Is this the greatest main review ever, or just the best one in recent years? Each co-host had something absolutely eloquent to say that I agreed with personally, and then also something absolutely eloquent to say that I disagreed with. So much passion - and that's how I know this was a great film! You guys are great.
My biggest criticism of this movie is the way it transitions from one scene to another. It's clunky or disjointed which gives it the effect of it being just a bunch of film clips with a vague plot of explaining how photojournalism (in conflict zones) is a lost art. And this is extended to the way the main characters are emotionally portrayed. What the hell happened to Lee in the last battle scene? And Jessie is a reck at times in the beginning and then seems to have gain some sort of superhuman photographer energy at the end. She has become disjointed from the reality of the war situation, ignores the danger of flying bullets and blows right past the fact that her best friend and mentor died in front of her (because she herself just f-up) and keeps shooting pictures. Joel, the same, he's a hardened war journalist and he's all over the place. Crying like a baby when Sammy dies and in the last scene as he's carrying his best friend for life (Lee Smith) from one safe place to another and she is killed doing his job saving the novice journalist, he's nowhere to be seen except going for the goal of getting the last interview with the president. At the end I was left a little flat with the theme of the movie, that Journalism is a heroic profession that needs to be held in high regard. They all seemed a little too ambitious.
1. We all know David would not like this film if he found out that the politics did not line up with his beliefs. A lot of people are like that these days, so I liked the decision to make the exact politics front and center. 2. I know folks who develop film on the go, I don't think it would be more difficult than having to upload digitals in that scenario. I also believe that Lee (digital) being a more raw, honest to the moment photographer compares to Jessie (film) being a more stylized/artsy photographer led to that metaphorical decision.
I can see that after California and Texas become separate republics and can do what they want internally with their sovereign selves (leaning blue or red), they could have ties to each other with trade and even a military alliance for mutual benefit (using that two-star flag like a UN or NATO flag for their joint cause). And as the two most powerful ex-states (with big populations, economies, militaries, and worldwide clout), the two juggernauts and their allies would be fearsome… Moreover, two very different countries sometimes align for a bigger common cause, like America and Russia in World War II…
I agree. The plausibility of how the civil war came about is vague and not covered in the movie, but having left and right leaning people team up to fight a bad (fascist) leader is plausible. I think it would have been a little helpful for the movie to have the main characters show some human traits and give them some opinions maybe once in the film discussing why one side of the warring factions is better than the other. Also I doubt there would be more than 2 sides (or regions) to this civil war. When things go to hell and war breaks out there is little room for parsing things up into individual positions. I would argue under current trends, it would break down into the law and order according to the original constitution (liberal and international) side against the neo-nationalist (isolationist or maga) side.
I went in with the attitude that it was taking place in an alternate universe, so the lack of political context didn't bother me so much. However if Garland's idea was to focus on war journalists, the notion that they could adopt a neutral position about a war tearing apart *their own country* struck me as even more incredible than a California-Texas alliance. And in real wars, truth is a weapon, which both sides always try to control. Garland's ignoring the "First Casualty of War" effect was the film's biggest missed opportunity.
If California and Texas don't work together the war would be over in 48 hours. That's how OP California is, so my take away was that it was an alliance of convenience. Like USA and soviet union vs Germany.
I perosnally love this movie as an anti war movie and the way they used photography both to explroe and the technique of stopping the action to observe for a second . I went a secod time to share it with my conservative dather and he left talking aboit how violence would be the only solution to our current in America, he described rioters and looters as subhuman and feared immigration. And hoenstly it really hurt. I dont see the world like him at all and it sucksd that i saw fhis depiction of what could be and why we couldn't do it and he saw rhe neccessity and it brought the worst out of him. God it was brutal
Its more of a photographer slideshow than an anti-war movie. Not providing any insight of what will cause the degradation of humanity makes it pretty impossible to prevent humanity from creating these situations.
Really mixed feelings on Civil War. I was never not enthralled by it, especially the audiovisual experience, but I think there's a dissonance at its core. Alex Garland calls the journalists heroes in interviews. He also says the implication of California and Texas teaming up is that they put aside partisan differences to fight and defeat a fascist dictator who disbanded the FBI and arrogated a third term to himself. So in what way are the journalists heroes? For documenting the defeat of a fascist dictator? But he also compares the photojournalists in the film to the journalists who unveiled the Vietnam War and Watergate, as if something bad needed to be made known to the public. What is bad about righteously fighting a dictator, though? Wouldn't the better analogy be the journalists who documented WW2? But in that case we don't really see those journalists as heroes, the Allied soldiers are the heroes. So why make journalists the protagonists and not soldiers if you want heroes? Really odd
MOVIE SPOILERS FOLOW! : I liked the movie quite a bit and wasn't at all annoyed by the vagueness, but the ending.... There were a couple of things that stretched my suspension of disbelief so much that I can only call them bad choices. The "Western Forces have been ordered to kill the president on sight" thing was completely unrealistic. Even if a government fully intends to kill an opposing political leader, they STILL capture them for a sham trial and execution. So that was contrived to support the ending they decided they wanted to show. Also, when Lee took the bullet for Jesse, she pushed her down and then stood straight up; as if to make herself easier to shoot. That method of saving Jessie was was actually quite a bit harder to do then just tackling her and going down to the ground with her; thereby taking both of them at least somewhat out of the line of fire. And Lee was experienced enough to fully know that she should GET DOWN. (Unless we are to believe that Lee was committing suicide, but I don't think that was supported by the plot.) (And leaving aside the WF soldiers ALL falling for the obvious secret service decoy escape convoy)
This is what i loved about the movie. We have here three men disagreeing and really trying to understand the movie, from several different points of view. Its about that, its starting a conversation in a middle point of the extrems. Its trying to create a bridge.
The film didn’t do much for me except for that excellent Jesse Plemons scene. It seems to just exist to make a point rather than exist through its story and characters. I couldn’t connect with the characters or story, and the script made it very clear that it’s primarily focused on communicating its ideas about journalism and war.
I don't live in the US so I don't have the specific point of view that North Americans must have, but the movie worked for me precisely because it didn't focus too much on that.
Interesting that Screen Engine/Comscore's PostTrak polled Civil War's attendees' political leanings & despite the movie being so deliberately non-partisan, it still didn't have Conservatives flocking to go see it! It had a very well utilised $50m production budget & $20m+ marketing budget, but all its audience score metrics like most of Alex Garland's movies aren't overly impressive with Ex Machina being the only one of the 4 movies he's both written & directed that both critics & audiences have loved! Its current B- CinemaScore, 77% RT (3.9/5), 76% PostTrak, 6.3/10 Metacritic & 7.6/10 IMDB audience ratings are solid but not great overall in terms of its box office legs beyond its very good $25.7m Opening Wkend.
I would also offer another interesting comparison with a British film by arguably, one of our greatest living directors, Ken loach called land and freedom. This film depicted the Spanish Civil War and arguably did take a position arguably did take a position. But explored that position through the eyes of the main protagonists, namely a socialist or anarchist understanding of the Spanish Civil War and the Resistance against fascism. And I think it's all the better for it. Because invariably films that depict history are depicted through the prism of dominant ideologies that sanitize history or revise history for the purposes of legitimizing the present. This film instead was quite subversive and challenged, the hegemonic received wisdoms. If Alex Garland's film had done something similar it begs the question. Which political prison would it be refracted through? Would it be the dominant left liberal perspective that I believe all of you possess?, one which rightly identifies the threat of right-wing populism but in my opinion fails to understand the material conditions which gave birth to such movements in the first place, namely, neoliberal capitalism as championed by the Democratic party under Bill Clinton onwards. So even if Alex Garland had taken a position, I dare say even people on the left would disagree about which prism to adopt
If using film feels stupid to an audience, it doesn’t matter if you couldn convince tthem that maybe it is somewhat plausible after a 30 minute debate. It is stupid.
I think the movie uses the real world horrific images to break the general anticipation of what COULD happen in the real world to make it ironically less exciting. i.e. Is this what you want?
I’ve been listening to the podcast for over a decade. Constructive Feedback: The podcast is the worst when you start talking over each other and interrupt each other. And on some movies, it happens a lot.
In his "press tour" he explains that his movie actually does take political positions. It is just that his political positions are foolish and stupid. It is also hilarious people want to praise him for simply not being propaganda. That is literally the bare minimum. And he explains that his objective actually was propaganda. He just failed at even that. His explanation for the strange bedfellows is essentially that Trump is so bad that even political opponents should unite against him. The reason people are confused is because his political agenda is so much dumber than the audience can even comprehend. That is why the president is killed at the end- becsuse he is the big bad guy. And Garland claims he is championing centrism. Wild stuff.
What Garland gave us was a movie no one asked for. Not knowing the man, I try not to jump to conclusions, but portraying these journalists as politically neutral, after everything they've seen and heard about the war, comes off as disingenuous. As they say, "The first casualty of war is the truth" -- that's the story worth telling.
Is this the greatest main review ever, or just the best one in recent years? Each co-host had something absolutely eloquent to say that I agreed with personally, and then also something absolutely eloquent to say that I disagreed with. So much passion - and that's how I know this was a great film! You guys are great.
Gas station scene and Jesse Plemons scene are what this movie should have been the entire time. Deliverance 2024.
My biggest criticism of this movie is the way it transitions from one scene to another. It's clunky or disjointed which gives it the effect of it being just a bunch of film clips with a vague plot of explaining how photojournalism (in conflict zones) is a lost art. And this is extended to the way the main characters are emotionally portrayed. What the hell happened to Lee in the last battle scene? And Jessie is a reck at times in the beginning and then seems to have gain some sort of superhuman photographer energy at the end. She has become disjointed from the reality of the war situation, ignores the danger of flying bullets and blows right past the fact that her best friend and mentor died in front of her (because she herself just f-up) and keeps shooting pictures. Joel, the same, he's a hardened war journalist and he's all over the place. Crying like a baby when Sammy dies and in the last scene as he's carrying his best friend for life (Lee Smith) from one safe place to another and she is killed doing his job saving the novice journalist, he's nowhere to be seen except going for the goal of getting the last interview with the president. At the end I was left a little flat with the theme of the movie, that Journalism is a heroic profession that needs to be held in high regard. They all seemed a little too ambitious.
I'm so hyped for Alex Garland’s 'Centrons vs Scissameds'. When's the release date?
1. We all know David would not like this film if he found out that the politics did not line up with his beliefs. A lot of people are like that these days, so I liked the decision to make the exact politics front and center.
2. I know folks who develop film on the go, I don't think it would be more difficult than having to upload digitals in that scenario.
I also believe that Lee (digital) being a more raw, honest to the moment photographer compares to Jessie (film) being a more stylized/artsy photographer led to that metaphorical decision.
I can see that after California and Texas become separate republics and can do what they want internally with their sovereign selves (leaning blue or red), they could have ties to each other with trade and even a military alliance for mutual benefit (using that two-star flag like a UN or NATO flag for their joint cause). And as the two most powerful ex-states (with big populations, economies, militaries, and worldwide clout), the two juggernauts and their allies would be fearsome…
Moreover, two very different countries sometimes align for a bigger common cause, like America and Russia in World War II…
I agree. The plausibility of how the civil war came about is vague and not covered in the movie, but having left and right leaning people team up to fight a bad (fascist) leader is plausible. I think it would have been a little helpful for the movie to have the main characters show some human traits and give them some opinions maybe once in the film discussing why one side of the warring factions is better than the other. Also I doubt there would be more than 2 sides (or regions) to this civil war. When things go to hell and war breaks out there is little room for parsing things up into individual positions. I would argue under current trends, it would break down into the law and order according to the original constitution (liberal and international) side against the neo-nationalist (isolationist or maga) side.
The least realistic part of this movie was the president writing his own speech.
What you don't thing the orange guy adlibs most of the time when he's talking for the cameras?
If one day the decide to make a The Division games adaptation, Alex Garland is their guy.
I went in with the attitude that it was taking place in an alternate universe, so the lack of political context didn't bother me so much. However if Garland's idea was to focus on war journalists, the notion that they could adopt a neutral position about a war tearing apart *their own country* struck me as even more incredible than a California-Texas alliance. And in real wars, truth is a weapon, which both sides always try to control. Garland's ignoring the "First Casualty of War" effect was the film's biggest missed opportunity.
If California and Texas don't work together the war would be over in 48 hours. That's how OP California is, so my take away was that it was an alliance of convenience.
Like USA and soviet union vs Germany.
This was a really great conversation.
When it comes to marketing a movie that said movie is very much not, nobody does it better than A24.
48:23 do you have any issues seeing other counties depicted in war movies in IMAX? I don't get this argument lol
I perosnally love this movie as an anti war movie and the way they used photography both to explroe and the technique of stopping the action to observe for a second .
I went a secod time to share it with my conservative dather and he left talking aboit how violence would be the only solution to our current in America, he described rioters and looters as subhuman and feared immigration. And hoenstly it really hurt. I dont see the world like him at all and it sucksd that i saw fhis depiction of what could be and why we couldn't do it and he saw rhe neccessity and it brought the worst out of him. God it was brutal
Its more of a photographer slideshow than an anti-war movie. Not providing any insight of what will cause the degradation of humanity makes it pretty impossible to prevent humanity from creating these situations.
It's basically Alex Garland's Little Miss Sunshine.
🤣🤣
Really mixed feelings on Civil War. I was never not enthralled by it, especially the audiovisual experience, but I think there's a dissonance at its core. Alex Garland calls the journalists heroes in interviews. He also says the implication of California and Texas teaming up is that they put aside partisan differences to fight and defeat a fascist dictator who disbanded the FBI and arrogated a third term to himself. So in what way are the journalists heroes? For documenting the defeat of a fascist dictator? But he also compares the photojournalists in the film to the journalists who unveiled the Vietnam War and Watergate, as if something bad needed to be made known to the public. What is bad about righteously fighting a dictator, though? Wouldn't the better analogy be the journalists who documented WW2? But in that case we don't really see those journalists as heroes, the Allied soldiers are the heroes. So why make journalists the protagonists and not soldiers if you want heroes? Really odd
MOVIE SPOILERS FOLOW! :
I liked the movie quite a bit and wasn't at all annoyed by the vagueness, but the ending.... There were a couple of things that stretched my suspension of disbelief so much that I can only call them bad choices. The "Western Forces have been ordered to kill the president on sight" thing was completely unrealistic. Even if a government fully intends to kill an opposing political leader, they STILL capture them for a sham trial and execution. So that was contrived to support the ending they decided they wanted to show. Also, when Lee took the bullet for Jesse, she pushed her down and then stood straight up; as if to make herself easier to shoot. That method of saving Jessie was was actually quite a bit harder to do then just tackling her and going down to the ground with her; thereby taking both of them at least somewhat out of the line of fire. And Lee was experienced enough to fully know that she should GET DOWN. (Unless we are to believe that Lee was committing suicide, but I don't think that was supported by the plot.) (And leaving aside the WF soldiers ALL falling for the obvious secret service decoy escape convoy)
I absolutely loved it. It didn’t glorify war, at all.
This is what i loved about the movie. We have here three men disagreeing and really trying to understand the movie, from several different points of view. Its about that, its starting a conversation in a middle point of the extrems. Its trying to create a bridge.
The film didn’t do much for me except for that excellent Jesse Plemons scene. It seems to just exist to make a point rather than exist through its story and characters. I couldn’t connect with the characters or story, and the script made it very clear that it’s primarily focused on communicating its ideas about journalism and war.
I don't live in the US so I don't have the specific point of view that North Americans must have, but the movie worked for me precisely because it didn't focus too much on that.
Interesting that Screen Engine/Comscore's PostTrak polled Civil War's attendees' political leanings & despite the movie being so deliberately non-partisan, it still didn't have Conservatives flocking to go see it! It had a very well utilised $50m production budget & $20m+ marketing budget, but all its audience score metrics like most of Alex Garland's movies aren't overly impressive with Ex Machina being the only one of the 4 movies he's both written & directed that both critics & audiences have loved! Its current B- CinemaScore, 77% RT (3.9/5), 76% PostTrak, 6.3/10 Metacritic & 7.6/10 IMDB audience ratings are solid but not great overall in terms of its box office legs beyond its very good $25.7m Opening Wkend.
I would also offer another interesting comparison with a British film by arguably, one of our greatest living directors, Ken loach called land and freedom.
This film depicted the Spanish Civil War and arguably did take a position arguably did take a position. But explored that position through the eyes of the main protagonists, namely a socialist or anarchist understanding of the Spanish Civil War and the Resistance against fascism.
And I think it's all the better for it. Because invariably films that depict history are depicted through the prism of dominant ideologies that sanitize history or revise history for the purposes of legitimizing the present.
This film instead was quite subversive and challenged, the hegemonic received wisdoms.
If Alex Garland's film had done something similar it begs the question. Which political prison would it be refracted through? Would it be the dominant left liberal perspective that I believe all of you possess?, one which rightly identifies the threat of right-wing populism but in my opinion fails to understand the material conditions which gave birth to such movements in the first place, namely, neoliberal capitalism as championed by the Democratic party under Bill Clinton onwards.
So even if Alex Garland had taken a position, I dare say even people on the left would disagree about which prism to adopt
If using film feels stupid to an audience, it doesn’t matter if you couldn convince tthem that maybe it is somewhat plausible after a 30 minute debate. It is stupid.
I think the movie uses the real world horrific images to break the general anticipation of what COULD happen in the real world to make it ironically less exciting.
i.e. Is this what you want?
I’ve been listening to the podcast for over a decade.
Constructive Feedback: The podcast is the worst when you start talking over each other and interrupt each other. And on some movies, it happens a lot.
confused liberal review
In his "press tour" he explains that his movie actually does take political positions. It is just that his political positions are foolish and stupid. It is also hilarious people want to praise him for simply not being propaganda. That is literally the bare minimum. And he explains that his objective actually was propaganda. He just failed at even that.
His explanation for the strange bedfellows is essentially that Trump is so bad that even political opponents should unite against him. The reason people are confused is because his political agenda is so much dumber than the audience can even comprehend. That is why the president is killed at the end- becsuse he is the big bad guy. And Garland claims he is championing centrism. Wild stuff.
What Garland gave us was a movie no one asked for. Not knowing the man, I try not to jump to conclusions, but portraying these journalists as politically neutral, after everything they've seen and heard about the war, comes off as disingenuous. As they say, "The first casualty of war is the truth" -- that's the story worth telling.
Very lively discussion, although I am not intending to see this movie.