Sorry to spoil it for you
Re: “Reach out, touch somebody, and die: In Contagion, your next kiss (or cocktail peanut) could be fatal” by J.R. Jones, September 8
My God! Where is the “spoiler alert” warning??? I didn’t want to know who dies first—that’s a huge part of the fun of such movies. What a jerk this reviewer is! —Annie Towne
Gave away the movie plot. Writer went into too much detail and blew my potential experience. Wish I never read this. —reallyupset
Your review is well written and enjoyable, and though everyone knows that Gwyneth Paltrow bites it from the trailers, I found it particularly distasteful that you managed to give away a pretty major spoiler regarding another one of the stars of the film. Have the decency to put up a “spoiler warning” at the very least. Not cool. Not cool. —p77
I can always tell when Rotten Tomatoes has linked to one of our long pieces as opposed to the short capsules, because there’s an influx of first-time visitors who either (1) comment on how the piece is better than most of what they’ve read elsewhere, or (2) become apoplectic that it gives away too much of the content. But these two reactions are really opposite sides of the same coin. If you want to write something insightful about a movie—as opposed to providing simple consumer advice, which is what the vast majority of writers offer and the vast majority of readers seem to want—you need to have access to the entire film.
The first time I saw Psycho, I had already seen the shower scene, as well as the murder of the detective played by Martin Balsam, excerpted in a PBS series called The Men Who Made the Movies. But when I saw the movie, those sequences were still suspenseful, and they continue to be suspenseful even though I must have seen the movie six or seven times since then.
So if you think I’ve “spoiled” your experience of Contagion, I would suggest going to see it anyway. Because it’s a good movie, with more on its mind than simple suspense, you may find that I’ve enhanced, rather than detracted from, your enjoyment of it. —J.R. Jones