More Civil War chat

I was reading an article on an entertainment website about Unfrosted, the Jerry Seinfeld Pop-Tart movie, and I made the mistake of clicking on another article about Civil War, and how Alex Garland really made a fatal slash unforgivable mistake of not picking a side. And I can't believe people are still up in arms about this, writing new articles about this, for multiple reasons.

a. has this critic not already decided who should have been labeled as good and who was bad (the answer is, they have), and if so, why do they need straight up exposition on this?

And b. what is this gross self-righteousness to say the film is diminished or even ruined (?!) because they weren't told who is good and who is bad, because clearly the bad guys are the bad guys and you are gutless if you can't say who the bad guys are,

And c. if you're so blinded to the message, the beauty or the achievement of the movie because of the lack of political labeling, then you should not be a movie critic,

And d. e. f. and fucking z. already. Z. being shut up.

If your view is this could have been a great movie, if only Alex Garland put red or blue patches on the soldiers, but since he did not it's garbage, you need to shut up.

As I said, my mistake for clicking on the article. Please, people, don't click on any more articles about Civil War. But do see the movie, because it's amazing.

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.