Civil War by Alex Garland

I saw Civil War last night. I'm a pretty big Alex Garland fan, starting with the Beach which is one of my favourite novels (never saw the movie, which he did not write, and from all accounts is not at all like the book). I also loved Ex Machina, and I really liked 28 Days Later. I thought Men was okay, and sort of liked parts of Annihilation (which, in reverse of the Beach, he wrote the movie script for - and changed the story I think for the worse - whereas the original novel not written by him is phenomenal. In his (or someone's? no one's?) defense, I don't really see how someone could read that book and then try to make a movie out of it). The Tesseract was meh. Devs was a no for me.

But I like where he writes from. But while his can hit the home run, he has a higher swing and miss or swing and chunk rate - and based on some lukewarm to negative reviews out there, I thought this might be a slight chunk.

I don't really want to say too much about the movie itself, as this is truly one where it's best enjoyed going in as cold as possible. And the thing is, a lot of it is, if not telegraphed then at least pretty standard and predictable. The major things that happen certainly, the story / plot points, these are not the surprises. Y'all can guess what's coming.

Doesn't even matter though. I loved it. I'm still thinking about it, and I'm not even sure why. (Okay I sort of know, but it's not for any of the reasons that any review, positive or negative, has focused on so far.)

To everyone who's complaining that he does not take a (left wing) stand, that the movie is meaningless if it's just sits astride the political fence: you have missed the point completely. You went in with a preconceived notion of what the movie was going to be, it wasn't that, and that's your complaint. You swung and missed.

Again, not to throw too much out there, but the movie is about Kirsten Dunst's character Lee, not Nick Offerman's president. And Kirsten Dunst, well this is gonna be an Oscar nomination I'm pretty sure. She's just phenomenal.

Cailee Spaeny is good, mostly. Wagner Moura (Pablo Escobar!) is good almost entirely. But Kirsten Dunst, holy moly.

(Cinematographer Rob Hardy also deserves some pretty major praise.)

Anyway, look. What I'm trying to say is, go in with open mind, because I can almost guarantee you'll walk out having seen something you weren't expecting to.

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By the by, during our screening, there's a scene where someone offers to buy something for $300 CANADIAN (as opposed to US dollars or whatever the currency of the seceded states). Literally everyone cheered, and one guy near the front screamed, "YEAH! FINALLY!" It was just another example of why going to the movies beats watching at home.