Need a new drug

Contagion

(2011)

OK, I'd never go so far as to say that a plague of zombies is impossible, but I think we can agree that it's a fairly far-fetched prospect, one that we can be mostly entertained and little threatened by. But a virus whose spread is explicable only to the eye of god (or Soderbergh, same diff), that gives people flulike symptoms quickly, then sends them into seizures and kills a quarter to a third of them--hell, that is as easy to fetch as a handshake from a Hong Kong chef who didn't wash his hands after handling a pig that ate a piece of fruit contaminated by a bat. We've already lived through a milder form of this movie more than once; it seems not only possible but almost inevitable that something like this, as bad or worse, is in our future. Which makes this the most terrifying film I've seen in recent years, no less so on second viewing.

Though also entertaining, mostly in the performances by some great actors, many of them rarely seen this millennium (Jennifer Ehle, Elliott Gould), many seen regularly but rarely so unglamorously (Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow), and at least one--Matt Damon--never seen more human and convincing.