“CONTAGION” WORTH CATCHING

CONTAGION

Starring Matt Damon,

Kate Winslet,

Gwyneth Paltrow,

Laurence Fishburne,

Jude Law

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Scott Z. Burns

Running time 105 mins.

Rated PG-13

          It almost feels more like a documentary. What an amazing film that can feature such big-name talent and still seem disturbingly real.

          Upshot: Pandemic.

          The lack of story-ness with this movie is incredible. As is the fact that it still works. “The Stand,” for example, with its wide array of characters and ultimate showdown of good versus evil is all story. But “Contagion” is much more spare. The characters are there, just far more subtly shown.

          What grabs our interest by the throat is the grim progression of a strange fatal illness spreading at exponential rate across the globe. We might see a person coughing touch a glass, then see a waiter pick up the glass, then wipe his eye, and suck on his finger for awhile, then rub it around on the glass some more and do it all again. That sort of thing. All just very simple, very real. It’s not the kind of movie that uses CG effects to zoom in on and spin all around a microbe going down somebody’s gullet.

          Central characters include Matt Damon as an average joe whose wife (Paltrow) comes back from a trip not feeling well, and Kate Winslet as a CDC doctor. As the disease quickly spreads, much of the film focuses on the CDC’s attempts to find out where the disease started and determine how to respond.

          As the response gets underway, we see who benefits first and who doesn’t. Voices raised, windows broken, lots of mass commuters with surgical masks.

          The effort to isolate the cause of the disease assumes proportions reminding us of “Citizen Kane” and the quest to find the meaning of “Rosebud.” And this aspect of story-ness does not, I think, work in the film’s favor. Seems too much like scapegoating, and sort of the opposite of factual, particularly knowing what we do about Mad Cow and other diseases resulting from industrialized farming.

          Not the big cinematic upper. (Pandemic.) Don’t expect to see Matt Damon rolling off of car hoods blasting shotguns at the zombie-like diseased. You may be familiar with Steven Soderbergh’s critically-acclaimed “Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich,” and the three “Ocean’s” movies. I still haven’t seen “The Informant!” but I think “Contagion” is Soderbergh’s best movie so far.               Well, nothing to sneeze at, anyway.

“APOLLO 18” NEVER LEAVES GROUND

APOLLO 18

Starring Warren Christie,

Lloyd Owen,

Ryan Robbins

Directed by Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego

Written by Brian Miller, Cory Goodman

Running time 88 mins.

Rated PG-13

          Think “Blair Moon Project.”

          In 1972, three astronauts take a secret mission to the moon. Cameras record events in and out of lunar modules. Strange things happen–I shan’t say what–perhaps explaining why we never went back to the moon.

          Reality TV, astronaut-style, may sound great as a concept, but the actual execution looks like a major ripoff.

          Blurry stuff, shaky camera, fake scratches in the “film.” Yet all that the contrivances geared toward authenticity in lieu of story serve to do is annoy. Anytime somebody’s on the moon in a movie, you can’t help but notice issues with gravity. But there isn’t nearly enough story to distract us from seeing the heels of the wizard moving back and forth behind the curtain.

          Once in a while there’s a movie where it’s just a couple dudes in a room most of the time, and some of those movies work out okay. But this isn’t one of those.

          If you’ve got a stationary camera on board a lunar module, then it doesn’t zoom in. Maybe it’s not multiple times that that happens, but it feels like it.

          As for leaving certain events in film to the audience’s imagination, sure, that’s generally a good idea. To a point. We will be requiring a certain amount of payoff. This is where the “Blair Witch Project” factor comes in. The ripoff factor. The one where the filmmakers try to pass low-quality under the aegis of “authenticity.”

          “Apollo 18” does have a few payoff moments, but they’re so few and so brief, they basically count as nothing.

          For example, when the two main astronauts (Christie, Owen) leave the module and walk around on the surface of the moon, they encounter craters which never see sunlight. Sounds great. You can’t help wishing Kubrick or Spielberg were around to film it, too. Because when one of the astronauts goes into the crater, he has to use a flashlight that works like a flashbulb. That means we’re stuck seeing a black screen with a spot of light occasionally flaring for half a second. In one of those flashing spots of light we know we will eventually see a brief unsatisfying digital effect. And there’s your payoff for you.

          Plus no musical score. That goes toward authenticity, too.