Contagion (2011)

director Steven Soderbergh
viewed: 02/18/2012

I have been pretty keen on seeing Contagion.  I guess you’d have to say “how keen?” as I neither managed to see it in the theater and was also patient enough to wait for Netflix to finally release the film (after their embargo on new content expired).  It had a lot of good buzz and it looked to me to be quite the thing to see.  But I guess that I was able to be patient enough to wait for it to come to me.

A disease thriller, this is only science fiction in that it is fiction.  The plot adheres as closely to a believable reality of a modern epidemic.  Think H1N1, but this time, people die by the thousands.  You get a runny nose, you feel like crap, three days later you’re in seizures and then you die.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Gwyneth Paltrow (actually, being a big star probably increases your chances of failing to make it through the film alive).

The film starts off running, with its pantheon of stars, several sets of mini-narratives, cross-cutting one another, attempt to tell this global story at a pace and immediacy of the now.  Much is made of the “fomites,” the many objects or touches that can swiftly pass a pathogen on from one human to the next or the many.  Director Steven Soderbergh lets the camera linger just long enough on the peanut bowl at the bar, the handles on a bus, the number of times a person touches their face and then touches a public object.  It’s a germophobe’s nightmare deluxe.

And for that matter, it’s an incredibly timely nightmare for the world.  In our increasingly global universe, the right contagion could sweep the human populace like the Black Death, taking down immense numbers of people, a significant percentage of the human race.   Some say it’s just a matter of time.  Perhaps the movie is perfectly prescient.

The movie is really quite good through the first hour or so.  The zeitgeist thriller really taps into something and moves with alacrity and with some deadly power.  The only thing is that the last half hour or so, the film loses some of its potency.  It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly, what happened, but it sort of sputters to the finish line.  I found the Jude Law character the weakest of the bunch and the kidnapping of Marion Cotillard seemed to veer off from whatever track had the film moving so well.  This hardly ruins the film, just diminishes what starts out as a top rate flick.  A popcorn movie that will keep you from sharing your popcorn.

The Woman (2011)

director Lucky McKee
viewed: 02/01/2012

Little tales of misogyny.  Actually, this is a big tale of big misogyny.  Thus its sordid reputation at film festivals.

I’d only seen one of director Lucky McKee’s films, his 2002 movie, May, which wound up surprising me positively.  When I read about his latest, edgy, controversial film, I was curious.  So much contemporary horror films are intensely uninspired, that something that shocks and appalls piques one’s interest (thus The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), right?)

The story about a small town nuclear family, who lives isolated on a pretty private lot, who take in a feral woman that the father captures in the nearby woods, chains in the storm shelter, and ostensibly tries to “socialize”.  This, however, is no The Wild Child (1970), no real sense of humanity trying to better a feral human.  No, this is all hypocrisy, barely veiled paternalism, misogyny, and ultimately rape and more violence.  It’s not going to end well.

The film is about the father’s point of view, the iron-fist of the family law, smacking down the women, cowing them into shame and quietude, suggesting further violence, both physical and psychological.  And the creepy breeding of the teenage son into a sexual manipulator in his father’s image.  When the woman is finally cut loose, her vengeance is not just personal, it’s meant to be societal, a female rage that eviscerates the oppressors.

There are shots, moments, when this titillating material looks strong.  But those are shots and moments.  Between those shots and moments is the rest of the film, which feels sloppy or rushed, not as strong or sophisticated as it would need to be to pull off its intellectual goals.  Either that or just not plain visceral enough.

Frankly, the idea, the concept, is creepy and stark.  Could be interesting.  I still think so, even after having watched The Woman and feeling less than impressed with its take on its material.

And where lies the misogyny? Is it in the text or the subtext, in the eye of the producer or the beholder?  That’s probably an openly debatable question.

The Trip (2010)

director Michael Winterbottom
viewed: 01/31/2012

Steve Coogan plays Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon plays Rob Brydon, or versions of themselves, in The Trip, a film from director Michael Winterbottom, compiled from a television series that ran on British television of the same material.  The plot is a simple one: Coogan nabs friend/colleague Brydon to join him on a winter trip around the north of England, sampling fancy restaurants for an article he is to write.  He invites Brydon when his girlfriend takes off to America.

Coogan is a broody, egoistic, self-absorbed version of Coogan.  Brydon is a very funny, kind, and affable version of himself.  They eat a lot of swank-looking food, do a ton of impressions, namely Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and dozens of others, all quite hilariously.   But that is about all that really goes on.  They also sing ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All.”

Apparently, The Trip meant to pick up the characters created in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) of which I remember very little.

The English countryside looks very beautiful.  The country, the food, British pop culture, Coleridge, over-produced fine food, much is subject here.  It’s amusing.  It got a lot of raves and wound up on a lot of people’s “best of” lists.  That is a bit of a reach for me, but it certainly has its charms.