“Side Effects”, the latest (and possibly last) film from famed director Steven Soderbergh is a story of pharmaceutical conspiracy, intrigue and murder. When a woman suffering from depression visits a new doctor, he puts her on an anti-depression medications. When the medications cause her to start sleep walking, though, there are unforeseen consequences.
Murder.
Ok, boys and girls. The Holiday Season is over… and the Spring Season, full of mini Blockbusters, is still months away.
Between now and then lies Hollywood’s dumping ground. The Hollywood fields lie fallow in the winter, bearing little quality product. It’s the two months of the year we need to “Get through”. While January typically offers some limited releases from the prior year going wide, there’s typically little else to get excited over.
Will this year be different? Are there any movies to get excited about these next two months? Let’s take a look at the release slate and see what we’ve got!
Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” is a tale of love, lust, and societal constraints.
Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” is also very much about style, as the director takes the classic tale and uses it as a launching pad for a demonstration of filmmaking showmanship. It’s a choice that’s bound to draw mixed reactions, but I for one found it intriguing, and as a result, the movie wound up holding my attention far better than any staid, traditional period piece adaptation would have.
Ok, folks, here we are! One of the major movie release seasons of the year is upon us, The Holiday Movie Season!
The Holidays started a little early this year, with “Skyfall” (undeniably a major release) opening in the first week of November. So we’re underway! Between now and the end of the year, we’ll see some of the biggest films on the 2012 docket get released, including the conclusion to the “Twilight” Saga, “The Hobbit”, and “Django Unchained”!
Click through to check out what the Holidays hold in store!
Following up on their hit movie from 2009, Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and director Guy Ritchie reteam to bring us “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows”. This time around, they’re joined by Noomi Rapace (of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” fame) as a fortune-teller who gets entangled in the goings on, and Jared Harris (of “Mad Men”) as the infamous Holmes villain, Professor Moriarty.
Fans of the first one will certainly enjoy this, while those who weren’t as thrilled with the first offering probably will find their gripes represented here as well. Which is not exactly to say this movie is more of the same – Harris as Moriarty is an excellent addition to the franchise.
Yet regardless of how the new elements factor in, the crux of the issue – to me – remains the same. Your enjoyment of these films will be directly correlated to your tolerance of the directorial stylings of director Guy Ritchie.
This year, the start of the Holiday Movie season is November 18th. That’s NEXT weekend already folks!! That’s when Hollywood releases “Happy Feet Two” and “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1”, two movies with valid expectations of large takes at the gate. The start of the second blockbuster season of the year!
Here are the movies coming up this Holiday Season that I’m most excited for. Check out Wednesday, December 21st! “The Adventures of Tintin”, “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, and “Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol”! That’s going to be a busy day!
Contagion tells the story of the sudden appearance of a hyper-virulent strain of virus known as MEV-1.
MEV-1 is an airborne virus. If a person passes close enough to someone carrying the virus, and they breathe, they could contract the virus. It can also be contracted through tactile transmission. If a healthy person touches something a carrier touched, they could contract the virus. Between these two methods of transmission, and the fact that ground zero was the highly populated city of Hong Kong and patient zero was an international traveler, you have the recipe for disaster on a global scale.
And “Contagion” serves it all up for us in a stylistic, engrossing, high calibre movie experience.
Fogs' Movie Reviews 