A person I care for and respect told me on Wednesday that she and her husband liked the movie, "Contagion." So Dave and I saw it yesterday. It's not a comedy.
It starts with a cough and ends with 26 million people dead.
It's not the typical disaster movie. It's not a melodrama. It's not touchy-feely. There are no high tech disaster scenes. There are no monsters.
It's scarier than that. It's realistic. It's played out in a rapid, almost documentary form.
As in real life, the disaster (in the form of a world-wide virus) brings out the best and worst in people. It's uplifting to see folks give themselves to solve the problem. We see this all the time in small and big disasters in real life.
I know people who run to the fire.
There are a number of big stars in this movie:
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- Laurence Fishburn - This must be why he left CSI.
- Gweyneth Paltrow - She looks really bad but we'll give her a break since she's dying.
- Jude Law - Plays one of the only bad guys (and a blogger at that.)
- Kate Winslet - Don't get too attached to her character.
- Marian Cotillard - She's a good guy.
- Matt Damon - He's a good guy who plays "everyman," as he does so well.
- Elliot Gould - Some of you might not know him but some of us remember when he was married to Barbra Streisand and, way before that, when he was the original Trapper on MASH.
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