Contagion (3/5 Stars)

Setting a record for the number of Oscar Winners killed in throwaway cameos.

The potential of a worldwide epidemic has been a great time-waster/audience scarer in the news for the past couple years. The virus will come from China (SARS, Birdflu) and just might be comparable to the 1917 influenza epidemic that killed about 1% of the world’s population. That was 1917, so the number of dead was only in the millions. Still, what if a virus like that came along again. Hundreds of millions might die.

“Contagion,” tells the story of such a virus in an oddly responsible way. There are no gruesome death scenes, over-dramatic wailing, or contagious zombies roaming the earth. Instead we are treated to plenty of scientists and doctors saying scientific things with patience and composure. These scientists are played by such acting heavyweights like Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslett, and Marion Cotillard. The first victim of the virus is Gwyneth Paltrow. Matt Damon plays her grieving husband. There are several other small parts played by well known actors. Jude Law plays a sensationalist blogger intent on dispensing government conspiracies. John Hawkes plays a janitor in Laurence Fishburne’s office. Jennifer Ehle and Demetri Martin are two other scientists working on the vaccine. Finally there is Bryan Cranston who plays some sort of military officer. Obviously, this is a very impressive cast. There are four Oscar winners, two Oscar nominees, and a two time Emmy winner in it. But none of this really matters except in marketing. You can put all the famous great actors on a screen and it still does not guarantee a great movie. This is especially true if the story is trying to be realistic.  

What’s the point of a Great Actor if the story does not allow for Great Acting? The Oscar winners here are supposed to be playing normal people going about exactly what they would do in this situation. This calls for understated performances, which they all do quite well. But really, it probably would have made more sense if the movie didn’t have any big name stars at all. Celebrity has a way of overshadowing underdeveloped characters. I rarely felt I was observing actual people. More often I was like, well, look that’s Kate Winslett and now she is in Chicago. Furthermore, if the movie wanted to take a realistic take on a subject that involves the entire world and a hyperlink network of characters, then perhaps the movie would have been better if it weren’t a movie. Two hours is not long enough to tell this story the way they want to tell it.  It should have been a 10-hour HBO mini-series.

The fact that the movie has such a huge scope but is only two hours long gives the story a sense of being in fast-forward most of the time. The vaccine apparently takes several months to create and distribute in the movie, but has a screen time of about 15 minutes. The great heroine of the story, Jennifer Ehle, is barely in the movie at all. Character back-story and motivation is hinted at but never developed in a satisfying way. Most of the problems set out are solved off-screen or dissipate in large jumps in time. Weirdly enough, the most dramatic conflict in the storyline is not the virus at all. It deals with the sensationalist blogger played by Jude Law who I think was selling a fake cure online. He gets arrested at the end, or maybe not. I’m not sure what was going on there in that park or even who he was talking to. It all happened so fast.

We’ve all seen catastrophe movies before. Well, remember that scene where the people are running wild in the streets and the looters raid the supermarket. That scene is in this movie too. Now, I’m sure that such a situation can be told in a realistic way that is just as exciting and dramatic as these scenes are in the best of zombie movies. But when a movie does not add anything to the set up the scene will not escape cliche. Time and details are needed for a realistic movies to be exciting. Otherwise they lack credibility. Now they obviously were pressed for time in this case, but whittling away those details makes what is left rather humdrum. Without the credibility the scene actually comes off worse than the same scene would be in a not so serious movie. You take the supermarket scene in a movie like “Zombieland.” Not only do they raid the supermarket, but they also kill zombies. Here they just raid the supermarket. It's boring.  

Having said all this, the movie is well put together considering that it is telling a story about a worldwide catastrophe in such a short running time. The director is none other than Steven Soderbergh, who was the Oscar winning director of one of the best hyperlink movies ever made, Traffic. But, really, you can just sense all the talent in the direction and the cast here going to waste. One wonders why Soderbergh decided to make this movie at all. The man is capable of great things. Why is he wasting his time with mediocre projects? Actually you can say this about Soderbergh’s career in general. Did we really need an Ocean’s 13? Come on Steven, you’re better than this.

Our Idiot Brother (4/5 Stars)

Good writing and nice people: A typical Paul Rudd comedy

The majority of comedies are about mean and obnoxious people. The idea being that gleeful and aggressive shocks of violence and rude behavior elicit laughs. And they do. Quite a lot of these movies are very funny. But every once in a while it is a pleasure to see a comedy take the opposite route and have the running joke be that the characters are too trusting, lovable, and sweet. Or in Ned’s case (played by the funniest nice guy in movies, Paul Rudd) all those characteristics to an idiotic degree.

What a good and compassionate heart Ned has. In the first scene we see him happily running a biodynamic vegetable stall at the local farmer’s market. He charges fair prices and lets little kids steal strawberries with a smile. A uniformed cop walks up to him and asks for marijuana. Ned is hesitant. The cop confides in Ned that it’s been a really rough week for him. Ned, ever so trusting and empathetic, decides to give him a bag of marijuana on the house. No, the cop insists, he wants to pay for it. Ned relents and gives a price that must be a rather large discount for that amount of marijuana. The cop pays and informs Ned that he is being arrested for selling drugs. It takes Ned awhile to realize that the nice cop had been lying to him all along.

Ned is thrown in prison for eight months and is released four months early for being “Most Cooperative Inmate” three months straight. Outside he finds that he has lost his job, his girlfriend, his place to live, and his much loved dog, Willie Nelson. The way he handles all this would make Socrates, Thoreau, and Jeffrey Lebowski very proud. He even makes dudely peace with his girlfriend’s new boyfriend, played here by the very funny T.J. Miller. He drops by his mother’s house where there are still family dinners routinely held. Around the table are his three sisters. One is Emily Mortimer, a wife and mother to an oily Steve Coogan and ten-year-old Dillon respectively. Another is Elizabeth Banks, a hard-working journalist on the verge of a career-making story. Finally there is Zooey Deschanel, a stand-up comedian currently engaged to Rashida Jones, a hipster lawyer with a must-mention sense of style. This is a very good cast. Most of them have worked together before and it has a way of showing. Elizabeth Banks was Rudd’s opposite in “Role Models” and Rashida Jones was Rudd’s opposite in “I Love You, Man.” Those movies too were very nice and funny comedies about good people. You can put this one up there with them. Good writing and nice people. I think it can be said that Paul Rudd is developing a solid reputation for these types of movies.

From there on, Ned couch surfs from home to home causing problems with his honesty and humility. Generally speaking, the problem already exists but Ned has a way of bringing them out in the open because of how his compassion and empathy (which makes him very easy to confide in) combines with his complete inability to tell a lie and childlike belief that the truth brings out the best in people. People tell him things he shouldn’t hear and he shares things to others he isn’t supposed to tell. Soon Emily’s marriage to Steve Coogan is on the rocks (as it should be because the guy is no good), Elizabeth’s career is put in danger (as it should be because her employers are telling her to do shady things), and Zooey’s relationship with Rashida is endangered (as it should be because Zooey has a bad habit of infidelity). All of this happens because of “our idiot brother.”

The first half of the movie is enjoyable but there were very few laughs. The movie did pick up steam, however, as it went along and by the end the laughs were big and numerous. The characters in general are so likable that laughing becomes a very easy reaction to indulge in. I especially liked the raid on the organic farm by Ned and Rashida Jones to steal back Willie Nelson. It goes bad almost immediately and they don’t get the dog back, but T.J. Miller is a really cool dude about the midnight trespassing and all. He even goes so far as to sort of apologize for not giving Ned the right information for when him and the girlfriend would be out of town to see a Dixie Chicks concert. “Next Thursday” apparently in Miller’s mind means every Thursday down the road that isn’t “this Thursday.” Ned kindly informs him that for future reference he should say “Next Next Thursday” if he means the Thursday after next. Sorry Dude, my bad. That’s totally okay, Dude, sorry for the trespassing. The movie did miss an opportunity in its underutilization of Zooey Deschanel though. This is an actress I have seen being truly hilarious before (The Good Girl, (500) Days of Summer). In this movie she plays a stand-up comedian. It would have been funny if she had a decent act that made people laugh or something.

Is Ned truly an idiot? The sisters treat Ned with that special kind of passive aggressive disdain women reserve for honest and humble men. Ned isn’t really an adult in their eyes. Ned tolerates this not only because he has to in that he is sleeping on their couches but also because he loves his family and understands their various problems. There is a very telling scene where Ned finally gets angry. Here is a man who was unjustly sent to prison via an act of compassion, lost his job, his home, his girlfriend, and essentially the respect and dignity in the eyes of his family. Does this make him bitter? No, he is still a good person, tries to do better, and spends much of the movie apologizing to those who are unfairly pissed off at him. What does he get angry about? He gets angry when on family night his sisters essentially ruin a game of charades. They break the rules, won’t have fun, and treat the concept of a family game as a stupid waste of time. It is easy to roll one’s eyes and claim that this is an idiotic thing to get angry about. Or one could perhaps reflect on their priorities in life.

One more thing, and I say this with but the expertise of a person who has seen an almost ridiculous amount of movies. Movies do not glamorize drugs, at least not the good ones. I have seen people drink themselves to death (Leaving Las Vegas), I have seen people ruin their lives with heroin (The Wire, Requiem for a Dream, Basketball Diaries), I have seen people make ridiculously bad decisions while on cocaine (Goodfelllas, Casino, Scarface, Boogie Nights, Bad Lieutenant). I have seen drug overdoses aplenty (Pulp Fiction, Traffic, Trainspotting, SLC Punk). Not once have I seen the movie where somebody smoked marijuana, became addicted, overdosed, or routinely went about their self-destruction. I think the worst I have seen was the case in Dave Chappelle’s Half Baked where one of the characters literally smoked himself retarded. True I have seen potheads that are lazy and stupid, but being lazy and stupid is not a crime and here is the point I want to make. We don’t need to be wasting the police’s time and the taxpayer’s money putting people like Ned behind prison bars. It has been argued that marijuana may lead to heavier drugs and more criminal behavior. You can say the same about losing your job, your girlfriend, and your home, which has a tendency to happen when someone gets thrown in prison. The problem isn’t being solved. Thank God that in this movie, Ned had a good family to fall back on. I think we must remember that there is a difference between behavior that is morally objectionable and behavior that is criminal. It can definitely be said that it would be better for the smoker or drinker to exercise prudence and refrain from intoxicants. But it must also be understood that indulging in mind-altering substances is a universal thing amongst human beings as a species. Basically every religion on the face of the planet has some kind of drug that they use in their functions or tolerate in society. It is a truth that people in general have rough weeks and look for a chance to escape every now and then. When this is made a crime, there will be a ludicrous amount of people behind bars that otherwise could be functioning productive citizens (ex. the United States of America). Drugs use is a very serious thing and those that are addictive, manipulative, and dangerous should be illegal. Marijuana is not one of those. If you would like to know exactly what it does, please read Michael Pollan’s “The Botany of Desire.” Of course, like anything else, marijuana may be abused. But that is a problem that should be dealt with by a family, a church, a support group, or a community. Using lawyers, courts, prisons, and parole officers to solve such a problem is akin to swatting flies with a baseball bat. You’re bound to cause far more damage than if you did nothing at all.