Elena

This a a film made by Andrey Zvyagintsev, who made The Return. It is a very gripping and persuasive film about a couple who have been together for ten years or so and married for two. He, Vladimir, is elderly and comfortably prosperous and she, Katerina, was previously a nurse. They both separately have children. He has an estranged daughter and she has a married son with a wife and children. The camera starts by following their daily routine in the spacious and fairly luxurious flat. Clearly he has made some money and is now retired, and she waits on him. There is mutual respect and affection.  

The destabilising in influence is Katerina's son, who is an unemployed wastrel with a wife and two children, and Katerina feels obliged to ask Vladimir for handouts for them. Vladimir is not unreasonable, but feels that this can't go on indefinitely, and there is some tension between him and Katerina.

In the opening section of the film the camera quietly observes the couple in their daily routine; the cinematography being one of the strengths of this film. The four main characters, Katerina, Vladimir, his daughter and her son are vividly realised, as is the urban environment, and the film leads to a gut-wrenching conclusion. In the course of the film we are shown a section through Russian society, seeing how it is stratified from gated communities down to poor tenements haunted by threatening yobs. There is good health care for those who can pay. This is a stunningly well made film, keenly judged, well acted, finely scripted, perfectly paced and with outstanding cinematography.

Tyrranosaur

This is the first feature film directed by Paddy Considine. It is a riveting showcase for Peter Mullen's commanding screen presence. Mullen plays a no-hoper; drinking, fighting and hungry for redemption, and in the course of the film we discover the sources of his unhappiness. Mullen plays Joseph who meets Hannah, a woman slightly higher than him in the British class hierarchy, and in the film she goes down a snake and he goes up a ladder. Yes, this is a British film and it is about class.

Eddie Marsan is among the usual suspects to be found in the cast while the woman who gives some purpose to Joseph's life, Hannah, is played excellently by Olivia Colman. I think those who are fond of dogs should probably avoid this film, because in the course of the film Joseph finds it necessary to kill two of them.

This is a moving and effective film which quietly reveals its depth as it progresses.

Contagion

I read somewhere that Stephen Soderbergh intends to stop directing films. I hope this isn't true. Here, he has made an engaging and intelligent film about an epidemic of an unknown disease that kills millions of people throughout the world and triggers social instability.

There is an excellent cast including Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Elliot Gould. Some sequences of the film, including the opening five minutes or so, play almost like a music video, with strong rhythmic music accompanying a sequence of wordless images. It is as though Soderbergh assumes we know how epidemic movies play out and all he needs to do is to sketch in how this one will be. The cinematography is amazing, with dark and shadowy images, some almost in grey-blue monochrome. Most of the cast play medical figures, while Jude Law plays a dissenting blogger and Matt Damon a layman whose wife and step-son die, and who is trying to protect his daughter.

This film eschews the usual Hollywood mayhem of disaster movies and takes a cool, clinical and analytical view of the events, rather as he did in his recent film Che.