Contagion, if you don’t know, is a virus film. Not a virus like the posts on Facebook with the crazy demanding headlines and the semi-alluring thumbnails that none of my “friends” seem able to resist clicking on. It is an old school procedural that tracks a worldwide pandemic from patient zero all the way through to the (temporary) reprieve of a cure, and the loss of millions of lives in the interim.

Is it considered a spoiler if I say that this movie sucked right in the first sentence of this review? Because it did and I am clueless as to why it has gotten as much praise as it has.

Let’s be clear up front, I haven’t seen all of the nominated pictures for the top awards, but I don’t think that should preclude me from sharing my thoughts. So the following will be a list of the Best Picture nominees with a brief summary of my thoughts on each, followed by an overall impression of each of the remaining premiere categories. I will also pick which one I think should win, not which one I think will win – those are two completely different things.