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REVIEW: “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (***1/2)
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Alfredson was an inspired but sensitive choice to direct this potentially outmoded material, and his delicate mood-cultivating sensibility reaps the same rare rewards that it did in his previous hit. A classy throwback to the pleasures of long-view tale-spinning, and an evocation of a time and place fading before its occupants’ own eyes, this is as inactively riveting a thriller as anyone is allowed to make these days.
Review: Cough and the World Coughs With You in a Taut 'Contagion' | The Wrap Movies
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While there are plenty of current Hollywood films with extensive casts and locations, “Contagion” is one of the rare ones that is actually about something real rather than just superheroes or machine gun-equipped robots battling it out.
With its strong grounding in real science and recent medical scares (such as the avian flu and the continuing scourge of AIDS), the movie effectively and dramatically raises (and sometimes answers) provocative and pertinent questions. What unilateral protective measures should governments take? How fast might the rules of society break down? If a vaccine was developed, how quickly could it be put into production and who decides who gets it first?
By its end, the movie leaves a viewer wrung out and feeling slightly queasy, though thankfully that’s only a passing feeling, one cinematically rather than germ-induced.
So far, the reviews on this seem pretty good.
Watch: U.K. Trailer For Psychological Virus Thriller ‘Retreat’ Starring Cillian Murphy & Jamie Bell > The Playlist
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Essentially a single setting film, the plot follows a couple (Murphy and Newton) who decide to vacation together on a remote island, where they’ve spent happier times, to try and repair their crumbling relationship. That’s the plan anyway, until a crazed Bell shows up claiming to be a solider and warning them that a virus is spreading around the world, and that they need to barricade themselves indoors if they want to stay alive. Is he crazy, dangerous or delusional? He may be a mix of all three, and what emerges is a movie that can’t free itself from an endless series of twists. We caught the film at Fantasia earlier this year and noted that “as a virus thriller we’re never quite sure if it’s real or how horrific the damage can be if infection sets in, as a psycho-sexual potboiler the story doesn’t get heated enough, and as an exercise in paranoia Tibbetts can only find a few notes and tones and then he hammers them incessantly to increasingly lessening impact.” Indeed a lot of things happen in this movie to little effect.
Contagion: Movie Review
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This is Soderbergh at his best; Contagion is fascinating to watch. Though some might prefer a more horrific “what if” situation, the film communicates great ideas about how our society functions, and where it breaks down. And more than any recent picture, Contagion really captures the internet era (arguably the film is more about that than the disease), where people are texting their reactions to tragedy, and someone leaking word about a possible shutdown or blockade goes as viral as the virus itself.
Steven Soderbergh Talks CONTAGION And Much, Much More With Mr. Beaks!
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RED LIGHTS Teaser Trailer
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The teaser trailer for the supernatural thriller Red Lights has gone online. The film is director Rodrigo Cortes’ follow-up to Buried, which took place entirely in a coffin containing Ryan Reynolds, and this time he’s taking on the other-worldly. Robert De Niro stars as a renowned psychic who comes under investigation by a psychologist who specializes in the paranormal, played by Sigourney Weaver. The trailer is incredibly simple, and a nice change of pace from the quick-cut style we’re used to seeing that succeeds only in inducing seizure and giving away 70% of the plot. Cortes has opted instead for mood, putting creepy music and De Niro’s back to good use.
Stanley Tucci and Chris Cooper Join Robert Redford's The Company You Keep
Great cast...but LaBeouf just puts me off this one.Quote:
Robert Redford has assembled quite the cast for his next directorial effort, and he’s just added two more terrific thesps to the roster: Stanley Tucci and Chris Cooper. The Company You Keep. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Neal Gordon, and centers on a former Weather Underground militant who goes on the run after an ambitious young journalist exposes his true identity. Redford will play the militant, while Shia LaBeouf is set as the young reporter.
Screen Daily (via The Playlist) reports that Tucci will play LaBeouf’s editor, while Cooper will take on the role of Redford’s brother who is forced to take his niece in when Redford’s character goes into hiding. In addition to Redford and LaBeouf, the cast now includes Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Brit Marling, Julie Christie and Richard Jenkins. Filming is set to begin soon in Vancouver. Hit the jump to read a synopsis of Gordon’s novel.
REVIEW: Contagion Treats Star-Studded Pandemic With Stone-Cold Tension | Movieline
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Contagion marks time in numbers, tracking how long it’s been since the virus first appeared — Day 2, Day 26, Day 141 — but tracking people in numbers too, noting the populations of each new city at which it and the illness arrives. Hong Kong, London, Chicago, Tokyo — the ease and speed with which MEV-1 spreads is a reminder that we’re living in a global society, one through which information can pass as quickly as infection. And given the teeming, impersonal masses through which the first sick characters stumble, the film’s affirmation of the connection humanity provides us is unexpectedly uplifting, the elements we have in common holding up against the animal chaos of a blind drive for survival.
