Contagion

Impressions before seeing it
I made a list of films from 2011 that I want to see before I break out a top 10 list (still have about 12 left on it), and this one was not on there because I'm not big on deadly virus movies, but then I realized the cast was too awesome not to watch it.

How was it?
Contagion is a deadly virus movie, yes, but the story is told more from the point of view of the doctors and scientists trying to cure it. To me, that was much more interesting than watching people die in mass numbers while lamenting that humanity is doomed. Here, they really are just numbers, letting us know how rapidly the thing has spread and nothing more. Curiously, the movie begins on day 2 of the epidemic, not day 1, because the cause is a mystery. But to be honest I wasn't that interested in the cause, and was underwhelmed when the movie ended with the reveal of day 1. What I liked was the scrambling of the doctors, not just in finding a cure, but in dealing with a frightened and desperate public and how to handle the situation with regards to media coverage. I felt like this was a more realistic portrayal of events for a deadly virus movie - the disease was nothing crazy, just one of those things that starts as a flu and then begins shutting down your respiratory system and heart, like the real life SARS. That makes it scary, because these things can and already have happened, but the best solution is to avoid going out in public and washing your hands when you do. The people in the movie who caught the disease did not do those things.

Recommendation
It's probably best to never, ever see this movie if you are a hardcore hypochondriac, but for everyone else it is a fascinating look at a potential scenario, albeit a grim one. And, again, the cast was pretty great; in addition to the six award calibre actors on the poster, you also get Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes, Elliott Gould, Demetri Martin, and Enrico Colantoni. I love a good cast, so that alone makes this worth it.