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The Most Shocking Epidemic Movies in Times of the Coronavirus

The Most Shocking Epidemic Movies in Times of the Coronavirus
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Wuhan’s coronavirus keeps the entire world in suspense. Like the nine movies about epidemics we talked about here. Here are the best coronavirus movies.

During the preparations for the last holiday of the end of the year, the Government of the Chinese dictatorship chaired by Pekingese Xi Jinping and the World Health Organization, led by Ethiopian doctor Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, informed us that an outbreak of a new respiratory disease, caused by the already famous Wuhan coronavirus . With the microscopic bug spreading throughout the world , thousands of infected, hundreds of deaths, cities in quarantine, the international alert declared by the WHO and the conspiranoicos demonstrating their anti-pharmaceutical and apocalyptic jubilation, it may not be a bad time to recommend a few shocking films about epidemics and thus contribute to our own concern and social alarm.

For some reason, cinematographic fictions about pandemics have multiplied surprisingly in the current century.
It must be said that, for some reason, cinematographic fictions about pandemics have multiplied surprisingly in the current century. It is not that in the previous decades there were no films that address this issue, but much less. Panic in the streets (Elia Kazan, 1950) is easily the first example worth mentioning: a black film thriller awarded the Oscar for the best story and of which the critic Patrick Peters said in Empire magazine that the director “makes a atmospheric and pseudodocumental use of their locations in New Orleans and extracts naturalistic performances from an excellent cast ”; and Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed it out in the Chicago Reader as “the best and the most forgotten of the first Kazan films”.

Praise has always covered The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) , a work of worship with the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival: Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times which is “a penetrating and powerful contemplation of the Man passed through this land. Essentially intellectual, but also emotionally stimulating ”; and Peter Bradshaw, in The Guardian , which is “a radical work of art,” still “as fresh as a glass of ice water,” and “a spotless gold standard of artistic and moral seriousness.” And at AV Club , Zack Handlen values ​​“his amazing images, obscene humor and gloomy suffering”, in“A human film about the inhuman inevitability of death . 

Precisely Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971) is another cult film with four BAFTA awards of which the long-awaited Angel Fernández-Santos pointed out in El País : “It is a complex film, even in its defects, and that, for Visconti , it meant a serious personal commitment, from which he knew how to leave partly with dignity and partly cheating ”; and Dan Jardine described it as “a sumptuous visual feast” in the Apollo Guide . The late Roger Ebert published in the Chicago Sun-Times that The Andromeda threat (Robert Wise, 1971)it is a “splendid entertainment that will make you worry about whether they can contain that strange drop of alien green crystal”; and Tony Mastroianni commented in the Cleveland Press : “There is nothing wrong with the formula when it works, and it works effortlessly in this movie.”Twelve monkeys (1995) is one of the most remembered and beloved films with deadly epidemics

Scott Weinberg, as we read in eFilm Critic , was excited by Cassandra Bridge (George Pan Cosmatos, 1976) : “Dark Mannerist disaster, full of overripe action, runaway trains and a killer virus!” He snapped over her; and for Ruth Batchelor of Los Angeles Free Press , “it’s a bad movie that is more fun than if it had been good.” A Burst (Wolfgang Petersen, 1995) referred to Fred Topel in About as a “scary film with realistic representation of the disease”; and if Rita Kempley considered her “an absolute kick” in The Washington Post , in San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle saidwhich “is a good movie enough to want to go to the movies and scary enough to make you wonder if you avoid the crowds” .

Twelve monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995) is one of the most remembered and beloved films with deadly epidemics: Ed Potton said in The Times that “this dystopian science fiction that travels in time is a reminder that the director can make films that are visually inventive, intellectually interesting and frankly exciting ”; Nick Hilditch of the BBC said that we were facing “Terry Gilliam’s most mature film to date”, that “requires a rigorous analysis of the viewer” and that, “if we add to this the director’s grotesquely comic stamps , the resulting film is a complex and rewarding fantasy ”; and Peter Travers gives his opinion on Rolling Stonethat the work of Bruce Willis as James Cole is “an eruptive performance of surprising emotional intensity.”The film with greater realism in teaching how an uncontrollable epidemic develops in our globalized world may be Contagio (2011)

But the one who took the Golden Globe for best supporting actor was Brad Pitt for his insane Jeffrey Goines. Like Sons of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) he was awarded two BAFTA awards, a work that Jim Schembri wrote for The Age : “If you thought the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan [ Steven Spielberg , 1998] were difficult, the last 20 minutes of Children of Men will not only shake you, but will make you revise your expectations on how realistic the cinematic representations of combat can be ”; and Joshua Rothkopf said the following in Time Out :“Unbrokenly struggling through the worst hours of humanity, the film intertwines the incursions of the narrative in science fiction with a heartbreaking dynamic . 

But the proposal with greater realism in teaching how an uncontrollable epidemic develops in our world of globalization may be Contagio (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) , which Luis Martínez seems to him, according to what he published in El Mundo , that “it is so effective – without concessions – like the bubonic plague of the past ”, and “ terror is chewed in each frame as something perfectly real ”because“ tomorrow what can be announced announces ”the film . Sergi Sánchez insisted that the filmmaker “knows how to create the DNA of a realistic, almost documentary horror film, a cerebral thriller for conspiracy times,” much needed in that last aspect. And in Cinemanía magazine Nando Salvá said that it is “a thriller as fast and unforgiving as a flu”, and “the best film made today about a pandemic”.In the fiction film about epidemics there is black plague, cholera, unknown viruses or with fictitious names and even a terrible flu

Vampirism and zombification can also become such a disaster, and good examples are found in Soy leyenda (Francis Lawrence, 2007), fourth adaptation of the homonymous book by Richard Matheson (1954), or Melanie: The Girl With All the Gifts ( Colm McCarthy, 2016), made from the novel by Mike Carey (2014). But here we deal with cinema with the most common viruses: the black plague looms over the main characters of Panic in the streets and The seventh seal , cholera in Death in Venice , an unknown but lethal microbe in The threat of Andromeda , The bridge from Cassandra , Twelve Monkeysand Contagion , the fictitious virus flew in Pop and a terrible flu in the past of Sons of Men . Maybe one day they will film a movie about Wuhan’s happy coronavirus, and that will be scary .

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