Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

The movie is to the first Sherlock Holmes exactly as Iron Man II was to Iron Man. Which is not surprising since both star Robert Downey Jr. I liked this movie, in spite of itself at times. It seems that at a few spots that it added in action scenes just to out-do the first installment in the series. The movie felt too long - it did clock in at over two hours, but it didn't need to feel like it did. They could have shortened some of the action sequences and perhaps expand on the interaction between Sherlock and Simza, or between Watson and his new bride.
Stephen Fry really made the movie for me. I would have liked it with another actor, but would have probably ended up feeling disappointed at the over all film - not that it was bad, but that it wasn't as good as the first. I think Fry as Mycroft pulls it up a notch. Noomi was great too, her Simza was a bit understated, which worked for me, but she was definitely under-used.
The one thing about this movie that both bothered me and tickled my funny bone, was Holmes's Clouseau moments when he is in his "urban camouflage". This film definitely played to humor more than the first, but I'm not sure if that worked. I think they should have either gone for more "quirky" humor so that the film was better balanced with it, or cut back entirely.

Contagion

A fictionalized account of the way the Center for Disease Control (CDC) works on an outbreak, featuring Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheevers, one of the directors of the CDC. Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, an agent of the Epedimiological Intelligence Services (EIS) sent to discover what is going on in Minneapolis surrounding the death of a woman, part of a cluster of deaths and sickness.
Because from the outset international are crossed by the outrbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) is involved in the investigation. The WHO are able to send one of the epidimiologist to Hong Kong to investigate what seems to be the origin point and to determine who might be patient zero.
Under ZZZ's guidance, the Minnesota Department of Health becomes a key figure as the first U.S. patient is traced to their city. The EIS do their best to coordinate in the field, answering back to Cheevers at the CDC.
The virus spreads at an alarming rate, which seems far fetched until you listen to what they say about the Spanish Flu and how it devastated the world in the early 20th century (facts confirmed via McKeena in her book "Beating Back the Devil", a non-fiction account of the EIS).
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The cast for this movie is about as star-laden as they come, in addition to those mentioned above, there is also Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and many, many "oh, I recognize him/her" such as Sammo Hung, Enrico Colantoni (dad from Veronica Mars) and Bryan Cranston (dad from Malcolm in the Middle); just to name a couple of my favorites. But really it's harder to pick out unknown actors than known - if they have a speaking role, odds are you've seen them somewhere before. The quality is top-notch, too. The characters seemed real, and in some cases I even forgot their famous face long enough to think of them as the character, chief among them Winslet's character of Mears and Law's Krumwiede, who is a blogger that is convinced that there is a cover-up going on, but who ultimately bows to the almighty dollar himself.
As mentioned above, I've read enough of McKenna's book to know that they nailed the terminology and the methodology of the EIS and the CDC. That's what makes this movie so fascinating - this is somewhat how an outbreak like this would be handled. I do say somewhat because there are dramatizations that are for the benefit of a good story that would not necessarily be the exact scientific approach. Just knowing that a virus like this could hit the world and spread in such a manner as depicted in the film, with likely a lot of the same side-effects (school closures, governments closing borders, police enforced curfews), well, it's a wonder that I've been able to sleep since watching it. I had previously steeled myself with McKenna's book, but how could I sleep after starting that? All I know is just don't ever touch anyone, let anyone breathe on you, handle anything handled by another human being; don't go to the hospital, don't eat the meat or the vegetables, and where a full BSDL level-4 containment suit at all times, and you'll be fine.