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Kaddish posted:lol what Getting a lot of "boss baby" vibes from this new Alex Garland movie. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 17:33
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I don't think that's a far off comparison at all? setting, tone, and themes have a lot in common. It's certainly informed by Children of Men.
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Apr 14, 2024 18:06
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R. Guyovich posted:(also pretty incoherent since trump has never and will never rehearse anything he says, he just dips a popsicle stick into his pudding brain and runs with whatever comes out) Yes he has actually https://youtu.be/-SIfGiy-L-I?si=rM3-Tm5i-ExleCxn He’s done it many times
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Apr 14, 2024 18:09
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I think saying it’s inspired by children of men is fair, but I dont think it’s desperately trying to be COM and I don’t think the two movies really set out to do the same thing at all.
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Apr 14, 2024 18:11
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The Big Picture's episode on Civil War is out, and has an interview with Alex Garland in the end. I'm quietly part of Dobb Mob but I think I enjoyed it more than Amanda did. Her point that if you start asking any probing questions regarding why things are happening you can be taken out of the film is understandable. I'm going to see this again in IMAX in a couple weeks. We'll see if my opinions change if I start noticing the flaws others are noticing.
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Apr 14, 2024 18:40
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I think the big disconnect here is that most of the movie's critics absolutely do get the message the movie is bringing across, and they simply aren't impressed by it.
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Apr 14, 2024 18:59
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Imagine making a movie about the experience of the American Civil War and having nothing to say whatsoever about slavery or the belligerents- instead simply reminding people who seem to have forgotten that “war is bad”
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Apr 14, 2024 19:10
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As a moral fable I won't argue that it offers a rather basic lesson, but I don't think that's the only angle worth critical analysis. I think it works on the level of character-driven hosed up road trip movie, dread-inducing thriller, and pure spectacle too. I would further contend that trying to lean to far into a fable/polemic about how The Left is Correct and Will Win (even if I agree that's true!) would have made for a worse movie. I almost wish they'd gone the last few degrees the other direction sanitized the scant mentions of any ideology behind anyone, because the two they drop that I remember (Portland Maoists and "Antifa Massacre") just take you right out trying to interrogate them. I'm also an easy sell on Children of Men being the superior movie in the "increasingly plausible dystopian nightmare near future" type genre, but there's no shame in falling short of an absolute masterpiece and landing in "pretty intense and compelling."
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Apr 14, 2024 19:50
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Owlbear Camus posted:As a moral fable I won't argue that it offers a rather basic lesson, but I don't think that's the only angle worth critical analysis. I think it works on the level of character-driven hosed up road trip movie, dread-inducing thriller, and pure spectacle too. I think it does work on that level, but Garland knows what's he doing by releasing the movie during this election season. If this had come out in the early 00s it would feel very different. He wants you to think about the specific context into which the film is being released. And the muddled politics (the California/Texas thing) only serves to a) confuse the audience or b) make lovely false equivalences between two sides of the conflict. Like, the final photo is clearly supposed to be evocative of Qaddafi, Bin Laden, Hussein, Mussolini, but what does that comparison say?
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Apr 14, 2024 20:19
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See, I don't really think the to the Texas-California alliance, something a lot of people latched onto when promo material started coming out, is actually a world-building gently caress up. I think way, way too much hay was made about how implausible that was based solely on the culture war stuff that plays to the cheap seats. In material terms, as far as hypothetical cessationist nation-states some 20+ years in the future there's plenty of plausible basis for alliance. Both big population states with energy extraction industries, both share a border with Mexico, President Offerman is the Enemy of my Enemy, etc. Before dismissing it out of hand it's probably instructive to look at how at least on their surface real world alliances of material interest are made notwithstanding aesthetic and cultural differences. I think to some degree Garland does put his thumb on the scale a little to suggest that the Trump expy is in the wrong, but not so much people can't lose themselves in the horror and trhill of things. I think the final photo functions as a bit of a Rorschach test. Arguably the moral lesson of seeing uniformed men posing with the head of state like a trophy buck brought to my mind the montage at the end of NotLD and invites the viewer to think through "Okay, what is the post-revolutionary order going to be" which is a perfectly salient question to think through before an armed revolt. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 14, 2024 |
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Apr 14, 2024 20:27
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I think where I disagree is to me this movie basically did feel like Left Behind: Liberal Edition Absolutely brutal.
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Apr 14, 2024 20:40
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Center-Left Behind
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Apr 14, 2024 20:52
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Absolutely brutal. It’s also absolutely untrue but whatever
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Apr 14, 2024 20:57
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The actual normie liberal version of this movie doesn't happen because people vote the discontent away and President Bartlett mollifies the secessionist blocs with a big stirring speech and a grand compromise on farm subsidies or something. In the B-plot Sam Seaborn has to deal with advances from a jilted ex while writing the big reunification speech.
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Apr 14, 2024 21:03
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veni veni veni posted:It’s also absolutely untrue but whatever Politifact rates this: Four Pinnochios (an opinion can be neither true nor untrue)
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Apr 14, 2024 21:16
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lol fair enough. Definitely don’t agree though
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Apr 14, 2024 21:20
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hey, if a Civil War movie isn’t provoking disagreement, what’s it even doing, right?
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Apr 14, 2024 21:35
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Owlbear Camus posted:The actual normie liberal version of this movie doesn't happen because people vote the discontent away and President Bartlett mollifies the secessionist blocs with a big stirring speech and a grand compromise on farm subsidies or something. Directed by Aaron Sorkin
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Apr 14, 2024 21:37
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The CA+TX thing doesn’t seem like THAT big of a stretch. Especially in a decade or two. The energy thing and having the two biggest economies in the country. Plus they (maybe? I’m not willing to do more research) have the two highest populations of service members in the country. I’d rather be gobbled up into the Western Forces than be absorbed by Canada.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:18
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Many of the criticisms of the film in this thread are valid but I enjoyed myself and found it compelling just the same. I know the lack of detail/specifics about the conflict is by design but it's still kind of frustrating at times that we don't know what the hell is going on. The cinematography and sound editing were remarkable, though, and I'm a sucker for Last of Us-core bombed-out landscapes, crumbling infrastructure, and eerily deserted small towns.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:25
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Center-Left Behind PLEASE make this the title of the thread.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:27
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I know a lot of people have been talking about sound design but the soundtrack itself sure is something. I never thought I’d be sitting in a theater with a bunch of old people while a Suicide track was blasting.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:29
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veni veni veni posted:I know a lot of people have been talking about sound design but the soundtrack itself sure is something. I never thought I’d be sitting in a theater with a bunch of old people while a Suicide track was blasting. Closing out the film with "Dream Baby Dream" was a rad choice. Maybe a nod to Adam Curtis, I remember it being used in one of his recent docs.
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Apr 14, 2024 22:42
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veni veni veni posted:I know a lot of people have been talking about sound design but the soundtrack itself sure is something. I never thought I’d be sitting in a theater with a bunch of old people while a Suicide track was blasting. I was head banging in the theater when Rocket USA came on
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Apr 14, 2024 23:25
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few people are demanding this be a moral fable or a lecture on the evils of fascism, that would be didactic and boring. the emptiness of the movie's politics is perhaps most clearly articulated when dunst says her reason for being a war photographer is to tell people back home "don't do this." and sure, a bunch of journalists are probably dumb enough for that to be their entire worldview. but come on. wars and armed conflicts happen for reasons, material reasons, and sometimes they are the only means to achieve justice. garland should know this if he's using footage from the 2020 protests, which didn't escalate into an armed struggle but absolutely could have. would that have been a "don't do this" war? all we ever get from this conflict is some vague hints at abuses of presidential power, which is deliberate, but even those hints are coded to facile liberal constitutionalist politics. are most civil wars fought over interpretations of jurisprudential documents? no, they're fought by people who have been denied basic human dignity against those who are withholding it from them. think about the journalists who've been slaughtered in gaza. something tells me they're not doing what they're doing because they want to tell the world war is bad. this is how they are telling the world they still exist and will never stop fighting for their survival, whether with a kalashnikov or a camera. surely the photographers and writers who would come out of an american civil war would have similar motives if they were drawn well as characters. but instead, we get...whatever the hell this is.
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Apr 14, 2024 23:40
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The specific politics are a kind of bitter observation (from a guy who's country is also collapsing) on how shallow, superficial and lacking in political consciousness Americans are, namely that identity/individualistic politics are a self centered and nihilistic cul-de-sac. It's deliberately atomized and personal, insensible to anyone other than the guy with his finger on the trigger howling his rage into the world. The problem is that this has already been done better in THE PURGE 1-5 (plus tv show), which explores this ad nauseam. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 00:06
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I was just about to say it's the drat Purge.Jewmanji posted:And the muddled politics (the California/Texas thing) only serves to a) confuse the audience or b) make lovely false equivalences between two sides of the conflict. The California-Texas alliance against Trump makes absolutely perfect sense when you realize it's aspirational.
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Apr 15, 2024 00:58
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The California-Texas alliance against Trump makes absolutely perfect sense when you realize it's aspirational. Exactly, lol. There's a sneering, snide comment about Ghaddafi in here akin to Hillary Clinton's "we came, we saw, he died" - the Adults In The Room crash the tinpot dictator's little party.
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Apr 15, 2024 01:15
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So I’m sure this got posted but Slashfilm did interview with Alex and gun sounds were asked aboutquote:I'm actually very pleased you said that. The answer is that a gun sound is, in a way, terrifying. A modern automatic rifle or machine gun or 50-caliber machine gun, whatever it happens to be, these are machines that are constructed to kill. That is what they're there for. They do this in this incredibly efficient fashion, and there is something sinister in the noise of something that really only exists for that purpose.
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Apr 15, 2024 01:23
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Jewmanji posted:I missed it, can you say what it was? Come and See is an interesting point of reference for Civil War since it had a very very specific political message (the director initially wanted to title the film “Kill Hitler”).  That isn't the best example from Come and See but you know how the film is full of those focused potrait/head shots where the subject is staring at the camera/breaking the 4th wall in shock/trauma? Its one of those. Filmed with the same focus trick too (not a film expert to know how it's how or what its called sorry). I was really hoping for more of them as the film went along and there was one more shot that seemed similar but not quite. Of course, the film is all about the camera and lots of shots are similar in that they are looking at the lense but that first one in the bath flashback sequence was a clear homage 
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Apr 15, 2024 01:28
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Exactly, lol. There's a sneering, snide comment about Ghaddafi in here akin to Hillary Clinton's "we came, we saw, he died" - the Adults In The Room crash the tinpot dictator's little party. The guy given the line is a jaded war tourism junkie who calls witnessing the summary execution of hooded POWs "a rush" so my read was he wasn't necessarily an authorial voice level reliable narrator.
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Apr 15, 2024 01:54
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Owlbear Camus posted:The guy given the line is a jaded war tourism junkie who calls witnessing the summary execution of hooded POWs "a rush" so my read was he wasn't necessarily an authorial voice level reliable narrator. I really liked that scene and how it uses the de la soul track to sort of trick you - everyone is celebrating taking the building and marching the prisoners out and then it shifts to a close up of a guy gleefully machine gunning them. Garland talked about how he didn't want the music to glamorize war or seduce the viewer and I thought that subversion worked really well. It reminded me a lot of a scene in Joseph Heller's "Dispatches" (which anyone who liked this movie and the war journalist theme should read) where a GI is magdumping his m16 into the corpse of a VC soldier and it's twitching with the impacts like in the movie. Heller described the GI as looking like his face was turning inside out with joy at doing this - "truly a man who had shot his wad" . I saw that in the face of the guy manning the machine gun in the movie. I actually jumped in my seat at a couple of the single gunshots, can't remember doing that since "Heat"
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Apr 15, 2024 02:15
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question for those who have seen it, I went to the loo at a point and when i returned to the cinema the old guy was dead in the car how did he die??? i'm assuming like a random sniper bullet or something?.
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Apr 15, 2024 03:05
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Lampsacus posted:question for those who have seen it, I went to the loo at a point and when i returned to the cinema the old guy was dead in the car how did he die??? i'm assuming like a random sniper bullet or something?. You picked like the worst possible time to take a poo poo
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Apr 15, 2024 03:09
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Lampsacus posted:question for those who have seen it, I went to the loo at a point and when i returned to the cinema the old guy was dead in the car how did he die??? i'm assuming like a random sniper bullet or something?. He ran over Jesse Plemmons and then everyone hopped into the car. The remaining guy started firing at them and he was hit That’s funny my brother went and took a piss at the exact same time. He asked the same thing after the movie. What scene for a piss break lol. He was also wondering where the other two guys went. E: beaten
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Apr 15, 2024 03:12
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This definitely a "try not to pee during this" film. Probably shouldn't have had those 2 Narragansetts to go with my pizza slices during the film…
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Apr 15, 2024 03:24
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giogadi posted:I was head banging in the theater when Rocket USA came on The only thing they hosed up on is they should have played Frankie Teardrop. The whole thing.
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Apr 15, 2024 03:35
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Jewmanji posted:Imagine making a movie about the experience of the American Civil War and having nothing to say whatsoever about slavery or the belligerents- instead simply reminding people who seem to have forgotten that “war is bad” This film makes its politics very clear about the people in charge and what they are doing. If you miss the several flashing signs then that's on you.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:03
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Owlbear Camus posted:The guy given the line is a jaded war tourism junkie who calls witnessing the summary execution of hooded POWs "a rush" so my read was he wasn't necessarily an authorial voice level reliable narrator. I really got a lot out of that aspect of the movie. The reoccurring rictus grin that both the journalist and the machine gunner boogaloo boy were wearing was truly chilling. It reminded me a lot of how the Ukraine war and Gaza genocide is being experienced, which is to say voyeuristic scenes of incalculable human suffering being obsessively traded back and forth by amateur "OSINT" junkies. Sure, it's to "document" which is important, but that is only eliding the raw thrill of third hand combat these people online are chasing. Even if the movie kinda failed, it's a really good document of how we are experiencing the world in the Twitter age.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:07
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I liked how Jesse Plemons' character would shift from keeping his finger on the trigger and off of it, as a sign of whether or not he trusts these people when Dunst's people tried to de-escalate the situation. I thought that was good, subtle direction on Garland's part (or if Plemons improvised it).
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Apr 15, 2024 04:19
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