re: TulaneLSU's Top 10 movies about pandemics

I remember this low budget movie from the 70s where a virus made everyone in an apartment building hypersexual. Once someone was infected, they just wanted to have sex with everyone.

It was the oddest movie I've ever watched. I think I watched it on Netflix.

Happy to send a downvote on this thread

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All three of the USA Trilogy were great - all three would make great movies

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miniseries

How do you get to Mississippi without crossing a bridge? I like your posts, but if you are going to play the game,be consistent.

One can fly. I am also capable of crossing the Slidell bridge if forced. I usually take two Benadryl and a melatonin before the trip. I do not think I will be hiding in Mississippi however and will ride this one out in solitude in New Orleans.

Does anyone have any additional pandemic movie suggestions? I just finished Toxic Skies and the Korean film FLU. Both were terrible.

Friends,

Great news. I was reading the archives of TD and came across one of my old reviews of Contagion, written Sept 12, 2011. Here is the link to my 2010-2011 reviews as well: TulaneLSU’s 2011 movies review thread

Contagion "The gloom which pervades the stricken cities is indescribable...From the turnings at the various cross streets the dread cavalcades of death are almost constantly filing in [Canal Street]. They turn the corners from every quarter; they wind their long and sinuous way--the silent march of the dead--so many shadowy spectres, beckoning all in their train. The dead are found everywhere...The provision-stores are closed, and the only way to obtain supplies from them is to break them open, which is sometimes done. Even the drug-stores are all closed...there are some cases of inhumanity." The 1878 yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans, a quarter century after another outbreak decimated 10% of the city's population while going unreported by the media thanks to the business community fearing a quarantine, was the occasion for this national news report. And while medical science has advanced, Contagion shows that human nature and behavior do not change. Fear and self-preservation drive us in times of panic. Most of us put ourselves and those "in my life raft," as Fishburne says, ahead of others.

When talking of the end of days, Jesus says, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars." Jesus recognized that the rumor of war was just as powerful and just as destructive as war itself. Those who have lived through crises have noted the same. Reality is not nearly as bad as rumors are, even in the case of the scourge of a pandemic. Behind the weak performances of a stellar cast and a survey of microbiology for neophytes, what you have in Contagion is a movie about the power of fear and rumors. The actual movie itself plays out like a modern retelling of the Spanish Flu Pandemic or Yellow Fever Epidemics. There is no innovation, no twist, no intrigue. It is an average script adapted from an ever-widening corpus of public health-history-psychological writings influenced by J Barry's The Great Influenza and R Preston's The Hot Zone. What makes these books readable, and this movie watchable, is that they appeal to the paradoxical modern human's desire for fear. For those who are truly fearful and live in a state of fear, it is abhorrent, but for lost people who live for entertainment and rush to avoid life's big questions or ennui, the subject of fear, which for such people is always at arm's length, is a welcome companion. Fear gives the hopeless something to live for. Fear of apocalypse sells: ask morons like John Hagee or the makers of the many 1980s-to present nuclear war movies or the 24-hour news stations.

But as much as fear appeals to the American viewing public, this movie just doesn't go anywhere. The only emotion I felt was a slight bit of anger against the false prophet, Jude Law's character, but even that was tempered by the predictability of his role and his lines. So while this movie is slightly entertaining and never boring, it also does nothing to warrant a second watching or much critical analysis. It is what it is: an average movie about fear and the inevitability of pandemic. 5/10

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I’ve seen World War Z get some hate on here but I really liked this movie, I’ve watched it multiple times.

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It's an entertaining flick, but I was down on it initially having read the book. Now I know movies are rarely as good as the book, but the only thing this movie gets from the book is A) the title, and B) zombies.

Otherwise they're worlds apart. Read the book, different and really cool.

Me too. The ban must end.

He started this pandemic movie thread just a little before Covid. He was so wise.