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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted: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. It's amazing how often people act like the Purge is a series with nothing to say when each installment gets increasingly blunt and direct about its politics.
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Apr 15, 2024 04:37
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Cone and see was a reference for Garland. I saw him or one of the actors mention he got the actors to watch it to put them in the right frame of mind. I have not seen that movie but I’m pretty sure I never want too now.
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Apr 15, 2024 06:31
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It’s one of the best war movies I’ve ever seen but Civil War is like, nothing compared to it. It’s loving brutal. It’s absolutely worth watching though. It’ll stick in your brain forever. The director actually lived through that poo poo.
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Apr 15, 2024 06:38
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More emotionally brutal I mean. Civil war has more violence but it’s not nearly as haunting.
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Apr 15, 2024 06:42
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The Bee posted:It's amazing how often people act like the Purge is a series with nothing to say when each installment gets increasingly blunt and direct about its politics. It's because it doesn't have the proper aesthetics that a movie with Something To Say is supposed to have. A little ironic given, y'know, over the top satire is the MOST likely to have something to say, but it doesn't count if it isn't absurdly self-serious.
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Apr 15, 2024 07:55
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Did that crappy post have something to say? I think I must have missed it.
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Apr 15, 2024 08:44
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I feel like I definitely see Come and See in the Kirstin's facial acting.
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Apr 15, 2024 09:21
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I enjoyed this. The end of the second act was a tad predictable but the performances were great so it doesn't really matter. It's not really a war documentary, I feel like the final sequence was not very realistic as much as part of the movie's overall statement of "imagine any of this poo poo happening... It happens elsewhere, it can happen here." Therefore everything was over the top plot-wise but held down by performances. It reminded me of Threads in that it's clearly targeting a white demographic.
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Apr 15, 2024 09:56
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"Just a suggestion, in case there's anything resembling human civilization circa 2050 or so: if you want to be a "conflict journalist" or "war reporter," there should probably be a strict requirement that you don't think war is cool" - mike s. judge and i agree but also, i'm grateful to see a contempary war-ish film in cinema. dune 2 was grand but this scratched my itch/love of the genre enough yay hmm not much else to add. its funny to see this with alex garland's novel The Beach in mind. i kept trying to find some through line but failed. i guess its about humanity and the human condition and modernity in a gen x way? are formal war journalists still a paid racket?? it feels like they have been largely superseded by citizen journalism/ppl taking photos as they are genocided in gaza, etc.
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Apr 15, 2024 14:14
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This movie was really, really uncomfortable to watch. While the big plot was fairly easy to predict as well as who lives/dies, lots of it seemed plausible in an extreme situation of social upheaval. I think the opening shot of when Dunst is flashing back to seeing war crimes in other countries, like the African guy getting bounded by a tire and then burned alive...gently caress, that went on for way too long and I nearly had to look away made the point that this is what it would look like if America were a country that regularly experiences revolutions/bombings/etc. (I mean, aside form our nonstop mass shootings). It seemed to try to "westernize" what people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central/South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and now Ukraine have lived with, some for decades - a horrific struggle for survival. As others have said, the politics of the individual factions aren't really the point - it's showing the brutality of conflict and how the worst of humanity can easily come out. From executing unarmed politicians to mass graves, no one is in the right. Some are comparing Offerman's President Swanson to Trump, but I didn't really get that vibe. He just seemed like a third-world dictator, especially when they mentioned executing journalists and disbanding the FBI. A few things: The part where they have to "run the gauntlet" on the guy's Christmas farm in nowhere West Virginia was darkly satirical and seemed like it was making fun of gun culture/militia men. Again, easy to predict with the "beware of stray golf balls" sign, but still a very entertaining scene. Jessee Plemons. gently caress, man. As soon as he said "There you go. Colorado. Missouri. Real Americans" my blood turned cold. The DC battle was Saving Private Ryan level uncomfortable, not just with the summary executions (they mowed down what I thought was the First Lady in the car), but with the hardware they used - Apache helicopters, tanks, etc. - all in an urban setting. Yes, I was also wondering why President Swanson wasn't in an underground bunker or not even the gently caress in DC once he surrendered, but it would have basically robbed Joel and Jessie of their agency after Dunst dies. Again, predictable as far as movie-making goes, but it didn't ruin it. The "photo" shots by Jessie were fantastic - an amazing artistic twist. So yeah, I don't think I'll be watching this again any time soon. Maybe when it comes out to streaming I'll give it a go, but for now....Jesus.
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Apr 15, 2024 16:57
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IT BURNS posted:As others have said, the politics of the individual factions aren't really the point - it's showing the brutality of conflict and how the worst of humanity can easily come out. From executing unarmed politicians to mass graves, no one is in the right. Some are comparing Offerman's President Swanson to Trump, but I didn't really get that vibe. He just seemed like a third-world dictator, especially when they mentioned executing journalists and disbanding the FBI. Trump actually really hammered the lugenpresse narrative to the point where MAGA dudes would wear "hang a journalist" t shirts and there were calls to "abolish the FBI" after they raided mar a Lago for his take home TSC NOFORN homework so that's actually pretty Trump-coded.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:11
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Lampsacus posted:"Just a suggestion, in case there's anything resembling human civilization circa 2050 or so: if you want to be a "conflict journalist" or "war reporter," there should probably be a strict requirement that you don't think war is cool" - mike s. judge I thought about this too. I think realistically a conflict like this would be documented mostly via social media. That would have turned it into something entirely different though. Definitely much less sexy having people document atrocities while hollering “like comment subscribe worldstar! “ that would have been interesting in its own right but would have been something else entirely. They do mention the crumbling infrastructure a few times so it’s very possible many cell towns are destroyed and many people are left without internet. Which is good enough for me.
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Apr 15, 2024 17:53
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Comstar posted:Cone and see was a reference for Garland. I saw him or one of the actors mention he got the actors to watch it to put them in the right frame of mind. I suggest you only watch it once, all subsequent rewatches will come via nightmares anyway. 
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Apr 15, 2024 18:02
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Owlbear Camus posted:Trump actually really hammered the lugenpresse narrative to the point where MAGA dudes would wear "hang a journalist" t shirts and there were calls to "abolish the FBI" after they raided mar a Lago for his take home TSC NOFORN homework so that's actually pretty Trump-coded. Perhaps, but controlling the media (either by force or murder) and human/civil rights violations (denial of due process, implied by abolishing the FBI) are also on the list of fascist characteristics: https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html Had they given this President a red tie, I'd say that it was definitely a Trump reference, but I took it as a character who alluded to recent events rather than an outright portrayal.
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Apr 15, 2024 20:29
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Budget Pedro Pasquale losing it over Thufir Hawats death but not a single tear for Kirsten Dunst from either him or the girl who considered her her hero and who saved her life. And lol at experienced war journalists running right to and staring at a pair of snipers trying to stay hidden from an enemy sniper. Oh a scene where the young idealist gets the jaded veteran to smile. Time to stick your arm out the window while lovely music plays during the road trip scene. Gimme a break with this movie.
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Apr 15, 2024 21:39
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I’ve seen some valid criticisms of the movie in here but all 3 of those are loving terrible lol.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:22
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banned from Starbucks posted:Budget Pedro Pasquale losing it over Thufir Hawats death but not a single tear for Kirsten Dunst from either him or the girl who considered her her hero and who saved her life. Had zero problems with this as it played out. As far as narrative structure, we're at the very last dip of the coaster, going 300mph. There's no time for much denouement over the shocking death. Plot, theme and character wise we start to see an inversion in the last act where Lee is rattled and finally affected by the horror around her, while Jesse is starting to feel in her element, the "rush" that Joel does. This is telegraphed by a lot of elements in the narrative. Jesse's question of Lee in the first act "if I die will you photograph me?" Lee ultimately answers "no" to this sort of lurid voyeurism when it comes to a close friend when she deletes the shot of Sammy. Jesse answers "yes" when she captures the moment of Lee's death. The old hand finally succumbs to her trauma, arguably regaining some of her humanity, her compassion, for the more spiritual you might say a bit of her soul. The young apprentice becomes the new hardened conflict junkie. Joel and Jesse don't have time to mourn in that moment because the money shot is right in the next room and their amped on adrenaline. And, critically one of the few things Joel actually expresses about his grief for Sammy is that he "died for nothing" because they weren't going to get to the Trumpenbunker before the fireworks show. Stopping for a solemn moment of grief and not being there when Chief Clark and his ad-hoc squad drag the president out would mean Lee "died for nothing." Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Apr 15, 2024 |
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Apr 15, 2024 22:25
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The rest of this thread seems to be people insisting that this movie “has something to say” and then not being able to name what that is.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:26
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Pirate Jet posted:The rest of this thread seems to be people insisting that this movie “has something to say” and then not being able to name what that is. I disagree
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Apr 15, 2024 22:28
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Pirate Jet posted:The rest of this thread seems to be people insisting that this movie “has something to say” and then not being able to name what that is. never tell the deranged american soldier filling mass graves that you're a foreign national.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:29
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Something I've thought about re: this movie was that, about the time Red Dawn came out, John Milius said "if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn't have to happen". He felt it was an anti-war movie, or at least was saying so publicly at the time.
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Apr 15, 2024 22:51
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Pirate Jet posted:The rest of this thread seems to be people insisting that this movie “has something to say” and then not being able to name what that is. Honestly, the further I get from it the more the movie feels like a very specific criticism not so much of political polarization (it essentially posits that, once violence overtakes the system itself, there is no way to "stay out of it" - either you take action, including passively, or you die) but of people who take advantage of a war situation to racketeer or just Do Crimes. If anything, it's not a warning to Not Have War, but a warning against doing a war dishonorably (idk in what fashion Garland imagines our current culture-war ends amicably). The main characters are portrayed in a really unflattering light, which I find fascinating. I don't usually want to see something twice during its release but I might have to go back for this one, I can't remember the last time I just plain enjoyed a movie so much. It reminded me a lot of the second half of Full Metal Jacket, right down to the hostile needle drops.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:06
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One thing that felt insidious by design is how the kinetic velocity of the last set piece battle scenes have you rooting for the Western Forces while showing them doing unquestionable war crimes. Murking (probably) the first lady in the presidential limo, executing the unarmed secret service negotiator, and of course summarily executing President Offerman without so much as a show trial. But at least for me, the way it's presented with the nasty badman ready for his comeuppance and the spectacle and slick operator room clearing aesthetic my amygdala was happy to take in the images and say "had to be done" even as my critical forebrain tried to say "wait a second."
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Apr 15, 2024 23:11
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veni veni veni posted:I’ve seen some valid criticisms of the movie in here but all 3 of those are loving terrible lol. Oh sorry uh lemme think... "He died before getting an interview! It was all for nothing!" drat....that's deep. War is hell but cool gun noises. A+ movie
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Apr 15, 2024 23:31
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Your first complaint is comparing people processing their friend’s death hours after the fact to literal seconds after the second death. After watching that entire movie do you actually think any of those people would have just abandoned their mission because of that? Like, they would have just ignored the president so they could have a scene of everyone crying and screaming lol. Your second complaint is just flat out wrong. they didn’t just mosey up to the sniper. They took cover behind the nearest trailer because they were being shot at and it just happened to be where the counter sniper was perched. The third complaint is just complete nonsense. I have no idea why you took issue with that scene but I assure it only makes sense in your own head.
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Apr 15, 2024 23:56
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banned from Starbucks posted:"He died before getting an interview! It was all for nothing!" That joel was saying that even though Sammy died to save them seemed like another comment on how far gone he is, at least to me
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Apr 16, 2024 00:00
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It's really funny because Wagner Moura is the lead of both ELITE SQUAD movies, if you enjoyed him as an amoral adrenaline junkie.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:03
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Something I've thought about re: this movie was that, about the time Red Dawn came out, John Milius said "if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn't have to happen". He felt it was an anti-war movie, or at least was saying so publicly at the time. The original Red Dawn is such a fascinating time capsule movie. I remember watching it pretty young & thinking "  kids fighting the dirty commies to free their home!"Then in the early 2000's I watched it again at a friend's place but somebody said "Now imagine this movie told from the point of view of Afghans right now" before we started, and it really changed the way I saw the film. Red Dawn played again a week ago on TV mad I realized how  that movie ultimately was.I'm curious how I'll think about Civil War 5-10 years from now.
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Apr 16, 2024 00:10
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's really funny because Wagner Moura is the lead of both ELITE SQUAD movies, if you enjoyed him as an amoral adrenaline junkie. He’s also Pablo Escobar in narcos but he gained like 50 lbs for that role so he’s barely recognizable
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Apr 16, 2024 00:13
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IT BURNS posted:this is what it would look like if America were a country that regularly experiences revolutions/bombings/etc. (I mean, aside form our nonstop mass shootings). It seemed to try to "westernize" what people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central/South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and now Ukraine have lived with, some for decades - a horrific struggle for survival. The ‘it can happen here’ interpretation falls apart when you play the “one of these things is not like the others” game. While we can criticize the detachment that lets us perceive extreme political instability (and the associated violence) as something that naturally happens ‘over there’, there’s a reason why it does happen ‘over there’ while events like Jan. 6 are these limp turds. Not to spoil it, but the reason is imperialism. Y’know, colonialism and its legacies. It’s increasingly clear that Civil War is not set in ‘the near future’, or even ‘20 years from now’. It’s an alternate-universe story. And it’s one where the scenario it depicts is intended as the subtext of our present day - the bullets representing rhetoric, discourse, mean tweets. Without the guidance of the New York Times or whatever, this queer person and this anonymous dude in a mansion are literally sniping at eachother, taking pot-shots at eachother… online. Of course, the drama comes from the conceit that if you die in the game, you die in real life. What if your mean tweets functioned like the Death Note? What if mean tweets were the Death Note? Well, I suppose we’d have a civil war!!!
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Apr 16, 2024 00:56
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veni veni veni posted:
I didn't say mosey. They get out of the truck and the guy runs from the cover of the trailer exposing himself (and gets shot at) and runs right past the two snipers in order to...hide on the other side of them for some reason. The scene is on YouTube go watch it.
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Apr 16, 2024 01:09
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Android Apocalypse posted:The original Red Dawn is such a fascinating time capsule movie. I remember watching it pretty young & thinking " Yeah, Red Dawn is one of those weird movies where it gets remembered and joked about as all "Wolverines!" fun and that's only about the 1st act of the movie. The rest is the grueling grind of guerrilla warfare, hopelessness and futility where the only achievement is that they don't all die.
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Apr 16, 2024 01:24
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veni veni veni posted:He’s also Pablo Escobar in narcos but he gained like 50 lbs for that role so he’s barely recognizable I see it in my mind's eye now that you said it but I never would have put it together without being told. Parakeet vs. Phone posted:Yeah, Red Dawn is one of those weird movies where it gets remembered and joked about as all "Wolverines!" fun and that's only about the 1st act of the movie. The rest is the grueling grind of guerrilla warfare, hopelessness and futility where the only achievement is that they don't all die. I wonder if not putting a button on things with the victory monument coda might have helped it be remembered as less of a jingoistic farce. SuperMechagodzilla posted:The ‘it can happen here’ interpretation falls apart when you play the “one of these things is not like the others” game. While we can criticize the detachment that lets us perceive extreme political instability (and the associated violence) as something that naturally happens ‘over there’, there’s a reason why it does happen ‘over there’ while events like Jan. 6 are these limp turds. While I appreciate the characteristically swing-for-the-fences SMG critical take about the actual violence being metaphor for rhetorical violence, I'm not sure I share it. However this is pretty spot on. I think Civil War doesn't actually present a plausible speculative future history, because ACW2 is going to be a really slow simmer Years of Lead style people won't even realize they're in. It will look more like the water truck bombing in the first act than the big set piece battles with helicopter gunships and uniformed soldiers with tanks. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Apr 16, 2024 |
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Apr 16, 2024 01:33
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I am pretty confident that any large-scale Second American Civil War will not look anything like this movie, and this movie doesn't mind. It breaks down immediately when there is gasoline to be had anywhere after presumably years of conflict, but without that conceit we don't have much of a road trip movie without it becoming a western. It's not an endorsement of which political ideology is best. These are Hollywood liberals, we all know what they think about that. It's a movie about war photographers and how it burns you out. It felt like a zombie movie without zombies. Those aren't really credible as realism films either. I don't really give a poo poo that it's not Sufficiently Leftist.
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Apr 16, 2024 02:04
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Yeah to be clear that was an observation about the shape of things to come, not a failing of the film. I'm not trying to give it cinema sins style dings while doing silly little goofs about how latino actors are fungible. It broadly achieves what it sets out to do and is a quality entry to the canon of "films not to watch if you're already depressed."
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Apr 16, 2024 02:11
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Owlbear Camus posted:While I appreciate the characteristically swing-for-the-fences SMG critical take about the actual violence being metaphor for rhetorical violence, I'm not sure I share it. Well, let’s look at a concrete example: why is “Trump” in the White House, up until the very last moments, when we already know him in reality as The Bunker Bitch? He absolutely wouldn’t give his life for, what, the symbolism? The history? No; he’s just another Bolsonsaro. He’d flee the country long before any such point, and then claim he never liked that smelly white house anyways. But online, in the media, in his rhetoric? Trump never left the White House there. The whole Big Lie thing is that he’s technically still on his second term, working toward a third. He’s constantly doing press releases on sets made up to look like government buildings, using official-looking letterheads. Trump presented the presidency itself as a perpetual campaign, and that campaign never ended.
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Apr 16, 2024 03:32
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It's really funny because Wagner Moura is the lead of both ELITE SQUAD movies, if you enjoyed him as an amoral adrenaline junkie. Oh man how did I completely miss this. They’re fantastic. I knew he was familiar but I couldn’t place it.
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Apr 17, 2024 00:43
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Android Apocalypse posted:The original Red Dawn is such a fascinating time capsule movie. I remember watching it pretty young & thinking " Kevin Reynolds, the other screenwriter of Red Dawn, went on to make The Beast, a movie about a Soviet tank crew in Afghanistan, which is very good and also flopped because American audiences in the late 80s weren't in the mood for a picture whose angle is "hey, the mostly villainous Russia protagonists doing war crimes are just like we were in Nam." High Warlord Zog fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Apr 17, 2024 |
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Apr 17, 2024 05:05
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Saw this last night. I thought some of it was outstanding, but overall it failed to hit that "great, important movie" space it's clearly aiming for. First: the politics of the movie feel pretty clear to me, and it annoys me that Garland and co seem to be going out of their way to be coy about it. President Offerman is an obvious Trump stand-in, with all the God Bless America, hate the media, demonize whatever government agency is standing in my way window dressing that comes standard with any national Republican politician. Garland's attempts to demur on this topic feel like a pretty cheap ticket-selling maneuver. The fact that the "front line" is Charlottesville drives this point home pretty hard. Yeah, Alex. I'm sure you weren't making any statements about current American politics when you chose to center the city that's spent almost 10 years acting as a symbol of current American politics. There are little things around the edges, too - the WF and Florida dudes are depicted as being pretty ethnically diverse, with dyed hair and painted fingernails, while the loyalists forces were mostly nameless white dudes. I know everyone's making a bunch of hay about which states seceded and which didn't, but to me it just feels like a pretty lazy way to say "not taking sides! Look, Texas! SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS!" To be fair, the PRIMARY politics of the movie boil down to Kirsten Dunst's character explaining: Don't do this. It's mostly a movie about how war is awful, which - fair. But Garland's gotta know the lore politics are still important, and going to get talked about, and I don't really respect the choices he's made there to throw random poo poo in there to try and muddy the waters. To me, that's a big knock on the movie as a statement piece. A lot of the imagery, especially e.g. the lingering tire fire shot, felt gratuitous and borderline exploitative. I'm sure Garland would say "but you see, that's the point! We watch war movies all the time where terrible things happen in other countries!" but, I dunno. I've seen other movies do more with a lot less. I don't fully see how this isn't just adding to that gratuitous violence pile that he'd probably claim to be critiquing. There are also a number of points where characters seem to make choices just to drive the story forward, rather than for reasons that make internal sense. President Offerman staying in the Oval Office instead of a bunker somewhere, just so they can get the symbolism-drenched shot of him clutching to the Resolute desk as they drag him out. Kirsten Dunst choosing to push Jessie down and then. . .just stand there? with a patronizing look on her face? instead of doing the easier move of grabbing her and throwing both their bodies to the ground/side, just so she can get shot and complete Jessie's character arc. Nobody helping Thufir when he gets shot, so that the camera can instead get a bunch (more) shots of crying and grim faces. The Western Forces soldiers mugging for the camera as they commit a clear war crime. Plemons not hearing an old Ford ExMachina roaring up on him from a quarter mile away, so that the remaining journalists can escape certain death. All that being said, there was still a lot to like. It certainly doesn't glorify war or combat, though I'd argue this messaging is somewhat undercut by the fact that the film ends with the Big Bad Guy getting captured and killed in ignominious fashion. The performances were outstanding, and the dialogue was mostly pretty strong. The combat scenes were about as visceral and intense as I've seen, due in no small part to the sound design. Pacing was good and played well into the themes about war being chaotic and bad.
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Apr 17, 2024 22:07
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safaco posted:A lot of the imagery, especially e.g. the lingering tire fire shot, felt gratuitous and borderline exploitative. this part, and a lot of the stuff about warzone photography in general, felt like a deliberate reference to The Bang Bang Club. that particular practice is called "necklacing" and it's something the Bang Bang Club famously documented in South Africa. but yeah, i agree a lot of the borrowing extremely loaded gruesome imagery particularly around racist violence while at the same time trying to distance itself from saying anything "too political" felt like the movie wanting to have the illusion of saying something without actually having to say something.
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Apr 17, 2024 22:13
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