Civil War (A24 - Alex Garland, Spring 2024) • Page 24

i agree

 

You drive me up a wall on this site sometimes, but I'm glad we can have this, Pat. This and Weezer.

 

Yeah this was a top movie of the year for me as well. Really cool "professional who goes too far" type of story

 

Stinky movie

 

The tagline for Warfare: "This time, it won't be so civil."

 

won't have any annoying conversations if you talk to people with taste :)

 

finally! Been waiting for this to hit streaming so I can finally see it.

 

This was so bad

 

One of my biggest peeves in film or tv is when a character is being annoying and obnoxious WHILE also doing something very dangerous. The two homeboys just decided to speed next to their journalist friends while there is a titular Civil War happening. Being super loud and annoying while doing it. THEN DECIDES TO JUMP ACROSS MOVING VEHICLES AND ANOTHER PERSON RANDOMLY DECIDES TO ASWELL? The dumbest thing

 

the world is ending, have a little fun

 

Dystopia can have a little amateur Jackass, as a treat

 

that driving stunt didn't seem too far off from some of the dumb sh*t that people in my high school would do in the rural town we grew up in.

I once got into a nickel war with my friend as we were driving near each other on a country road. it kept going until we both ran out of change to throw at each other's car while we were driving in no man's land. fun times

 

I’m sad to say this was not good. I had heard enough good to go with the bad and idea of an apolitical look at America’s moral code sounded like an interesting way to approach this type of story, so I went into it optimistic. But unfortunately it does a whole lot of nothing with the ideas it was trying to examine.

It also has some of the worst dialogue and lazy exposition I’ve heard in a while. Which was surprising because I don’t remember that being a huge issue in any of Garlands previous work.

 

The Jesse Plemons scene and a few other set pieces were well done though. It’s not totally without merit. But yea, this is a miss for me.

 

Was it ever streaming elsewhere? Seems like that took forever to get to streaming.

I only saw it once, but I don't remember any of these complaints and thought it was pretty organic.

Taken for what it is, which is a look at how journalism would look amongst a wide scale American conflict, I thought it was effective and I enjoyed it. I knew going in it was going to be 'shallow' as to the politics of the conflict, but I didn't think it was overall shallow.

 

The "Antifa Massacre" line is pretty egregious, but it's the only thing I remember not landing for me

 

The whole conversation to set up to their road trip felt so unnatural. It felt like the set up for Nic Cage saying he’s going to steal the Declaration of Independence, but I’d never believe a group of journalists would talk to each other like that. Another example is when they make it to Charlottesville and Joel is saying “they’re storming the White House now and our whole trip was a waste and our friend died for nothing!” Exposition is hard and necessary, especially when the conflict the film is set in is left intentionally vague, so I’m not saying I know how to fix it, but most of the expository lines just felt like placeholders that were never edited to sound natural.

As for the look at journalism in an American war, I just don’t think it did anything intriguing there and the moral questions it raised felt both obvious and over explained. The conversation when Jesse asks Lee “if I were shot would you take that picture” was so on the nose and unnecessary. It’s an insulting case of not trusting the audience to ask that question themselves. Then there’s Joel’s character shouting “What a rush!” After that one battle scene. Again, the audience can see he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie without that.

And then there’s the “do you you guys know there’s a civil war happening right now?!” My eyes almost rolled out of my skull there.

For a director who has a good track record of letting the visuals do some heavy lifting and a film with good actors, it seems like Garland didn’t trust either of those elements and continually felt the need to spell things out in the most irritating ways.

 

Oh there was also the whole, “tell me your origin story, that I already know” set up. Rough stuff.

 

All fair points but mostly disagreeable to me and how i felt on my one watch. I enjoyed it enough that I'd check it out again and see if anything changes.

 

That line was there to try and ground it in our current moment. I didn’t hate it as much as some lines.

Ron Swanson’s opening speech did feel like a pretty obvious Trump stand in too. It was basically a copy of Trumps January 6th concession speech outtakes that were unearthed in the house committee. That opening scene was a good start and a part I actually thought held promise.