matt Damon was the biggest loser in this though.  He lost his wife and his stepson and even when he’s being the overprotective parent, I still felt that I supported his idea in this one.  He really didn’t have much else to lose so even if it seemed unfair, extreme measures, right?  I had to write some on Matt Damon because I don’t watch a lot of him and he is usually in the “meh” territory but this one, I did like his character.

Still, the other characters did a great job.  I particularly like Kate Winslet’s character.  If you’ve been reading my reviews, you already know I’m a HUGE fan of hers.  She is just a classy awesome actress who can do no wrong.  And if there is wrong, its the movie, the story, the writers and whatever else, but nope, never her.  In this one, she just totally steals it.  As for Laurence Fishburne, the only thing that bothered me was his moustache.  It just doesn’t suit him well but other than that, his character was great.  He tried to keep the pieces together and his character was human because it wasn’t a perfect savior.  He just tried to balance his own personal worries during the tough time and make as objective as possible decisions based on what he had.  Along with Jennifer Ehle, who I have never seen before this, was pretty awesome.  She was really just in and out of scenes for short amount of times but she was in a lot of the critical scenes and handled them very well.

The character I hated the most (and I believe we are supposed to hate) was Jude Law’s Alan. The man was batshit crazy and obnoxious and just ridiculous.  You know the guy that pours oil on fire.  Thats him.  As the story intensifies, his face just irritated me.  Plus, Jude Law actually did pull off those facial expressions so well.  All in all, he did everything his character needed.  Great job, Jude Law.  You never let me down.

Because of all the characters involved in this, switching from different levels of investigation and management and research for this epidemic, the plot stays focused on the big problem on hand. It stay tense and compelling throughout its slight short of 2 hour run time but I never felt it was even that long.  Plus, in the Hong Kong scenes, they actually used some of the Hong Kong entertainment industry’s familiar faces so it hit even closer to home for me.

Overall, Contagion has an amazing cast, a gripping plot and it may possibly be the best epidemic disaster movie I have seen ever! So yes, I’d totally recommend this.  Its smart and it brings out the scary level of this especially since we’ve already experienced some similar scares (not quite to their extent, thank goodness) in the past decade.

Have you seen Contagion? What do you think of its plot and the cast? Did it get under your skin? 

Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow (2004)

I’m starting to finally work on the backlog of all the movies I watched during last month outside of recommendations.  Netflix went crazy and had about 8 movies expire at the end of the month so I tried to watch all of them.  One of those was Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow.  I’ve never heard much about this one and somehow I always remembering confusing this with Master and Commander.  I never saw that one before but I think its because they came out at about the same time and had a really long title also. Either way, the poster showed a cast I liked so it was all good with me.

Let’s check it out!

Director: Kerry Conran

Cast: Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Gambon, Bai Ling, Laurence Olivier

In a futuristic New York City, there are giant robots set out to sabotage the city and frighten the citizens. In this chaos, ambitious reporter Polly Perkins (Gwyneth Paltrow) is determined to find her big story.  It is then she joins her ex-lover, Joe aka Sky Captain as they exchange information that she has found on her trails to hopefully stop Dr. Totenkropf as they try to rescue a group of the world’s best scientists from his grasp and prevent him from doing even more harm. However, as great as they are as a duo, they are gradually entering into more and more dangerous areas even if they have the help of female air commander Franky (Angelina Jolie) and technical expert Dex (Giovanni Ribisi).

Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow is a pretty average movie.  The story is lacking and they don’t develop the characters too much.  However, Sky Captain is also eye candy because the visuals are amazing.  Its all very CGI-y and all but doesn’t stop it from looking like you are watching a live action comic book open up in front of you and acting out all the sequences.  That part makes it fun and entertaining.  Other than Gwyneth Paltrow not really doing great, and I’ve never really enjoyed her in much, maybe thats just me, Jude Law always lights up the screen for me. Just let the man talk and I’m down for whatever he plays. Thats also just a personal preference.

What surprised me the most is that usually I’m not a huge fan of Angelina Jolie but in this one, her character Franky was pretty awesome.  This role matched her a lot.  Its too bad that they didn’t give her too much time on-screen as it was dominated by Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.  Franky brought style just like the whole CGI set did 🙂

Honestly, I’m at a loss for how to express myself.  Its been over a week since I’ve seen this and the only part I remember was the awesome effects, the set and some characters.  The story could have been so much better.  Some parts didn’t make a lot of sense and some parts didn’t link well together but then, maybe it was because I was dozing off at parts in the middle. Plus, I didn’t really like Jude Law with Gwyneth Paltrow.  At parts the whole scorned lovers thing works and its pretty funny but in other parts, it just makes the character Polly seem stupid.

Overall, I’m half and half with this one.  There are parts I really really liked and I think that if you like these comic book style, CGI setting movies, this one packs in a lot of style and class.  It has some action which carries the movie along but the story doesn’t really work out too well and its missing something.  If you like Jude Law or Angelina Jolie, I’d say they are quite enjoyable to watch as well. 🙂

Have you seen Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow? What did you think? Are you a fan of Angelina Jolie? Any movies that stands out of hers that you liked? Do you think Gwyneth Paltrow is a good actress?

Iron Man 3 (2013)

The month of May summer blockbusters are intense for me.  The first to come was Iron Man 3.  I’ve been generally looking at the scores that other movie review blogs have given but not read the context much.  If you saw that I liked yours, I will be back to check it out right after this is posted 🙂 Honestly, as much as I was extremely excited to see this movie, I was worried it wouldn’t do as well because I really did not enjoy the 2nd one a lot.  Still, we managed to go last night (Wednesday) and the theatre was pretty much packed except for the few rows right in front of the screen and after watching 30 minutes of ads then another 20 minutes of previews (almost all superhero movies previews), Iron Man 3 started with the narration from Tony Stark 🙂

Director: Shane Black

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, Jon Favreau, Rebecca Hall, William Sadler

A insomniac and anxious Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) after the events of last year’s The Avengers in New York is bothered constantly by the sudden possibility of danger hitting him and the people he loves, especially his girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwneyth Paltrow). When the terrorist The Mandarin starts decreeing that he will take steps to teach the President (William Sadler) some lessons by causing explosions and destruction and it ends up injuring his friend and bodyguard, Happy (Jon Favreau), he issues a threat to The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).  Little to his knowledge does he know that the Mandarin will end up destroying his home and turning it into rubbles causing him to have to scrabble to piece together his life again.  With this fall, he needs to find ways to work with what he has left and try to have his revenge and save the day!

The first Marvel movie to arrive after The Avengers was certainly entertaining! I loved it a lot.  This one was action-packed, fast-paced and still had a lot of Tony Stark’s witty remarks.

Tony Stark is definitely a great hero in this franchise.  This one brings in more of a personal struggle to find himself.  It was not only a struggle against keeping the ones he love safe but also digging deep into who he is amongst all the humor that he lashes out with whoever he is interacting with.  He seeks to find who he is at the base whether he’s really just a hero because of the suit or whether just himself as an individual, he can still be as great an individual.  Packaging that into a lot of action and introducing Don Cheadle’s Rhodey and his version of Iron Man but called Iron Patriot definitely gave this an extra push also.

I also enjoyed the sub characters.  Although Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts got a lot more screen time in this one which was for the better.  Her character has become one that I love and enjoy.  She’s tough and smart and just perfect for the uncontrollable Tony Stark.  I really love the little screen time at Jon Favreau’s Happy had also.  He’s just a hilarious man.  Don Cheadle’s character starts bringing in the political side of the equation as he tries to protect his country in general.  On the more business and science side, we have the great scientist here, Aldrich Killian played by Guy Pearce.  Ever since Memento, this guy has been on my radar and its nice to see him in this role 🙂

Whats a superhero movie without its villain, right? Super hero movies are straight forward and a lot has to do with finding that perfect villain to make the hero look awesome.  In this one, we have The Mandarin and his deadly explosions and taking over the wavelengths to broadcast his plans to terrorize the president and his country.  I’m a big fan of Ben Kingsley.  If you’ve seen this, then you’ll understand when I say that he was so awesome! Its not a normal role that I’ve seen him in but man, he was so good at doing this!

 

Iron Man 3 may not be as great as the first one but definitely is superior and worthy as a sequel, especially after a very unsatisfying 2nd.  The runtime was relatively average at a bit more over 2 hours ( I believe) but the time rolled by relatively quickly as the plot moves forward quickly, the action never stops (or at least it felt that way) and there’s always a lot of humour and snarky remarks (a la Stark style) to keep the audience entertained!  I can’t ask for more! I loved it and its definitely a great addition to the Marvel movies 🙂 I look forward to grabbing a copy of this when it gets released on Blu-ray!

Are you pumped up for the other summer blockbusters coming out? I know I am! Two more to go this month (at least)!