Real Steel

Real Steel is a 2011 American science fiction film starring Hugh Jackman and directed by Shawn Levy. The film is based on the 1956 short story "Steel" by Richard Matheson, though Levy placed the film in U.S. state fairs and other "old-fashioned" Americana settings. Real Steel was in development for several years before production began on June 11, 2010. Filming took place primarily in the U.S. state of Michigan. Animatronic robots were built for the film, and motion capture technology was used to depict the brawling of computer-generated robots and animatronics. Real Steel was publicly released in Australia on October 6, 2011 and in the United States and Canada on October 7, 2011 to mixed to positive reviews. It was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters.

In 2020, humans have been replaced by robots in boxing. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a former boxer who attempts to get money in illegal boxing matches between robots to pay his debts to loan sharks. During a fight, Charlie's robot, Ambush, is destroyed by Black Thunder, a bull belonging to Ricky (Kevin Durand). Having made a bet that Ambush would win, Charlie now owes Ricky $20,000, which he doesn't pay before leaving.

Charlie is informed his ex-girlfriend has died, and he has to attend a meeting to decide the fate of his preteen son Max (Dakota Goyo). Max's aunt Debra (Hope Davis) and uncle Marvin (James Rebhorn) want full custody, and Charlie gives it to them in exchange for $100,000 from Marvin, $50,000 of it in advance, on the condition that Charlie takes care of Max for three months, while Marvin and Debra are away on a second honeymoon.

Charlie and Max meet with Charlie's friend Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly), who runs the boxing gym of her deceased father, Charlie's old coach. There, Charlie buys a secondhand WRB league robot, the once-famous Noisy Boy, and arranges for it to fight the illegal circuit's champion, Midas, at a venue belonging to his friend Finn (Anthony Mackie). Partly due to his inexperience with Noisy Boy's combinations, Charlie ends up losing control of Noisy Boy and Midas destroys it.

Charlie breaks into a junkyard with Max to steal scraps that he can use to put a new robot together. There, Max falls over a ledge, where he is saved from doom after being snagged by a lodged and buried robot arm. After Charlie pulls him back up, Max uncovers the entire robot, called Atom. On Max's insistence, Charlie takes it back to Bailey's gym, where they discover Atom is an obsolete Generation-2 sparring bot built in 2014. Atom has been designed to sustain massive damage, but is unable to deal out much damage itself. Max convinces Charlie to get Atom a fight, and upgrades it to take vocal commands using spare parts from Noisy Boy and Ambush.

Charlie and Max take Atom to fight an unsanctioned outdoor match against a robot called Metro, and Atom wins, earning back some of Charlie's money. Atom's string of subsequent wins and high speed humanoid boxing maneuvers which are rarely seen from a robot, attracts the attention of a promoter from the World Robot Boxing league (WRB), who offers Atom a professional fight against a robot called Twin Cities. Charlie accepts, and Atom wins again, thanks to Charlie's knowledge of boxing, which allows him to locate a design flaw in Twin Cities. Taking advantage of Atom's subsequent novelty attention, Max challenges WRB champion Zeus, designed by arrogant genius Tak Mashido (Karl Yune) and sponsored by rich Russian Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda), who accepts, but first tries to buy the upstart Atom.

As they leave the Twin Cities fight, Charlie is attacked by Ricky and his men, who beat him severely, assault Max and steal their money. Feeling guilty, Charlie returns Max to his aunt and uncle so they can protect him, but Bailey convinces him he can be a better father to Max. Debra allows him one more chance, and Charlie takes Max to the Zeus-Atom match. Zeus severely damages Atom — while also getting injured, a first for Zeus. In addition, by the end of the first round, Ricky ends up being led away by Finn and some of his men to pay up and presumably beat him up (earlier, he bet $100,000 that Atom wouldn't last the first round). In the last round of the five-round match, Atom's vocal receptors are damaged, and Atom must fight in shadow-boxing mode, copying Charlie's moves from the aisle. Zeus, now controlled manually by a very furious Tak Mashido, expends energy on pummeling the defensive Atom. After Zeus runs very low on power, Atom begins to heavily damage Zeus, even knocking the seemingly invincible champion down once, but doesn't win before the round ends, and the judges declare a winner on points. They favor Zeus, but his reputation is tarnished, and Atom has become famous as "The People's Champion".

The Thing

The Thing is a 2011 science-fiction horror film directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., and written by Eric Heisserer and Ronald D. Moore. It is a prequel to the 1982 film of the same name by John Carpenter, the plot taking place immediately prior to the events of that film. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton who are part of a team of Norwegian and American scientists who discover an alien buried deep in the ice of Antarctica, realizing too late that it is still alive, consuming then imitating the team members.

In 1982, paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is recruited by scientists Dr. Sander Halversen (Ulrich Thomsen) and his assistant Adam Goodman (Eric Christian Olsen) to join a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across a crashed extraterrestrial spaceship buried beneath the ice of Antarctica. They discover the frozen corpse of a creature that seems to have died in the crash 100,000 years ago.

After the creature is transported back to base in a block of ice, Dr. Sander orders them to conduct an experiment to retrieve a tissue sample, against Kate's protests. Later, while the others celebrate, American helicopter pilot Derek Jameson (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) sees the Thing escape from the block of ice. The team splits up into groups to search for the alien. Olav (Jan Gunnar Røise) and Henrik (Jo Adrian Haavind) discover it hiding under one of the buildings. The Thing grabs Henrik and pulls him into its body. The others converge on the scene and set it and the entire building on fire. In the chaotic aftermath, the lone dog of the team is found dead in a bloody heap in its kennel, a massive hole torn in the wire mesh.

During an autopsy, Kate and Dr. Sander discover that the creature was somehow digesting Henrik's body. Based on an examination of a sample of Henrik's tissue, Kate determines that the cells of the Thing were attaching to, absorbing, and imitating Henrik's cells. Meanwhile, Derek, pilot Sam Carter (Joel Edgerton), Griggs (Paul Braunstein), and Olav prepare to leave the base in the only helicopter to bring back help. Just as they prepare to take off, Kate discovers four bloody, discarded metal tooth fillings and a massive amount of blood on the shower walls and floor. She runs outside to flag down the departing helicopter, fearing that one of the passengers is the Thing. When Carter decides to land, Griggs, who is really one of the Things, transforms and kills Olav, causing the helicopter to spin wildly out of control and crash, presumably killing all onboard.

In the rec room, Kate tells the other scientists her theory on the nature of the creature: It is perfectly capable of imitating any life form, but cannot imitate inorganic material such as metal, hence why it spit out the tooth fillings. Most of the team members either do not believe her or accuse her of turning them against each other out of paranoia. After everyone else leaves, Juliette (Kim Bubbs) tells Kate that she believes her, and says that she saw Colin (Jonathan Lloyd Walker) leave the shower with some sort of towel or rag. Juliette tells Kate that she knows where they keep the keys to all the vehicles, and that they can take them to prevent anyone else from leaving; however, when the two are alone in the storeroom where the keys are, Juliette transforms and attempts to kill Kate. Kate escapes, running past Karl (Carsten Bjørnlund), who is killed by the Juliette-Thing. Dog handler Lars (Jørgen Langhelle) arrives with a flamethrower and burns the Thing as it assimilates Karl.

As they burn the remains outside, Carter and Derek return, both half-frozen and barely alive. While Peder and Sander both immediately believe that both are Things and should be burned, Kate convinces them to simply lock them in a storage shed until a test can be prepared. Afterward, Adam and Sander are in the lab preparing a potential test, but when both leave for a short while, the lab is suddenly engulfed in flames in an apparent sabotage. Tensions rise as accusations by both the Norwegians and the Americans are made, but Kate proposes another, much simpler test to single out those who might be the Thing from those who aren't. With Peder manning the flamethrower, she uses a flashlight to inspect the teeth of all the other team members to see who has fillings and who doesn't. This test singles out Adam, Dr. Sander, station commander Edvard (Trond Espen Seim), and Colin. Peder sends Lars and Jonas (Kristofer Hivju) out to bring back Carter and Derek, but they have tunneled out the floor of the storage shed and into a neighboring building. While Lars leans in the doorway of the other building, they grab him and pull him inside. Jonas runs back and pleads with Peder to help him rescue Lars, but Kate orders him to guard the prisoners.

During the argument, Carter and Derek force their way inside, armed with Lars's flamethrower. Edvard repeatedly pushes Peder to burn both of them, assuming that they have killed Lars and deserve retribution. But when Peder takes aim, Derek shoots him three times, puncturing his flamethrower's tank and causing an explosion that kills Peder and renders Edvard unconscious. When Edvard is brought back to the rec room, he transforms into the Thing and kills Jonas, Adam, and Derek while Sander runs off to hide. Colin, Carter, and Kate head off in a group to hunt it down, but Colin is eventually separated from them. The Thing, which is now in the form of a creature with the faces of both Edvard and Adam, finds and kills Dr. Sander. The monster manages to separate Carter from Kate and traps him in the kitchen. Just as it is about to kill him, Kate arrives and torches the monster.

Kate and Carter see the Sander-Thing driving off in one of the Snowcats and give chase in the remaining vehicle. They follow it out to the wreck of its ship, which has been opened up and restarted, slowly preparing to take off. Kate and Carter are separated once again and Kate encounters the Thing. She barely manages to stay out of its reach, and when it finally catches her, she destroys it with a grenade. She and Carter escape and make it back to the Snowcat. As they are preparing to leave, Kate notices that Carter is missing his left ear piercing and determines that he is one of the Things. Despite his protests, she burns him and destroys the Snowcat. Kate slowly climbs into the remaining Snowcat and stares blankly into the night.

The next morning, a Norwegian helicopter pilot, Matias (Ole Martin Aune Nilsen), arrives at the Norwegian camp in a two-man helicopter and finds the facility burning and deserted, as well as the charred remains of the two-faced Thing. It is then revealed that Colin went into the radio room and committed suicide by slitting both of his wrists and his throat with a scalpel. Lars, who has survived hiding in the building where Derek and Carter attacked him, shoots at Matias but recognizes that he is human after checking his fillings. At that moment, the Thing in the form of Lars' dog bolts out of a ruined building and runs away. Lars fires at it, then orders Matias to take off in pursuit. Lars begins shooting at the animal from the helicopter, directly leading into the beginning of John Carpenter's The Thing.

Dolphin Tale

Dolphin Tale is a 2011 family drama film directed by Charles Martin Smith from a screenplay by Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi starring Harry Connick, Jr., Ashley Judd, and Morgan Freeman, and is based on the book of the same name. The film is "inspired by the amazing true story of Winter", a bottlenose dolphin that was rescued in December 2005 off the Florida coast and taken in by the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, in the process losing its tail and having to be fitted with a prosthetic one.

The initial scenes of the movie show a school of dolphins in their natural state, followed by a crab fisherman returning a crab trap to the ocean after emptying the trap of its contents. Sawyer Nelson (Nathan Gamble) is biking along the beach when a fisherman calls for help after finding an injured bottlenose dolphin tangled in a crab trap. The two call for assistance, and rescue workers from the Clearwater Marine Hospital, run by Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.), take the injured dolphin for treatment. Clay's daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff) names the dolphin Winter, as two prior dolphins (Summer and Autumn) were successfully returned to the ocean, and believes that using seasons as names will continue the streak. She allows Sawyer to see Winter; Clay initially does not like the arrangement since Sawyer is not trained in marine animal care; however, after noticing that Winter responds well whenever Sawyer is around, he is allowed to visit. Afterwards Sawyer (who was enrolled in summer school due to him failing or nearly failing all his classes during the year) skips classes to daily visit Winter.

Unfortunately, Winter's tail is irreparably damaged and thus must be amputated. Sawyer's mother Lorraine (Ashley Judd) finds out about Sawyer skipping classes, but after seeing that Sawyer's interaction with Winter has improved his moods and well-being (something Sawyer had not shown since being abandoned by his father who disappeared while going on a visit five years earlier), she withdraws him from summer school and allows him to volunteer at the hospital. Winter learns to swim without a tail by developing a side-to-side motion (like a fish), but after an x-ray Dr. Haskett notices that the unnatural motion is causing stress on her spine; if continued the motion will eventually kill her.

Meanwhile, Sawyer's cousin Kyle, a champion swimmer, returns from the military with a damaged right leg from an explosion (later requiring amputation). Sawyer visits him at the local Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he meets Dr. Cameron McCarthy (played by Morgan Freeman) who specializes in prosthetics. Sawyer thinks that a prosthetic tail may be the solution for Winter's future health and asks Dr. McCarthy to assist; he agrees to work on the project during his upcoming vacation, and convinces his prosthetic supplier (Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, who supplies Winter's real-life tails) to supply the parts at no cost. Dr. McCarthy manufactures a "homemade" model tail while waiting for the real one to arrive; however, Winter destroys it by banging it in the pool.

Shortly thereafter the hospital (already in financial straits) is seriously damaged by "Hurricane LeRoy", whereupon the board of directors agree to close the hospital, sell the land to a real estate developer, and find homes for the other residents (except Winter, who due to her condition is not relocatable and may have to be euthanized). However, after a chance encounter with a mother and daughter (who heard about Winter's story and drove all the way from Atlanta to see her; the daughter is also missing a left leg), Sawyer comes up with a last-chance plan, "Save Winter Day", to save the facility. Dr. Haskett is not sold on the idea, but reconsiders after talking with his father, Reed (Kris Kristofferson). Kyle agrees to a race against Donovan (who followed him at high school and broke nearly all his prior swim records) and enlists a female friend at Bay News 9 to promote the event.

The Hanger-supplied tail finally arrives; however, Winter damages it as well. Sawyer discovers that Winter isn't rejecting the tail; instead, the sock to which the tail is attached is irritating her skin. Dr. McCarthy comes up with an alternative gel-like sock (which he calls "WintersGel", the real-life name of the Hanger product used to attach prosthetic limbs, which was developed during its research with Winter); and finally on Save Winter Day she is able to accept the new sock and tail. At Save Winter Day, Sawyer's teacher gives him credit for his work at the hospital; thus, Sawyer has passed summer school despite not attending formal classes. The fisherman who initially spotted Winter places $40 in the donation jar (saying "we have a history together"). The board learned that the real estate deal closed (thus selling the facility); however, the developer (who attended the event with his grandchildren) agrees to allow the hospital to remain open.

The ending shows scenes from Winter's actual rescue in December 2005, several of the prosthetic tails that Winter has worn, and scenes from real amputees who have visited Winter at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

The Ides of March

Mike Morris, the governor of Pennsylvania in “The Ides of March,” is an image of the liberal heart’s desire, and not only because he is played by George Clooney. Morris, who keeps his cool while inflaming the passions of Democratic primary voters, is a committed environmentalist and a forthright secularist who sidesteps questions about his faith by professing that his religion is the United States Constitution. He is against war and in favor of jobs, though the economy figures much less in his fictitious campaign than it will in the real one just around the corner.

In spite of Morris’s party affiliation and expressed positions — which are tailored to sound both vague and provocative — “The Ides of March” is not an ideological fairy tale. It is easy enough, while watching Morris in action, to substitute a different set of talking points and imagine the governor as a Republican dream candidate, smoothly defending low taxes and traditional values in the same seductive whisper. (Who is the right-wing George Clooney? Is Tom Selleck still available?)

But it is difficult, really, to connect this fable to the world it pretends to represent. Whatever happens in 2012, within either party or in the contest between them, it seems fair to say that quite a lot will be at stake. That is not the case in “The Ides of March,” which is less an allegory of the American political process than a busy, foggy, mildly entertaining antidote to it.

Morris, locked in a battle for the nomination with a colorless (and barely seen) Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell), is a bit of a cipher, or perhaps a symbol. He stands for an ideal of political charisma that the film, directed by Mr. Clooney and based on the play “Farragut North” by Beau Willimon, sets out to tarnish. And yet it seems doubtful, after more than a decade of scandal, acrimony and bare-knuckled media brawling, that this noble fantasy exists anywhere but in the minds of writers and actors who look back fondly on the glorious make-believe administrations of Henry Fonda and Martin Sheen.

“You stay in this business long enough, you get jaded and cynical,” one campaign staffer says to another. “The Ides of March” sets out first to rebut this bit of conventional wisdom, then to reaffirm it. It is in large part the tale of a professional politico’s loss of innocence. Not Morris’s, but that of Stephen Meyers, a young hotshot on the governor’s campaign staff who is played, with sad-eyed intensity, by Ryan Gosling. His prodigious talents are mentioned rather than shown, but we can accept that he is both a dazzling tactical brain and, what’s more, a true believer, working for Morris because he thinks Morris is the last, best hope for America.

Stephen’s boss is Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), whose counterpart in the Pullman campaign is Tom Duffy, played by Paul Giamatti. “The Ides of March” feels most alive and truest to its ostensible subject when these two soft-bellied, sharp-tongued schlubs do battle, with the angelic Stephen in the middle. Hovering around him like a crow circling carrion is Marisa Tomei as Ida Horowicz, a New York Times reporter who might be the only journalist covering the campaign or at least the only one with a speaking part in the movie. (Go team!)

But what political drama there is in this film — will Morris win the Ohio primary? Will his staff cut a deal with a vain and imperious North Carolina senator (Jeffrey Wright)? — is scaffolding rather than substance. As the Shakespearean title suggests, “The Ides of March” has loftier, less time-bound matters on its mind: the nature of honor, the price of loyalty, the ways that a man’s actions are a measure of his character.

These themes, swathed in Alexandre Desplat’s dark-hued score and Phedon Papamichael’s chocolate-and-burgundy cinematography, come into relief as Stephen encounters turbulence in his career and his personal life. He stumbles into a professional flirtation with Duffy, and almost simultaneously into some hot campaign sex with Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood), a young woman who is — no points for guessing right — an intern. She also has a powerful daddy and a secret in her past that has the potential to send Stephen’s career and the Morris campaign into a tailspin.

Mr. Clooney handles the plot complications with elegant dexterity. As an actor, he works best in long, understated scenes that allow him to play with nuances of charm and menace, so it is not surprising that, as a director, he gives the rest of the cast room to work. But the parts of “The Ides of March” — quiet scenes between Mr. Gosling and Ms. Wood; swirling, Sorkinesque exchanges of banter; any time Ms. Tomei or Max Minghella (as a campaign worker grooming himself to be the next Stephen Meyers) are in the room — are greater than the whole.

Somehow, the film is missing both adrenaline and gravity, notwithstanding some frantic early moments and a late swerve toward tragedy. It makes its points carefully and unimpeachably but does not bring much in the way of insight or risk. Powerful men often treat women as sexual playthings. Reporters do not always get things right. Politicians sometimes lie. If any of that sounds like news to you, then you may well find “The Ides of March” downright electrifying.

Captain America : The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger is a 2011 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Captain America. It is the fifth installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was directed by Joe Johnston, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and stars Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Dominic Cooper, Neal McDonough, Derek Luke, and Stanley Tucci. The film tells the story of Steve Rogers, a sickly man from Brooklyn who is transformed into super soldier Captain America to aid in the war effort. Captain America must stop Red Skull, Adolf Hitler's ruthless head of weaponry, and the leader of a mysterious organization that intends to use a tesseract energy-source for world domination.

Captain America: The First Avenger began as a concept in 1997, and was scheduled to be distributed by Artisan Entertainment. However, a lawsuit, not settled until September 2003, disrupted the project. After Marvel Studios received a grant from Merrill Lynch, the project was set up at Paramount Pictures. Directors Jon Favreau and Louis Leterrier were interested in directing the project before Johnston was approached in 2008. The principal characters were cast between March and June 2010. Production of Captain America: The First Avenger began in June 2010, and filming took place in London, Manchester and Liverpool in the United Kingdom, and Los Angeles in the United States. The film was converted to 3D in post-production.

Captain America: The First Avenger premiered in Hollywood on July 19, 2011, and was released in the United States on July 22, 2011. The film became a critical and commercial success, grossing an estimated $348.5 million worldwide as of September 2011.

In the present day, scientists in the Arctic uncover a circular object with a red, white and blue motif. In March 1942, Nazi officer Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) and his men invade Tønsberg, Norway, to steal a mysterious tesseract possessing untold powers. In New York City, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is rejected for World War II military duty due to various health and physical issues. While attending an exhibition of future technologies with his friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Rogers again attempts to enlist. Having overheard Rogers' conversation with Barnes about wanting to help in the war, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) allows Rogers to enlist. He is recruited as part of a "super-soldier" experiment under Erskine, Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones), and British agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Phillips is unconvinced of Erskine's claims that Rogers is the right person for the procedure but relents after seeing Rogers commit an act of self-sacrificing bravery. The night before the treatment, Erskine reveals to Rogers that Schmidt underwent an imperfect version of the treatment, and suffered side-effects.

In Europe, Schmidt and Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) successfully harness the energies of the tesseract, intending to use the power to fuel Zola's inventions. Schmidt, having discovered Erskine's location, dispatches an assassin to kill him. In America, Erskine subjects Rogers to the super-soldier treatment, injecting him with a special serum and dosing him with "vita-rays". After Rogers emerges from the experiment taller and muscular, one of the attendees kills Erskine, revealing himself as Schmidt's assassin, Heinz Kruger (Richard Armitage). Rogers pursues and captures Kruger but the assassin commits suicide via cyanide capsule before he can be interrogated.

With Erskine dead and the super-soldier formula lost, U.S. Senator Brandt (Michael Brandon) has Rogers tour the nation in a colorful costume as "Captain America" to promote war bonds rather than allow scientists to study him and attempt to rediscover Erskine's formula. In Italy 1943, while on tour performing for active servicemen, Rogers learns that Barnes' unit was lost in battle against Schmidt's forces. Refusing to believe that Barnes is dead, Rogers mounts a solo rescue attempt with Carter and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) flying him behind enemy lines. Rogers infiltrates the fortress belonging to Schmidt's HYDRA organization, freeing Barnes and the other captured soldiers. Rogers confronts Schmidt who reveals his face to be a mask, removing it to display the red, skull-like face that earned him the sobriquet, the Red Skull. Schmidt escapes and Rogers returns to base with the freed soldiers.

Abduction

Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner) is a teenager who lives with his parents, Kevin (Jason Isaacs) and Mara (Maria Bello). He has a recurring nightmare, and consults a psychiatrist, Dr. Geraldine Bennett (Sigourney Weaver) to discover why.

One day, Nathan is partnered with his neighbor and longtime crush Karen Murphy (Lily Collins) on a school assignment about missing children. Karen finds a website that shows how the children would look like as adults, and Nathan discovers that a young boy named Steven Price would look exactly like him, when Price got older. Searching in his basement, he finds the same shirt that Steven is wearing in the picture and realizes that he and Steven are the same person.

Nathan calls the website's owner, unaware that he is a Russian terrorist. The man reports back to his commander, Viktor Kozlow (Michael Nyqvist), who deploys two agents to Nathan's house. They attack Nathan's parents, who tell him to run before being murdered and the house is destroyed. Nathan and Karen escape and attempt to call the police, but the call is intercepted by CIA operative Frank Burton (Alfred Molina), who tells Nathan that he's in danger and sends a team to pick him up.

Before the team arrives, Dr. Bennett appears and tells Nathan that Burton can't be trusted. She reveals that Nathan's biological father, Martin, is a CIA agent who stole a list from Kozlow with the names of corrupt CIA operatives and that Kozlow created the website in order to locate Nathan and use him as leverage to force Martin to return the list. Kozlow's men appear, having intercepted Nathan's call. Bennett tells Nathan to run away and head for a safe house in Arlington, Virginia. Karen decides to go with Nathan. Before they leave, Bennett tells him he can only trust his father and a man called Paul Rasen, and blows up her car to facilitate both their escape and her own.

Nathan and Karen arrive at the safe house, where Nathan finds Martin's cellphone as well as an address and photo of his biological mother, Lorna Price. They discover that she is dead. Nathan visits her grave and notices fresh flowers, so Karen asks the caretaker about recent visitors. He reveals that the last visitor was Paul Rasen from Nebraska.

Nathan and Karen head to Nebraska on a train; Kozlow's right-hand man follows them. When Karen leaves to get food, he kidnaps her and attempts to capture Nathan, but Nathan overpowers him and throws him off the train. Karen escapes and reunites with Nathan. They leave when the train stops in response to Kozlow's agent's death. Nathan takes Kozlow's agent's phone during the fight.

Burton and his men find and convince the two that they want to help. They stop at a diner, where Burton tells Nathan about the list. Nathan checks Martin's phone and finds the list, which contains Burton's name. Before Burton can react, Kozlow's men attack the diner and kill several of Burton's men. Nathan and Karen escape while Burton and his partner kill Kozlow's men.

Kozlow's right-hand man's cellphone rings and Nathan answers it. Kozlow reveals that he has planned to kidnap Karen's parents and will kill them if Nathan doesn't give him the list. Nathan agrees, but says that he'll choose the place of the exchange. Kozlow agrees. Nathan realizes that his nightmares are due to repressed memories of Lorna being murdered by Kozlow while trying to protect him.

Nathan decides to give Kozlow the list at a Pirates baseball game, and reveals to Karen that he actually intends to kill Kozlow. Nathan receives a call from Martin (who is also at the stadium) who tells him not to give Kazlow the list. Nathan ignores his advice, and tries to shoot Kozlow, who steals the gun and tries to force Nathan to give him the list. Burton's men, stationed all over the stadium, open fire as Nathan escapes, with Kozlow in pursuit.

Martin calls Nathan and tells him to lure Kozlow to an open area. Nathan does so, and, as Kozlow prepares to kill Nathan, Martin (Dermot Mulroney) kills Kozlow with a sniper shot fired from a nearby building. Burton's men appear and capture Nathan. On their way to CIA headquarters, Burton attempts to decrypt Martin's cellphone. However, his superiors reveal that Martin has warned them that Burton would attempt this in order to remove his own name, and Burton is detained.

Martin calls Nathan one last time and apologizes for everything. He says that he'll always be watching over Nathan, who reunites with Karen and Bennett, who tells him that she has arranged for him to live with her until he graduates, at which point he can move out to attend college. Nathan thanks her and leaves with Karen for a date in the empty stadium.

Contagion

The film follows several interacting plotlines, with no single protagonist, over the course of several weeks from the initial outbreak and attempts to contain it, to panic and decay of social order, and, finally, to the introduction of a vaccine.

Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) returns from a business trip to Hong Kong, after briefly stopping in Chicago to cheat on her husband with an old flame. Two days later, she collapses with severe seizures in her suburban Minneapolis home. Her husband, Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), rushes her to the hospital, but she dies from an unknown disease. Mitch returns home and finds that his stepson, Clark, has also died from similar symptoms. Mitch is put in isolation but turns out to be immune to the disease. He and his daughter attempt to flee the city, but a quarantine has been imposed, and they are forced to return to their home to face a decaying social order and rampant looting of stores and homes. Mitch struggles to give his daughter, who has a lengthy wait for a vaccination and is thus quarantined to their house, a sense of normality while trying to come to terms with his own loss. For prom night, he decorates the living room and invites his daughter's boyfriend, who got vaccinated in the meantime.

In Atlanta, representatives from the Department of Homeland Security meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and express fears that the disease is a bioweapon intended to cause terror over the Thanksgiving weekend. Cheever sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet), an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis to begin the investigation and traceback. Dr. Mears has to negotiate with local bureaucrats reluctant to commit resources and becomes infected with the disease while staying at her hotel. The Minnesota National Guard arrives to quarantine the city, and a badly deteriorating Dr. Mears is moved to the field medical station she helped set up, where she later dies.

Investigations into cures via treatment protocols or vaccines initially prove fruitless as scientists cannot find a cell line to culture the MEV-1 virus. Professor Ian Sussman (Elliott Gould) violates orders from CDC scientist Dr. Ally Hextall (Jennifer Ehle) to destroy his samples and identifies a line of bat cells that will support research of a vaccine. At the CDC, Dr. Hextall uses this breakthrough to begin to characterize the properties of the virus, which turns out to have a mix of genetic material from bat and pig viruses and appears to spread via fomites with a basic reproduction number of two.

A conspiratorially-minded freelance journalist named Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) posts video blogs, claiming that he has recovered from his sickness using a homeopathic cure based on forsythia. Panicked people attempting to obtain forsythia overwhelm pharmacies and also accelerate the contagion as infected and healthy people congregate. Krumwiede leaps to national attention and, during a television interview, accuses Dr. Cheever of informing friends and family to leave Chicago before a quarantine is imposed. It is later revealed Krumwiede was never sick but was attempting to boost demand on behalf of investors in the companies producing and distributing the treatment.

Dr. Hextall identifies a potential vaccine, using an attenuated (live) virus. Because of the difficulties of human subjects testing, she follows the precedent of other vaccine researchers and inoculates herself first. Hextall visits her gravely-ill father in the hospital to expose herself to the virus and test the vaccine. Production of the vaccine is rapidly ramped up, and the CDC awards vaccinations via a random lottery based on birth dates for one full year until every survivor is vaccinated. Dr. Cheever, remorseful about the deaths that his delayed action indirectly caused, gave his fast-tracked vaccination to the son of a janitor (John Hawkes) he works with at the disease center.

Dr. Leonora Orantes (Marion Cotillard) is a World Health Organization epidemiologist who traveled to Hong Kong to find out where the sickness originated. While there, she identifies Emhoff as patient zero. Epidemiologist Sun Feng (Chin Han) kidnapps Orantes to use her as leverage to obtain the first vaccines for his village. After the vaccines arrive, Feng exchanges Orantes for the vaccines, which turn out to be placebos. Orantes rushes to notify the villagers.

The film concludes by showing how the virus originated. Emhoff's Minneapolis-based mining corporation is actively clearing jungle, and a bulldozer knocks over a palm tree in which bats were nesting. They fly out, and one bat, the vector, lands on a banana plant, eating a chunk of banana. Not having its tree to return to, the bat flies to a nearby hog building, where it drops the banana into a pig sty, where a pig eats it. The pig is then sold and slaughtered and is shown being prepared by a chef in the Macau casino Beth Emhoff was in. The chef smears the pig's blood on his apron but does not wash his hands before shaking Beth's hand, thereby infecting her with the disease.