Civil War [Alex Garland]

Feels like an 80's mini series about an Alt America that I watched years ago on VHS.

seems like doomer porn, and kind of cynical film making and lets face it, watching americans in real time is far more entertaining than any Hollywood movie can portray.

I only saw the trailer last night, I assume they chose Cali and Texas Vs the rest more to remove it from the current Dem Vs Rep war happening over there

Yes, exactly.

Saw this tonight and don't really know how I felt about it.

A lot of potential promise, but blended in among essentially a meandering road movie disguised as something smarter than it actually is.

Liked the perspective from the press but it's a bit more style than substance.

Shame!

Honestly thought it was excellent. For me, what the war is about is just not important in the context of the 'war photographer' lens we're viewing the movie through, which is purely 'what is happening right here right now'. The movie is not about the big picture of the war, it's about those entrenched in the final days of it, and the absolute chaos and violence the war has inflicted. Entirely, and only, in the moment. And for a war correspondent, the two sides are 'press', and 'combatants'.

It felt like it was trying to represent the true feeling of war… we see them chatting away with people on both sides - sides that are often hard to distinguish ('quaint and curious war is, you shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half a crown'), just humans in bloodied conflict with each other for reasons they themselves don't necessarily understand or are not privy to.

Lee early on says that all that time as a foreign war correspondent, she'd thought her photographs were sending home the message; "don't do this", but that "still, here we are". I think that basically encapsulates the movie, and is the core theme, like "if images of it happening far away aren't making you think, then maybe images of it happening right here might?"

Living in the US definitely added an extra layer of impact for me for sure, but I felt it was one of the best contemporary anti-war movies I've seen in a while. To have started inventing political narrative that brought more subjective 'good' or 'bad' into it would have neutered that I think.

Fun fact - Plemons is married to Kirsten Dunst. He's fantastic in everything but his impact in that 5 minute scene was something else.

Thought i was very good but ducked out of the tough questions… as in what did the President do etc.. its only hinted at like ..disband the FBI …decided to do a third term …shooting Journalists on sight in DC. Nick Offerman is criminally under-used. The film pulled its punches a bit, like it didn't want to offend either side of the current political spectrum in the US, it being an election year etc. It should have been a lot braver.

The whole 'War Photo Journalists just doing their job' to document Good and Bad, get a great photo and let someone else decide the rights and wrongs of it was good and could have been developed more. The cast is very strong, Kristen Dunst and Wegner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson (<old grizzled hack) and newcomer Cailee Spaeny(<the rookie) putting in good performances. Jessie Plemons absolutely steels the show with his scenes.

The action scenes hit hard, but they really could have given more background to why the US states left the Union and took up arms.

Worth a watch.