Contagion is about the terrifying prospect of a pandemic deadly disease outbreak, with an impact similar in scale to the 1918 Spanish Flu which killed at least 3% of the global population.

There’s some fine performances from a stellar cast, including Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Marion Cotillard.

So with such a great cast, a global setting, and a fascinating subject, why was Contagion so underwhelming?

For me, it was this – for a story portraying a catastrophic global event it felt somewhat under-dramatised (for a change). The outbreaks of rioting and general lawlessness as desperation took hold came a little too late in the timeline. I may be being pessimistic about our fellow mankind, but I’d expect society to start to break down much earlier than it does in Contagion.

There’s far too many self-centred people in this world. Gone are the days when people would pull together as a community like during the blitz in the East End of London. It seems like today it would only take a shortage of Plasma TV’s for cities to resemble Beirut circa 1978.

Look what happens each Black Friday in the US, or when there’s the rumours of fuel shortages in the UK, or simply during Christmas shopping. Imagine then, what it would be like if there were shortages of something really important, such as food or medical supplies. It would be every man for himself. Furthermore, imagine what it would be like in the US, with 35% of households possessing a gun. It would be like scenes from Escape from New York.

All of this is portrayed in Contagion but it felt somewhat flat. It’s certainly not a thriller. Contagion is a slow, meticulous drama which focuses on the technicalities faced by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US and the World Health Organisation (WHO). At times it felt more like a documentary than an exciting edge-of-the-seat thriller about the fight to save mankind.

Contagion is good enough as 106 mins of though-provoking entertainment, but it could have been so much better. In fact, I reckon Outbreak is a better movie.

I knew very little about Remember Me before watching it so the end came as a complete shock, despite the fact that in retrospect I can see there were clear clues to the final event throughout the film. Sometimes I’m attuned to these things, not this time.

Robert Pattinson plays Tyler Hawkins, a young New Yorker who is grieving for the loss of his brother.

Tyler doesn’t handle the grief very well. He’s rebellious. He drinks and smokes too much and generally has a bad attitude. He’s clearly got anger issues; the main cause of that anger being his father. He doesn’t explicitly say it, but we can see that he holds his father responsible for the death of his brother.

Through a twist of fate he meets Ally (Emilie de Ravin). And it is a twist of fate. In a city of 8 million people you have to wonder at the odds that they would meet in the way they do.

Ally has also been affected by tragedy, and their shared experience and grief helps bring them together.

At this point you may think this is just another soppy love story. In a way it is, but I found this movie deeply affecting. The characters are engaging. The blossoming relationship between Tyler and Ally is well handled.

The relationship between Tyler and his father, played by Pierce Brosnan, is probably the most interesting aspect of the film. Pierce Brosnan puts in a great performance, in spite of the slightly dodgy caricature New Jersey accent.

The plot is like a Shakespearean tragedy. Maybe a bit overdone. After the coincidences that led to Tyler and Ally meeting, we are expected to suspend disbelief again for another set of coincidences that leads to the climactic finale. In an inferior film this would be a problem. In the case of Remember Me I wasn’t bothered by it at all. It was a fitting ending to a powerful and thought-provoking film.

The Company Men attempts to portray the human impact of corporate downsizing as a result of the global financial crisis.

You may think this is going to be something akin to the The Pursuit of Happyness, where an average joe has some bad luck and ends up losing everything. Not so. Instead, this film tries to make us feel sorry for the rich guy – Bobby Walker – a sales executive who loses his extremely cushy job, with a great salary and benefits, and, shock-horror, even loses his Porsche.

The definition of poverty is relative. To much of the world, poverty may mean living on $1 a day, not having running water or proper sanitisation. To us in the western world the benchmark for poverty is entirely different. As was reported during the UK riots this year, the benchmark for poverty in the UK is not having a second car or Sky +. Surely that can’t be true?

The story is interesting enough and there’s a great cast, including Ben Affleck (playing Bobby Walker) and Tommy Lee Jones (playing Gene McLary), but if the Director’s aim was for us to empathise with Bobby Walker then he has surely failed.

There is something extremely unsettling about this film. I felt uncomfortable watching it. Oh look, rich people have problems too. Look at this poor guy, he can no longer afford his country club fees!

If you’re expecting to see the main character go through a lazarus moment where he comes back from the pits of despair and is transformed by the experience, think again.

Even at the end, when he finds work in a job where his salary is only half what it was before, there’s no real evidence that he has reformed his thinking in any way. The film ends before we can find out if he repeats the same capitalist excesses. For all we know, he may be just as much of an arrogant, wasteful arsehole as he was before.

By the way, do you think Ben Affleck’s agent has been instructed to only look at scripts that are set in Boston?

Another Earth is one of those slow-paced, arty, independent films, that looks like it’s been developed specifically for a film festival.

The story has two main threads. Rhoda Williams is a high school student who has just been accepted to MIT. She has a promising future but her world falls apart one night when, after a night of drinking, she drives and crashes into the Burroughs family, killing the wife and son, and leaving the husband in a coma.

The second thread, and the event that causes her to lose concentration that night ultimately resulting in the tragic event, is the news on the radio that scientists have discovered a planet moving towards Earth which seems to be an exact replica of our own planet. This planet is quickly dubbed Earth 2.

The main character, Rhoda Williams, is played by Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the film’s script with first-time director Mike Cahill.

The husband and father that Rhoda has left in a coma, John Burroughs (William Mapother), is a successful composer and professor.

Both Rhoda’s and John’s lives are devastated by the crash, but four years later, events transpire to bring them together, in what becomes the focus of the film.

I love the ideas presented in this film. The plot focuses on the human relationships and the tragedy. The sci-fi element is a back-drop, which becomes more intertwined towards the end. Ultimately, however, it is the lack of focus on the world-changing event that lets Another Earth down. It’s hard to care about the characters and relationships when in the background they’re playing news footage of what could potentially be mankind’s first contact with other lifeforms; the big idea is far more interesting and engaging than the human tragedy.

Another Earth has a tremendously slow pace. It plods along as if it’s purposefully trying to tell you it’s a film that you must take seriously. I don’t mind slow-paced, independent films built around tragedy. One of my favourites of this type is In My Father’s Den starring Matthew Macfadyen, but Another Earth is not even in the same league as In My Father’s Den.

The idea of another planet Earth is compelling and brings up many interesting questions. Also, the background scenes of Earth 2 in the night sky along with the moon look really good, but to go along with this film you need to suspend logic and ignore the laws of physics. There are some serious holes in the science. For a start, forget all you know about gravity.

In general, it’s worth a watch but the concept is far better than the delivery.

Barney’s Version tell the story of Barney Panofsky, a balding, overweight American Jew who drinks too much, smokes too much, and yet manages to find beautiful women who agree to marry him.

The movie plays out largely in flashback. We first learn that Barney has a suspect past when he is confronted by a Detective in a bar – a Detective who is clearly frustrated that Barney is still a free man in spite of his attempts to get him convicted for murder. This is the trigger for a flashback to the story that leads Barney to that point – beginning just before his first marriage; a marriage featuring a wedding ceremony that probably qualifies as the most un-romantic in history.

The detective is played by the superb Mark Addy – the Yorkshireman who has managed to carve for himself a career in Hollywood on the back of The Full Monty.

Barney is played with great effect by Paul Giamatti, an actor who divides opinion in the Haines household. I think Paul Giamatti is outstanding whereas Rachelle finds him annoying. But maybe that’s because I, unlike Rachelle, saw and loved Sideways and the incredible HBO series – John Adams. It was great performances in these that have led to him, with justification, getting lead parts where previously he would only get supporting ones.

Barney is likeable as a character, yet it feels wrong to like him. After all, this is someone who leaves his own wedding reception to pursue a woman he’s just met at said wedding reception. What is it that gets three women to agree to marry him? Maybe it’s the same charm that makes you like him despite his considerable flaws. This is a man who seems to have no filter for his words or actions; he acts impulsively, seemingly without thought of the consequences to those close to him.

Barney’s third wife, Miriam, is played by Rosamund Pike – the posh British ‘totty’ who most notably, for Bond fans such as myself, played Miranda Frost in Die Another Day.  She also had key roles in An Education and Made in Dagenham, both remarkable movies fully deserving of the positive critical reviews they received.

Miriam is mesmerising, Far too good for Barney.  When she finally succumbs to his charm you’re left wondering whether she actually likes him or has just given in to his persistence. The question is quickly put to rest as you see their life together progress in the final stages of the film. You’re also left wondering why she puts up with him. Barney has supposedly found the love of his life yet this doesn’t manage to halt his course of self-destruction.

There’s some great supporting characters too. Dustin Hoffman can be credited with a lot of the movie’s laughs. He plays Barney’s father – a loveable rogue and serial philanderer, who leaves no doubt as to the lineage of Barney.

To complete the package, Barney’s Version has a great soundtrack, featuring Jazz classics from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald and Leonard Cohen, as well as 70’s music befitting the first half of the film.

I loved Barney’s Version. The story is funny, moving at times, and thoroughly engaging. What’s more, there’s a ring of truth to the scenes; where even the most innocuous moment seems recognisable. Anyone who has had an argument, lied, or been lied to, will recognise the body language and eye movement; the sub-conscious human traits that mark the performance of great actors.

My Rating: 

About my rating system

Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a battle-axe teacher nearing retirement in a London inner-city school, who befriends the new teacher, Sheba Hart (played by Cate Blanchet). When Barbara accidentally discovers that Sheba is having an affair with one of the students, she decides to take advantage of Sheba’s situation to get close to her.

As the plot unfolded I wasn’t quite sure where it was going. It seemed to me that there was more to Barbara’s motives than appeared. Was it just a case of a lonely old Lesbian wanting to take advantage of the situation to get some action, or could it be something else?

Unfortunately, what started as a highly intriguing story tapered off towards the end leaving me feeling that it should have been so much more. At least the superb writing and acting by the two former Queens and Bill Nighy compensated slightly for the underwhelming plot.

I found the most engaging aspect of the film to be Barbara Covett’s first-person narration. It reminded me a lot of the narration by Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) in American Psycho. Not to say that Barbara is a serial killer.

In some movies narration is essentially a cop-out by the Director who doesn’t know how to properly tell the story. In Notes on A Scandal the narration is crucial. It immediately allows us access to Barbara’s bitter, twisted personality; the mask of a lonely old spinster hiding her contempt for ‘modern’ families, the education system, and the superficiality of today’s Britain.

The narration also gives us some of the best lines. Barbara is clearly a frustrated writer. When she’s not writing in her diary her thoughts are expressed to us as if she’s writing fine literature. An example of this is when she’s sitting on the stairs listening to the argument between Sheba and her husband – “I sat in the gods while the aria unfolded before me”. Sheba sums this up towards the end of the film with a put-down to Barbara “you think you’re fucking Virginia Woolf!”.

Another problem for me was the relationship between Sheba and the 15 year-old student. It seems slightly implausible, as does her marriage to the older husband. But of course, these things happen. Women marry older men, even older men that aren’t rich. Affairs between teachers and schoolboys do occur. Although I’m sure not as often as your average 15 year old schoolboys might purport.

In summary, an interesting enough story, above average writing and acting, but let down by an unfulfilling finale.

I’ve decided to start writing some short movie reviews on here. I’ve got quite a large DVD collection, most of of which I’ve now copied on to my Apple TV set-up. In my geekness, I’ve got movies stored on a couple of external hard disks connected to my wireless router so that I can stream them wirelessly to any of the Apple TVs. We’ve somehow ended up with 3 in our house. Surely that’s more than is healthy for any small family?

My ratings will be based on the 5 stars system. Half stars are allowed so it’s effectively a score out of ten.

Unlike ‘proper’ critical reviews from bona-fide film critics, my ratings aren’t based on the quality of the film as judged by the usual standards. I simply rate films based on how much I enjoyed them or otherwise appreciated them. For instance, there’s certain comedies that may get a slating by the film critics and have a low rating on IMDB, but if they make me laugh I’m going to give them a higher rating, simple as.

There’s quite a few oscar winners and so-called ‘classics’ that I’ve seen which have bored me to tears. When that’s the case it gets a low rating. I don’t care if it was considered ground-breaking in its time, with beautiful cinematography and a narrative which captures the zeitgeist of the moment. If I yawned, it gets a low rating. An example which I saw for the first time recently is The Third Man (1949). There’s my invitation to join the British Film Institute out of the window!

I’ll very rarely review the latest releases as I generally wait until they’re out on DVD/Blueray. In fact, I’ve now boycotted the cinema after my experience during the last 2 visits. I took the family to see both Super 8 and the final Harry Potter, and on both occasions the experience was ruined by inconsiderate twats; munching, coughing, talking, slurping and causing light pollution from their mobile phones for the entire length of the film. They obviously have no appreciation for the Wittertainment Code of Conduct…

I’ve currently got a patent lawyer looking into whether or not anyone else has patented my invention of wireless audio streaming in cinemas to surround-sound headphones that they can hand out like they do 3-D glasses. Not really. You can have that idea for free.

Talking about 3-D. I’m certainly over that gimmick. I actually like to see a sharp, bright picture, not the slightly blurred, dim experience you get through 3-D glasses, for which you have to pay a premium through the ticket price.

If I do visit the cinema again it will be to see a film nobody else wants to see. On a Sunday morning. Alternatively, it will be during the Summer to catch one of the Movies in the Park.

Then again, open-air cinema isn’t really the place to appreciate a film first time round. Not when you’re surrounded by heavy-petting teenagers and the dulcet tones of the generator for a burger van whirring away in the background.