There’s something diabolically ingenious about the premise: Back in December of 1973, the story goes, two American astronauts were sent into space on a secret mission - a classified liftoff funded by the United States Department of Defense. Returning to the moon a year after Apollo 17 - the last manned mission to the lunar surface - Apollo 18 was never officially confirmed or disclosed to the public.

Why? Because this mission was not solely about science. The objective: uncovering info on the pesky Russians. Upon arriving on the moon, however, the astronauts start to realize that things are not as they should be - and that the moon is not as tranquil (or solitary) as one would expect.

Creepy silhouettes move quickly by the lunar lander. There’s scattered evidence that the Russians have been up to something. There are also inklings that something went wrong with the previous Apollo landings. Even worse: The controllers back on Earth seem to know more about the situation than they are letting on, leaving these two men feeling stranded thousands miles of away.

Sadly, halfway through the thriller, I found my attention drifting. After the first spooks and starts, and after the basic conceit has run its course, "Apollo 18" shifts its focus toward creating an us-versus-them conflict between the two astronauts and the management back on Earth.

Clearly not all information has been passed along, and a team effort quickly devolves into an every-man-for-himself situation, all of which would be intriguing - if not for the fact that the documentary approach makes it all but impossible to create complex characters.

Still, I admit, my inner sci-fi fanboy liked the setup here. It could almost be an "X-Files" episode: the great moon mystery the government covered up.

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‘Contagion’ captures scary side of science

By Steven Snyder

TimeOut Film Critic

Director Steven Soderbergh, expert in multilayered personal dramas, pushes beyond his comfort zone in "Contagion" - one of the more cerebral, plausible outbreak thrillers ever made.

Rounding up an astonishing array of acting talent - Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne - it is primarily Gwyneth Paltrow who aids the script in snapping into crisp, horrifying focus.

Paltrow plays Beth, a business traveler who returns home to Minneapolis after extensive meetings in Hong Kong. Jet lag is wearing on her, and then the fog in her head suddenly turns virulent. Two days later, she is dead in the emergency room, as doctors insist to her husband that they have no idea why she fell ill - much less died.

Our brains scan backward. When she was in Hong Kong, each meeting started with handshakes. There was the man coughing on the bus. Whatever the source of the infection, it took a toll on her body. And not just hers; Beth served as a carrier, bringing the contagion back to North America.

Beth is not the source, but one of the key transition points for a global pandemic. From Minneapolis to Chicago, London, Paris and Tokyo, the number of cases of illness multiplies, spiraling out of control faster than Cheever (Fishburne) can manage. He is the deputy director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the team that will try to deconstruct and destroy this disease.

It’s those coming to "Contagion" in hopes of getting their "Outbreak" fix who will be most disappointed. Unlike that 1995 thriller, with its bombastic approach to medicine and its savvy way of twisting chemistry into thrills, "Contagion" is a far more subdued and methodical affair.

Soderbergh fixates on the daunting physics of an outbreak - on the relentless, unstoppable march of a disease. I can remember watching the coverage of the swine flu outbreak a couple of years ago, and marveling at just how quickly it arced around the planet. There were some scientists who believed that, by the time the disease was even officially understood, it had already swept through New York City on every plane, train and public restroom. In an age of global telecommunications, nothing could move faster than a virus.

And so Soderbergh allows his cameras to linger - on the coughing man on mass transit, on the doorknob that was just touched by a sick hand. And while there aren’t blasting trumpets or last- minute car chases to save the world, there are still plenty of thrills to be found in "Contagion:" This is the true danger of an interconnected world, where germs can travel thousands of miles in a single day, and kill millions before science even understands what’s going on.

It’s urgent, smart, terrifying - and utterly hypnotic.

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