Another plague movie! Like "Outbreak" or the flashbacks in "The Omega Man" or the flashbacks in "I Am Legend," which were really the same movie except the former was set in LA instead of NYC, and featured Charlton Heston against an albino army led by a former local TV anchorman. Anyway, you know the story: one person coughs, then everyone starts coughing, then the army moves in and lots of people are being herded into buses saying "What's happening?"

Meanwhile, in a starkly modern government office, officials are staring at monitors and barking orders, or speaking softly in that tone government officials use to tell others how bad things are. Elsewhere, there's a character who reflects the demographic of the target audience but is better looking and has a Pottery Barn house, who's trying to save his family, or reunite with them. Standing in his way is the entire military, which is dedicated to stopping him, or Martians, or viruses. Will they make a vaccine in time? Will the movie have a montage sequence with scientists staring at test tubes? Will one scientist tell another "get some sleep. We can't afford to make mistakes now," and will the other one say "there's no time for that now," and stare at the monitor with renewed virus-hating determination?

For my money the best plague movie was "The Andromeda Strain," in which we saw no one die except a monkey. "Contagion" isn't the same kind of money - and to be fair, it has a great cast and a top director, Steven Soderburgh. Here's the new trailer: