2011 in Review: The Films I Liked

As I stated many times over in my overviews of films I didn’t see in 2011, I was a pretty poor person this past year, which limited the number of films I could see in theatres. Luckily, I was able to make up for much of these missed showings through rentals.

Of the films I saw in 2011, few of them were truly bad films. A few were disappointing, many were just about as average as I expected, and a few turned out to be surprises. While none of the films on this list were truly awful in my eyes, not all of them were that remarkable either, with few exceptions. Before I tell you which films I considered to be the worst and which were my favorites, I am once again going to lead you through the year in review of the mostly average films that I actually did see throughout and from 2011 by the time I made this list.

Review: “Contagion”

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Produced by: Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Gregory Jacobs

Written by: Scott Z. Burns

Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow

Music by: Cliff Martinez

Year: 2011

 

If you’ve ever seen a disaster movie, particularly one by The Day After Tomorrow director Roland Emmerich, and knowing what the genre usually holds in store for audiences, you’d be forgiven for not expecting much from this recent take on the genre from Steven Soderbergh. Contagion makes use of many of the same tropes every disaster movie since Airplane opened in 1970: A big cast of well-knowns face an unrelenting threat from an out of nowhere force (usually of nature) that threatens the very existence of themselves and/or humanity.

In The Day After Tomorrow, it was Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, and several others facing global warming. Cue giant wave and running from the cold front. In Contagion, it’s Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, and many, many others facing a deadly, highly contagious disease. However, unlike most disaster films, Soderbergh takes a quieter, much more intimate approach and brings the tired genre up to a level that is at once riveting, emotionally resonant, and artfully produced.