Contagion (2011)

“Contagion” will stay with you for weeks, like a bad infection or the title killer virus that spreads around the globe thanks to Gwyneth Paltrow’s businesswoman/mom/wife/adulteress. This is a medical apocalypse horror flick where every cough, sneeze and human touch comes on like an axe blade. Director Steven Soderberg and writer Scott Z. Burns present a cold and smart drama, as if told by a veteran crime reporter. The duo refuse to go for the loud orchestra-assisted heroic deaths of major characters: They get sick and die, the scene moves on. No comment. Like the virus. Some great actors – Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and John Hawks among them – are the scrambling heroes, locking their surviving children in their home, taking to the field to control the virus’ spread, or managing from on high at Center for Disease Control. The characters spill expert medical terms without apology, make errors both terrible and loving, and the saviors wear lab coats. The women rock. Science rocks. Jude Law plays a snakey left-wing blogger, and is deviously good. Damon marks his best onscreen moment: A husband so shocked upon hearing of his wife’s death, he asks to speak to her. The doctor repeats, “She’s dead.” Cold and sad. A-

Warrior (2011)

“Warrior” is a two-for-one “Rocky” tale set inside the metal cages of Mixed Martial Arts. Tom Hardy is Rocky 1, a hulking slab of muscle and seething anger named Tommy Riordan, returned home to visit his Found Jesus father (Nick Nolte), a recovering alcoholic whose past sins run deep. In Philly is Rocky 2, Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton), an ex-MMA pro now teaching high school physics. The kicker: The men are brothers, split apart by the old man’s carnage. Directed by Gavin O’Connor, who made “Miracle,” the movie plays with every sport film cliché around from the loyal wife to the hero with a dark secret. Nolte’s listening to “Moby Dick” on CD pushes the edge of symbolism, that white whale being his sin. It could have been cut. But like “Miracle,” this is a go-ahead-and-cheer film with the brother-against-brother final bout dishing out drama that hurts. Nolte plays regret so well, and Edgerton (“Animal Kingdom”) is heroic as the underdog fighting to pay the mortgage. But this is Hardy’s film. He stalks and defeats opponents with a Raging Bull glare, and builds on the grisly prison flick “Bronson” and his scene-stealing from “Inception.” He’s up next as the steroid-crazed Bane in “Dark Knight Rises.” Batman better watch his back. B

Don’t Look Now (1973)

Donald Sutherland plays John Baxter, an academic and artist/restorer, obsessing to the point of tedium over the exact size and shade of colored squares for bas relief sculptures on his latest facelift project, a centuries old church in a dreary, wintry Venice. The work is good, it keeps him distracted from thinking about the soul-crushing drowning death of his young daughter back home in England, the brokenness pooling inside his wife, Laura (Julie Christie), and the fact that he foresaw the girl’s death moments before it occurred.

When a small gesture – the closing of a restaurant window – brings Baxter and his wife into contact with two sisters (Clelia Matania and Hilary Mason), one of whom is blind and psychic, lives will unravel. For the blind woman can see the dead daughter, and the girl has a message for daddy: Flee Venice or die.

That is the premise of Nicolas Roeg’s justifiably famous psychological horror/thriller “Don’t Look Now.” There is a serial killer here, yes, but the suspect is off to the side, a secondary plot tangent, whereas the real onscreen horror is about a couple desperately trying to come to terms with unfathomable loss and guilt, and further losing their paths – mentally and physically – along the way to recovery. The latter part is literal, as the streets and alleys of Venice can be an endless puzzle box, where light often is absent and unreachable. Even during daylight.

I have been there, to Venice, and I have never seen its dark side – and it has a dark side, no lie – put to better use than here. This is a city where walking around a corner can bring you to the safety of a market square or a pitch black dead end. Dread follows this couple.

Roeg’s story, loosely based on a short story, and his editing and camera work, and the refusal to use subtitles for spoken Italian, constantly keep the viewer off balance. Some scenes play out mysteriously and suddenly, and it is not until the end credits roll that one realizes their significance. A second viewing is a must. Also our heroes are not so lovable: They abandon their surviving child to a boarding school back in England after he watched his sister drown. Who does that? One pauses at their parenting skills, and ponders the meaning of such a send-off.

Absolutely among the most terrifyingly real films I’ve ever seen, and winced through twice in a row. Sutherland I don’t think has ever been better, or Christie more lovely and hurt, and as the blind woman with a special sense all her own, Mason nearly steals the film in the final freakish minutes.

Not for all tastes that’s for sure, it contains one of the most notorious sex films ever put in a film. The drowning of the child, at the opening of the film, is also startling, leaving one cold and uneasy. Emotions throughout the film, including the climax, cling to you. Or they dd to me, even writing this blog piece days after viewing the film.

Incidentally, or not, “Now” has one of the most layered depictions of a Catholic priest I have ever seen. The bishop (Massimo Serato) overseeing the renovations dismisses the detailed work by Baxter. Having suffered his own tragedies, he shrugs off stucco choices and the shapes of gargoyles, and all the brick and mortar worry. Baxter foams and protests, “This is important!” It’s just a building, the priest says, looking with grave concern at his troubled and grieving employee and friend, “God has more important priorities.” A+

Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

“Airplane!” has been a favorite since I first saw it 30 years ago. A spoof of 1970s-era airplane disaster flicks such as “Airport,” plus “Saturday Night Fever” and “From Here to Eternity,” it is the tale of a shell-shocked flyboy vet (Robert Hays) who buys a ticket on a Chicago-L.A. flight to woo back the stewardess (Julie Hagerty) he loves. But tragedy – food poison! – strikes, and Hays must command the airplane after the crew is laid ill. Insert dramatic music.

Directors/writers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker just kill it, every joke either a gold-star winner or so awful, you laugh anyway. The genius is how nearly every actor – Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack -- in the film is dead-set serious no matter what insanity occurs. My favorite bits change with each viewing, from Barbara Billingsley talking jive to the white man saves Africa spoof to the wrong engine sound and a horse in bed. I could drone on for hours about this classic, but just know this is the ultimate pick-up film on any bad day. Leslie Nielsen as the doctor is a cinematic god. RIP, sir. A

The sequel – aptly named “Airplane II: The Sequel” -- is not classic, or even really memorable. The cherries are far outnumbered by the shit balls in this mostly scene-for-scene remake-part-sequel set not in airplane, but a passenger ship Space Shuttle headed to the moon.

Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers moved on to greener pastures, as did much of the cast, leaving some guy named Ken Finkleman to helm this space ride. He’s the guy who made “Grease 2.” The semi-plot: An onboard computer control goes whack, causing mayhem. HAL spoof! Boring! Hays and Hagerty return, both on Ottopilot. Jokes about armed terrorists boarding unscathed as old ladies are strip-searched is funnier now than the 1980s, in a twisted way. But even at 85 minutes, the film nose dives. C+

Drive (2011)

Steve McQueen would faint. “Drive” is a soaked-in-blood B-Grade car chase flick living the A-Grade life, with a silent, stewing Ryan Gosling (“My Blue Valentine”) as Driver, a nameless Hollywood stunt man by day and a freelance wheelman by night. When he drives, cutting j-turns or racing past other cars, he does so with the exact precision of a brain surgeon. A toothpick sticks straight out of our hero’s closed mouth, as if it’s a holy cross, and biting on it will keep Driver’s tires spinning. He doesn’t sweat the cop car chases or the helicopter search lights, barely blinking as he turns and swerves and hides, the wide-eyed thieves in the backseat sweating and bopping around like loose grocery items.

Of course “Driver” is a Hollywood film itself, so there must be a lonely, pretty woman (Carey Mulligan) down the hallway, an oddball mentor (Bryan Cranston), and sadistic mobsters out to make the hero’s life hell. The heavies are played by Ron Perlman – turning his Hellboy hero upside down to pure-fire menace – and Albert Brooks – erasing decades of nice guy nerds by taking kitchen cutlery to a man’s head and throat. It’s a bristling, seething performance, and it deserves an Oscar nomination.

But don’t think Gosling is be lefty empty-handed against such villainy. As with Clint Eastwood as The Man with No Name and Kurt Russell as Snake Plisskin, Gosling’s acting is all in his glare, the slight movement of an eye against an opponent. For the first part of the film, one assumes he is just a driver for criminals, not prone to violence or crime. Wrong. He threatens a betraying woman, beats a man with a hammer and makes him swallow a bullet, and then ups the ante by beating a man to death. Gosling’s Driver does this seemingly without raising his pulse, a mere sweat mark, as if he’s just jogged a mile or two. A nice workout. Great performance.

There’s not a wasted moment in this economic film, shot similar to a late ’70s midnight feature that shows up on cable every now and then, and scored with a pulsating 1980s rock beat that sizzles. Hossein Amini’s screenplay is sparse, sharp. Gosling maybe has under 100 words. One great exchange: Brooks’ mobster wants to shake hands with Driver at the start of the film. Driver demurs. “My hands are dirty.” Grease and grime. “So are mine,” the man shoots back. Blood and sin.

Director Nicolas Winding Refn stages chases low to the ground, as if we’re following along on a jet-fueled skateboard. The fights and murders are doused with buckets of blood: A skull explodes wide open from a shotgun blast and when Driver stomps a man to death, we hear every crack of skull then the mushy plop of brain tissue. Wisely Refn pulls back the on-screen carnage toward the end for shadows and long shots. His prison drama “Bronson” was a shocking powerhouse film, but I thought his Viking flick “Valhalla Rising” was too artsy. Here Refn is in full gear, grinding the throttle until the engine gives, not sweating.

“Drive” doesn’t break new ground. The plot is, to put it mildly, familiar. So was “13 Assassins,” another summer winner for me. I’m not sure Mulligan pulls off her role: A mother and waitress barely scraping by money wise with a husband in prison. Most women in that position would be tired and frazzled. Her Irene seems more grad school track. But that’s Mulligan’s mug, I think. This past summer left us little in the way of pure adrenaline rushes, and “Driver” than fits the bill. I can’t wait to take it for another spin. A-

Secretariat (2010)

Walt Disney airbrushes life. That is its specialty. And in “Secretariat,” the studio does a splendid job: This biopic of the horse that won Triple Crowns shows no grit and grime of track racing, nor does it delve into race issues, Vietnam, drugs and sex, or feminist issues despite its 1960s-1970s setting. When Tea Party Patriots talk about the gleaming glory days of American history, they mean the America depicted in this movie. Not reality. But I digress, because this is a rousing lump-in-your-throat film. It focuses on Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), a housewife compelled into taking over her parents’ horse farm. Born with horse sense, Penny knows there is a champion soon to be born in her stable and so she marches full force into a sport run by cigar-smoking old men. You know the rest. From Lane’s whip smart take-no-crap aura to the beautiful cinematography (by Dean Semler) to the long finale where the horse gallops to glory, my snob standards fell and I smiled big. A must-show to girls looking for female heroes. B

Men in Black (1997)

I love “Men in Black.” To think it once was going to star Clint Eastwood and Chris O’Donnell. Thank God for Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. Jones is K, an agent for a secret government organization that is like Department of Immigration for outer space arrivals. K’s mission: Keep the aliens a secret from us human saps. Smith is J, a plains clothes street cop who ends up working for K. The plot has Smith as a surrogate “us,” seeing a whacky world that’s been all around us, but just out of sight until now. Our Men in Black have to stop the world from going asunder, and their enemy is a bug-infested famer whose body was smashed flat so he drags himself around with tics and hiccups. He’s played by Vincent D’Onofrio in an endlessly funny and Oscar-worthy performance. Director Barry Sonnenfeld makes the talking dogs, one-liners and the climactic joke about the N.Y. fair grounds seem effortless and perfectly sensible. Rick Baker designed the unique aliens. Smith and Jones -- I love their surnames here -- play like a father-and-son comedy team, having a blast. Even Jones smiles. A