CONTAGION
4 out of 5 stars

this has got to be the scariest movie i’ve ever seen... VIRUSES ARE FUCKING SCARY. :O :O :O

contagion follows the story of one person, who goes on to infecting/killing almost 26 million globally... beth emhoff (GOOP: govt name- gweneth paltrow) is some sort of global construction project manager who travels extensively for her work, and the movie starts with her coughing but talking to some guy named jon neal, whom she just slept with in chicago during a layover. her home is in minneapolis, and she’s greeted at home by her loving/adoring husband mitch (matt damon) and her young son clark. a couple days pass...and beth can’t see, feel her arms, begins to have a seizure, and then ends up dead in the hospital. the doctors have NO CLUE WHATSOEVER to what killed her, so they end up doing an autopsy (a truly gross scene when they peel back her scalp to examine her brain), and IMMEDIATELY call the CDC, the WHO, and practically anyone whose involved in public health safety and infectious disease control. the director of the CDC (laurence fishburne) sends a field agent/doctor (kate winslet) out to minneapolis to investigate this matter further, but you’ll see what happens to her... the CDC deal with this domestically, along with pressure coming from paranoid homeland security officials, but the WHO (world health organization) deal with this in china by sending marion cotillard, where they think the virus originated from b/c beth was on a business trip in hong kong...specifically a macao casino. there’s also a pesky blogger in the form of jude law who complicates things by creating mass paranoia through his video blog posts and such. A LOT happens throughout this one, but wait until the very end when they show you how the virus started. ;) (hint: a bat was eating a banana in a tree when a construction bulldozer chopped it down...)

MUCH better than outbreak and not melodramatic at all!!! it’s a clear account to what would happen if something like this were to happen, and we sort of already know based on what we experienced with swine flu AKA H1N1 virus. a lot of good actors were attached to this project, and i really liked steven soderbergh’s directional style. this one doesn’t have that soderbergh gritty-ness that makes it semi-indie and stylistic, but it still does the job. my only gripe is that damn awful soundtrack that’s suppose to be electronic/synthesizer ??? just distracting and really ANNOYING... :/