Contagio (2009)

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Ben Affleck leads The Way Back, a seemingly cathartic film for him after the actor’s recent bouts with alcoholism and rehab. He plays Jack, a man fighting his own battles who happens upon coaching a boys’ basketball team, the same team he once played for back in high school.

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

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I hope that more people will see Joyland, understand the situation, and eventually change themselves and society so we can have a more accommodating world where everyday tragedies like the one depicted in the film do not occur.