What, No Zombies? I Want My Money Back.

CONTAGION (2011)

Dr. Ally Hextall being a BAMF.

It's happened. Labor day weekend has come and gone, and now we can finally strap in as the disappointingly "eh" summer movies fade away and we prepare ourselves for the badassitry that is going to be this winter. Contagion (2011) is a wonderfully concise way to shed the dead skin of summer and enjoy a little taste of panic, desperation, and sneezes just in time for flu season. The funny thing about this movie is that it is really the movie that shouldn't have worked. There's no real main character, no real defeat of the antagonist, no car chases, no explosions, and no fucking zombies. It's a movie about a really bad case of the swine flu and the various ways people deal with it. The end. And yet, thanks to a little thing we call star studded cast and excellent acting, they somehow pull it off. 

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Since there's no real singular plot that follows through the movie except "holyfuck, bacteria!", I'm just going to highlight some of the major plots I appreciated. My favorite segment was definitely anything and everything that happened around Dr. Ellis, played by none other than Morpheus himself. I've always had a soft spot for Laurence Fishburne, and he pushed every emotional button here. Ellis was the "go-to" man for emotional problem, it seemed, and he played out an excellent, subtle bromance with Dr. Erin Mears, AKA, the lovely Kate Winslet. I call it a bromance because that's exactly what it was--a great, platonic friendship between two characters built off of a few spot-on scenes. 

We had a bunch of really excellent female characters, while on the topic. Marion Cotillard was fucking sexy. Oh, and a great actress and stuff. She helped save the world. Whatever. Even though her segment didn't...seem to have a real end? But maybe I just wasn't reading into it hard enough. However, the real heroine of the movie is Dr. Ally Hextall, played by Jennifer Ehle. Know her? Me neither. Her previous credits include "Brooklyn Ice House Bartender" in The Adjustment Bureau. Yet, even among all these big name actors, she shines in a organic, easy way. Her character remains the same stubborn, persistent doctor throughout the entire movie and doesn't seem to go through any major changes, and yet she more or less singlehandedly saves mankind. So I think she deserves a pat on the back for that. I know I should probably say something about Gwyneth Paltrrow here but...I don't really like her, so I was just happy to see her die right away. I think she did an excellent job foaming at the mouth. A +.

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Another character I've got to mention is Alan Krumwiede, played by Jude Law's teeth. Seriously. Look at those chompers. Am I right? But in all seriousness, he's an excellent obnoxious blogger trying to turn a profit (or prophet) out of others' misery. I've always thought Jude Law does his best when he's an asshole (I'm looking at you, I Heart Huckabees (2004). Which, by the way, is an excellent stoner movie. Just throwing that out there. Pressing on--), and he doesn't disappoint here. He's smarmy, but you can't help but enjoy every moment he's on screen. 

The last subplot I'm going to go into is Jason Bourne's whole bit. Jason Bourne plays Mitch, who's wife (Paltrow) is one of the first to die, and ends up waiting out the storm with his daughter. Except Mitch has a secret. He's Jason Bourne. And Jason Bourne doesn't get sick. Sick gets Jason Bourne. Jason Bourne is immune to every disease. Ever. It might wipe out the entire human race, but not Jason Bourne. Chuck Norris can stay too. With that said...alright. So they give Mitch this great immunity that no one else has. Awesome! And then he spends the rest of the movie...doing absolutely nothing with it. The only reason his immunity exists seems to be so he can hold his wife as she writhes and comes out on the other end alive. The government isn't able to use him, he can't do anything special with it. Instead, he just holes up in his house with a shotgun and protects his daughter. Which I'm cool with. Really. I liked the whole father/daughter dynamic. But I was left a little unsatisfied with his whole immunity bit. 

On the thread of unsatisfying things, I'm going to say that while I liked the film a lot as a whole, the end didn't really do it for me. I know, when we're dealing with a multi-plot movie that evolves around a man-killing disease, there's no real logical way to end it except to somehow neatly wrap up each segment. You can't really fire a bazooka into a contagious disease and call it a night. Still, you did get the feeling that the writers just didn't know how to end it. So they found the cure. Great! But then they had to give it out to the public. Done! And then they had to deal with the people waiting on the cure, denying that it worked, giving the government hell. I was waiting for a skip into the future when we find out the vaccine gave everyone AIDS and they all died anyway. Limp ending aside, the movie still packed an emotional punch I wasn't expecting from an infection movie. The characters were well thought out, the events seemed believable, and the writing was natural and organic. It was just a good end-of-the-world movie, without being so...end-of-the-worldy. 

Dramatic Kate Winslet is dramatic.

With all that said. There is one final point I have to make. Which is...Zombies. Because someone had to say it. Now, I like a good infection movie as much as the next person. And I'm cool with an outbreak of the batty swine flu without any undead, brain-eating zombies coming to life. Really, go ahead and make your "intellectual" outbreak film. But I have a personal bone to pick here. The book World War Z by Max Brooks was pretty popular recently, and if I could make love to a zombie infested book, it would be this one. Yet, as I was watching Contagion, I could not stop thinking about World War Z. World-wide infection. Various different character stories. A bit of politics here and there. I'm not by any means saying Contagion "ripped off" the book, because infection-movies are hardly a novel idea. However, they've got a World War Z movie in the making, which will hopefully come out sometime next year. The lesson I hope people take form Contagion is that a multi-plot multi-location movie can be done, and done well. Except now I'm suddenly holding my breath and waiting for that person who talks out of World War Z going "What the hell, that's such a rip-off of Contagion." After which zombies will eat their face. There. I got it out of my system. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

In short, Contagion was a unique look at infection movies. It went with a relatively simple plot and churned out a compelling story with many captivating characters. Well worth the watch. Just let someone else touch the door handle for you on your way out. 

I'm Looking For The Man That Killed My Father.

TRUE GRIT (2010)

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It's no secret that I'm a Coen Brother's fan. I recently highlighted them as number 5 in my list of Top Ten Killer Directors. Fargo (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Blood Simple (1984)--time and again, they've churned out classic after classic. And so, when I saw the trailer for True Grit, I was hooked. Granted, I've never seen the John Wayne version, nor have a read the book, but as a Coen Brothers die-hard, I was into it. What I got, I still have mixed feelings about. 

The film starts off with the conflict: the young but persistent Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) has taken it on herself to hunt down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who robbed and murdered her father. She enlists the help of the washed up Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), who gets a lot of slack for being old, being a drunk, and, oh...killing people unnecessarily. A lot. Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) is also on a quest to track down Tom Chaney and claim the earnings, so he joins them to form an unlikely trio of three people who really don't want to be near each other.

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Overall, it ran a lot like O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The people on a very barebones quest, meandering about trying to find some semblance of direction. Honestly, they spent so much of the movie turned around, I'm surprised they found Chaney at all. The thing is, it's a movie filled with long and strange pauses, with scenes that just seem to stretch on. Which is fine by me, because the dialogue was fun and the characters were enjoyable to be around, so I didn't mind lingering from scene to scene with them. It just didn't give the film as a whole a very tight feeling. And then just when everyone is "solving their character problems" and I think the plot is becoming a little kitschy, the Coen Brothers manage to turn it on its head. Suddenly, what was a blatantly obvious film about revenge and perseverance turns into something else: a more subtle and tender story of loyalty, the bonds of friendship, redemption and growing up. It sounds cliché, but I think the Coen Brothers did eventually turn it around with a very nicely placed snakebite. 

As for the actors. Little Hailee Steinfeld was just stunning. She was hands down the best part of the movie. I believed her every second she was on the screen. She played a bold young girl, without coming off as pretentious, and her chemistry with the other actors was great. Especially with Matt Damon, who I actually liked in this movie, even though I'm usually not that big of a fan of him. Someone give this man more comedic roles. That said, his character had a pseudo-romance with little Mattie Ross, and while it stayed harmless and didn't go into any potentially pedophile awkward space, it did pop up here and there with a couple twisted spanking scenes and gave a little something interesting to their dynamic. Jeff Bridges was Jeff Bridges. Always brilliant. 

The one character I would've liked to see more of was Cogburn's nemesis with woolly legs, Lucky Ned. He seemed to have come out of nowhere and they gave the impression that there was a history there, but it was never really explained. As much as I appreciate subtly, I'm not getting any rewards if this epic fight out with Lucky Ned is simply...an epic fight out, and I don't really have anything to back up their strife with. I was waiting for a "he poked out my eye" story, but that never happened. I suppose that might've been too much, but just a little something-something and I'd have been happy. 

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Lastly, the film itself ended on a bit of a flat note for me. I really enjoyed the journey, and the characters, and getting to know them. The standoff with Cogburn and the four men was riveting, and then I loved the whole snakebite scene. However...well. Alright. I'll just say it. I got emotional with the horse. Not going to lie. Kill all the men you want--but Little Blackie! I was mourning, and the Coen Brothers offered no relief. And then I'm fine with an unresolved ending. Really, I am. The cutting-off-her-arm thing was cool. I was all for that. But overall, leaving without word of LaBoeuf, and then going to see Cogburn only to not see Cogburn...it just didn't seem necessary to me. Like, we learned that she lost her arm and never got married. That was about it. I'm all for following up with the characters, I just felt like we could've used a little more than that. And actually-14-year-old Hailee was a much better actor than the woman who played grown up Mattie Ross. Is all I'm saying. 

What do you guys think? Did this movie have true grit?