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The calm is what's so startling in "Contagion" - the cool precision with which Steven Soderbergh depicts a deadly virus that spreads throughout the world, quickly claiming millions of victims.

There's no great panic in his tone, no hysteria. Soderbergh has amassed a dazzling cast of Oscar winners but this is not like those '70s disaster movies that had melodrama to match their star power.

Characters become increasingly confused and frustrated, they struggle to survive and then die in a matter-of-fact way. Even the eventual instances of looting and rioting that crop up - as they are wont to do in these kinds of movies when societal rules have long since been abandoned - feel like blips of intensity, understandable reactions to an incomprehensible situation.

Working from a script by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote his 2009 comedy "The Informant!," Soderbergh takes us from suburban living rooms to labs at the Centers for Disease Control to remote Asian villages with equally clear-eyed realism. The attention to detail - and to the infinite ways germs can spread that we probably don't want to think about - provide the sensation that this sort of outbreak really could happen right now.

"Contagion" begins with Gwyneth Paltrow's character, Beth, coughing as she reaches into a bowl of peanuts at an airport bar on her way home to Minneapolis from a business trip in Hong Kong. This is Day 2, we are told, and she will end up being Patient Zero. With the help of a low-key but propulsive electronic score, Soderbergh steadily focuses on the hands as he jumps from Chicago to Tokyo to London in these early scenes, fluidly revealing how we pass our credit card to a waitress or grasp a bus railing or press an elevator button.

Kate Winslet's character, the steely Dr. Erin Mears, who thrusts herself into the vortex as the virus starts developing, offers a chilling statistic to some skeptical medical administrators: We touch our hands to our face 2,000 to 3,000 times ... a day. I don't even want to finish writing this review for fear of what's lurking on my own laptop. But I must.

As Soderbergh did in the superior "Traffic," he intertwines various story lines to give us a complete picture of the devastation. Matt Damon, as Paltrow's stoic husband, Mitch, tries to stay strong and protect his teenage daughter as it becomes clear that they're both immune. Jude Law, believably skeevy as an online journalist with questionable ethics, digs for the truth of the story - but government scientists are just as keen on stopping the spread of information as they are the disease itself.

Marion Cotillard gets a bit lost in the shuffle, though, as Dr. Leonora Orantes of the World Health Organization, who's working backward to find the disease's origin. She's gone for large chunks of time and her plot line feels unfinished; it's an example of how, given the enormity of the cast and the subject matter, not all of the characters are fleshed out as well as you'd like them to be.

But then excellent character actors show up and lend weight to some of the smallest parts: Hey, there's John Hawkes as a janitor. There's Bryan Cranston as Laurence Fishburne's boss at the CDC. And you'd like to see more of them, too.

Despite all the big names crammed together, Jennifer Ehle might just steal this thing as Fishburne's right-hand woman, Dr. Ally Hextall, who's racing to find a vaccine even as the number of dead skyrockets. Like the film itself, she's got an irresistible cool about her. But she's also so confident and radiates such no-nonsense intelligence, she commands the screen every time she shows up. (And how great is it that three of the top scientists here are strong, decisive women?)

Her performance represents one of many elements of "Contagion" that will make you stop and think. And then wash your hands.

Review: Contagion

***

• Rated: PG-13 for disturbing content and some language.

• Director: Steven Soderbergh.

• Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Ehle, Marion Cotillard.

• Running time: 103 minutes.

One brother's a schoolteacher who struggles to keep home and family together in hard economic times.

The other's a brooding brute, home from the war, living with his long-estranged father.

Both grown men have daddy issues, issues hinted at in bitter, perfunctory conversations between the brute and his recovering alcoholic of a father.

"No more women for me," the old man confesses.

"Must be hard to find a girl who can take a punch these days," the son spits back.

There's history here - hard fought, hard-bitten history. Dad, Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), is a man of principles, a former wreck looking for redemption. And his boys, Brendan the teacher (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy (Tom Hardy) - two fighters once trained by Paddy - aren't giving it.

"Warrior" is a straight genre picture, a fight movie of the old school. But it's a mixed martial arts tale, and as such, it's the best MMA movie ever. A bare-fisted sports thriller with lots of Hollywood melodrama, "Warrior" pits these two brothers on a collision course with destiny, in the ring.

Co-writer and director Gavin O'Connor ("Miracle") is on sure ground with the battling Conlons, mixing loads of personal crises into a standard issue sports drama. Brendan needs money to keep paying the mortgage, but fighting gets him into trouble with the school district. Tommy, a Marine of few words and much rage, just needs to fight.

Brendan won't let his three-years-sober dad see his grandkids. Tommy would rather live with the old man so he can ostracize him from close range: "I think I liked you better when you were a drunk."

The film's sports-movie journey takes us to the big winner-take-all tourney that both men enter, each with a need to win. That destination is entertaining, but it is the journey and the people who take it that recommend this fine film.

Nolte's Paddy is devoted to self-help, listening to "Moby Dick" on tape, resolving to train Tommy the old way to get him ready for his bouts. The son isn't having it. Nolte plays the toughness as a memory; the guilt and wounds Paddy carries are his new persona. And Hardy, the next "Dark Knight" villain, is a ferocious figure on screen every time out (the British prison bio-drama "Bronson" was his break-out performance). He plays every moment with a chip on his shoulder.

Edgerton, of last year's "Animal Kingdom," has to be a convincing physics teacher, a husband who lies to his wife (Jennifer Morrison) about his fighting, a man at the end of his tether and a convincing 30-something mixed martial artist. It's a brilliant turn as he lets us see the wheels turning with every argument with his wife or boss, every scheme he can think of to beat a superior opponent in the ring.

"Warrior" is the first movie built around this relatively new sport to capture the grit, guts, heart and pathos of the great boxing pictures. It may not be MMA's "Raging Bull," but it's good enough to compare to "Rocky" or "Body and Soul" and not embarrass itself or its sport.

Review

Warrior

***

• PG-13: For sequences of intense mixed martial arts fighting, some language and thematic material.

• Director: Gavin O'Connor

• Cast: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Morrison.

• Running time: 139 minutes.

Jacob Wysocki makes his subtly confident film debut in "Terri" as a misfit teen who's comfortable in his own skin - even though there's a lot of it.

Heavyset, soft-spoken and reserved, he makes the same solitary trek to school each day in his pajamas - "They're just comfortable on me," he reasons - but barely makes much of an impression on anyone once he gets there, except to serve as a target of torment.

What's fascinating about director Azazel Jacobs' quietly beautiful film, though, is that it never condescends to Terri, never pities him, because Terri doesn't pity himself. He is who he is: no-nonsense, observant and smarter than he looks. He goes about his days, living in a cluttered home with his aging uncle (Creed Bratton) who's showing early signs of Alzheimer's.

Terri doesn't even realize how badly he wants friends until he gets the chance to make some.

The high school's vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald, is the first of them. He takes Terri under his wing and makes him his latest project, inviting him to share Monday mornings in his office where they can hang out and get to know each other. The always unpredictable and versatile John C. Reilly plays him as an affable goofball, a man who means well but is given to mercurial outbursts. (The script from Patrick deWitt also has Reilly spell things out that should be implied: "Life's a mess, dude. But we're all just doing the best we can." Thankfully, he does so sparingly.)

What Terri comes to understand is that he's one of many students Fitzgerald has taken on: a sort of cadre of freaks, losers and outcasts. In an artsier, edgier take on "The Breakfast Club" - which is not a criticism coming from this critic - Terri forges a sweet, unexpected bond with two of them. There's Chad (Bridger Zadina), the scrawny and volatile troublemaker, and Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), a popular girl who becomes a pariah after a sexual encounter during home economics class.

A scene in which the three of them get intoxicated together percolates with a steady tension and is full of surprises. Lonely and needy in their own individual ways, they're feeling themselves and each other out as they teeter on the brink of adulthood, and each word and moment rings absolutely true.

All three young performers are strong here, but Wysocki especially never seems like he's "acting" during these scenes of adolescent drama. He just is. The lead role in "Terri" was only his second audition ever, and his performance makes you hope that truthful material like this continues to come his way.

Review

Terri

***

• Rated: R for sexual content, language, some drug and alcohol use, all involving teens.

• Director: Azazel Jacobs.

• Cast: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Bridger Zadina, Olivia Crocicchia.

• Running time: 105 minutes.

A poetic tale of loss and starting over, Julie Bertuccelli's "The Tree" centers on its title character: an enormous, sprawling fig tree that stands by the home of the O'Neil family, in the Australian countryside.

It's as if the tree, with its numerous branches and twisty roots that seem to be bubbling up from the earth, watches over the house and the people in it - and, early in the movie, they're very much in need of its comforting. Peter (Aden Young), husband of Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and father of four children, is suddenly killed in a car accident and the family is adrift, so in shock they hardly know how to mourn.

From its terribly sad beginning, "The Tree" (adapted from a 2002 Australian novel by Judy Pascoe) floats gently into magic realism. Eight-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies, in an enchanting performance) is certain that she can hear her father whispering to her from the tree; Dawn starts sitting in the tree at night, talking to her husband. But the tree's presence eventually becomes less benign.

A branch crashes into the house; a neighbor protests its growth. ("It's not a tree; it's an octopus!" she says.) Dawn meets a charming plumber (Marton Csokas) and begins to let go of the past. Soon it's just Simone guarding the tree, determined that it not be cut down, clinging to hold on to something that's destined to slip away.

Beautifully filmed in the harsh, dry landscape, "The Tree" is often mesmerizing, from the images of lacy green vines as they circle the house to the expression of quiet calm on Gainsbourg's face as Dawn realizes that she can and will go on.

The sky seems endless in this part of the world: gray-glazed in stormy weather, shrouded in cobwebby mist on early mornings, majestically shimmering in summer twilight.

A family is broken, like a branch - but slowly the rough edges soften, becoming whole again.

REVIEW

The Tree

*** 1/2

• Not rated: For mature audiences.

• Director: Julie Bertuccelli.

• Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Morgana Davies, Aden Young.

• Running time: 100 minutes.

Ask me if I'd like to see a precious movie that includes a narrating cat, a talking moon and a heroine that greets her boyfriend in the morning with "Hello, person," and I will likely leave in my wake a wisp of smoke and a Roadrunner-shaped hole in the cinema wall.

But whatever the precocious leanings of Miranda July's "The Future," the film resonates primarily for its journey away from simple, irritating quirk, and toward originality of a more substantial kind.

"The Future," the second film of director-writer-actor and performance artist July following 2005's "Me and You and Everyone We Know," ultimately wins you over with its persistent curiosity. It matches glances at commonplace details with the tug of metaphysical confusion.

The movie begins with the voice of a cat named Paw-Paw (voiced by July). In a scratchy, fragile voice, it wonders, "Have you ever been outside?"

Rooted to their sofa and tethered to their laptops, the earnest, thirty-something couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) treat "outside" as merely an option worth avoiding, like non-Apple products. Lounging next to each other, the two, both lanky and topped by shaggy dark hair, look like mops carelessly stored.

In Los Angeles, Sophie teaches dance and Jason gives IT support by phone. They're planning to adopt Paw-Paw, but have to wait a month. This acceptance of responsibility (something of a furry stand-in for a child) sets off an early midlife crisis.

By their anxious calculations, their lives will soon begin deteriorating. After 50, Jason says, it's just "loose change." Regret is massing; he says, "I always thought I'd be smarter."

Faced with the onset of cat ownership (which is to say, death), they resolve to live the month like their last. They quit their jobs and, terror of all terrors, cut the Internet.

Another movie, from here, might go on to celebrate maintaining a childlike naivety through adulthood, of rising above the mundane with whimsy. But in "The Future," whimsy stands little chance against time's relentless march.

Jason begins volunteering for a tree-growing charity, Tree-by-Tree, and goes door-to-door for donations. He meets an old man, Joe (Joe Putterlik, also the voice of the moon), whose thoughts on life - both peculiar and wise - attract him. Joe advises that Jason's alarmist sense of time is off: "You're just in the middle of the beginning right now."

Sophie's chosen path is to create a daily YouTube video with a new dance. But her body is unable to contort to the hip-hop moves that go viral, and her boredom turns to an unlikely love interest (David Warshofsky). The father of a young girl and a factory-owner, he's emphatically more normal than Sophie - and perhaps that's his appeal.

These mixed results of Sophie and Jason's self-enforced trial is shown in variously mystical expressions: The moon talks, an emotionally significant T-shirt travels on its own and Jason attempts to stop time. The dreamy music by Jon Brion adds to the sad, enchanted tone.

These magical flourishes come alongside more prosaic observations, like the feel of a couch's felt. There's a childlike sense of wonder, but it's the adultness of "The Future" that makes it rise above.

July, with her Chaplin eyes, perhaps knows too well how to play earnest and smart. But "The Future" feels progressively less adorned, even as it grows more magical. Hardship, fear, anxiety and death set it, and narcissism burns away. New worlds are explored, even if they're just down the street. Pain proves far more preferable than utter stasis.

It's a fancy feast. Cut the talking cat, next time, though.

Review

The Future

** 1/2

• Rated R: for some sexual content.

• Director: Miranda July.

• Cast: Miranda July, Hamish Linklater.

• Running time: 91 minutes.