Med students study hard - at the movies

Gwyneth Paltrow in the thriller Contagion.

Slouching on the sofa watching movies often isn't the best way to get study done, but for medical students, a trip to the DVD store can be good for grades.

Senior academics at Otago University's department of public health in Wellington have compiled a list of 35 films for teaching, among them the 2011 movie Contagion, about a fictional global pandemic, and Erin Brockovich, the film that earned Julia Roberts an Oscar for best actress.

Associate Professor Nick Wilson and Dr Peter Gallagher said a "systematic selection process" was used to compile a batch of movies, all of which covered public health issues but also achieved a "minimum level of entertainment value".

"That is, nearly all have a score of at least 7 out of 10 on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes."

Other picks based on human rights and infectious diseases issues included the Sean Penn film Milk, And the Band Played On, Miss Evers' Boys and How to Survive a Plague, the 2012 documentary that chronicled how activism forced better treatment for HIV/Aids.

For environmental health issues, they picked Erin Brockovich, about a single mother who led a landmark legal case over a power company accused of polluting an area's water supply, along with the documentary The Cove, the George Clooney-starring Michael Clayton, and A Civil Action, in which John Travolta plays a hotshot lawyer representing families suing two companies for dumping toxic waste.

Movies that dealt with developing countries included the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries, following a young Che Guevara, The Constant Gardener, the adaptation of John le Carre's book starring Ralph Fiennes, and docos Born into Brothels, Darwin's Nightmare and Workingman's Death.

George Clooney in Michael Clayton.

Other cult documentaries were Fed Up, Food, Inc and Super Size Me (nutrition), Bowling for Columbine and The Corporation (public policy), Sicko (healthcare systems), An Inconvenient Truth and Who Killed the Electric Car? (climate change and energy).

Elsewhere, they picked The Insider, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, as an insight into the tobacco industry, and Traffic, featuring Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, for a close-up look at illicit drug policy.

The university has made all the movies available free to students at its medical school library.

Hollywood health 101
Movies which can teach us a thing or two about public health issues, as picked by Otago University academics.

Infectious diseases and pandemics: Contagion, Milk
Environmental health: Erin Brockovich, Michael Clayton, A Civil Action
Developing countries: The Constant Gardener, The Motorcycle Diaries
Nutrition: Super Size Me, Fed Up, Food Inc