Civil War

It was clear that Garland wasn’t going to make a blockbuster out of this. However, it wasn’t clear what his masterful balancing between reality and dimensions beyond human perception would bring to a film that is supposed to stand solely on raw realism. Civil War contains grand scenes with tanks and helicopters, but without a cinematographic concept of the kind that Alfonso Cuarón employed in Children of Men and which would be needed here. At its core, Civil War is merely an intimate road movie spanning a broken America as it follows a team of three seasoned journalists and their novice colleague, whose innocence stands in contrast to their experience and professional detachment. Our question of why such a young girl would be doing such work is immediately answered for us: “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life. And I've never felt more alive.” ___ Civil War avoids sentiment and the dark tone of the story is lightened by the use of American pop oldies, but it lacks the artistic optics that we like Garland for in the first place. The film should me made up entirely of terrifying scenes, but it contains only one, which reflects the one-dimensional thinking of America’s redneck population and features a standout performance by Jesse Plemons. The director amplifies the rawness not with dark instrumental music, but with the intense sound of gunfire. And even though the film is compelling and engaging thanks to its characters, it lacks refined and unexpected conflicts, as well as an intellectual reach that would go beyond warning us about Donald Trump. And the climax is literally ridiculous. (17/04/2024)

Alex Garland's awkward Salvador. In it there was a sentence that you have to get closer to get to the truth, or if you want reality, then fidelity. If you get too close, you die. Here, the distance wasn’t ideal, whether due to poorly written and cast characters, or the vagueness of initially heroizing the impartiality of a war journalist’s badge, only to later point out the dangers of national polarization (as someone humorously remarked, putting together California and Texas is like a coalition between Sweetgreen and KFC). If the peak of the intense episodes was to be Plemons’ lime-like quality, then the connections between them, meant to profile and develop characters, didn’t set the bar very high. The final militant pornography from D.C. was just missing Gerard Butler, on the right side, of course. (03/06/2024)

Olympic level in the discipline of "inducing a feeling of deep inner turmoil". I haven't seen something so often beautiful, yet repulsive and disturbing in a long time. And my apologies to A24 for wrongly suspecting it of producing a straightforward war blockbuster. It's, of course, another auteur film, just the way we like it. (24/04/2024)

A stunning picture of cruelty, where the first two parts, wandering in an anthill of trivia and sudden traumas, are surprisingly quite a bit better than the finale. It probably had to be that way so it wouldn't be a journey from nowhere to nowhere, but its giant scale takes away from the intensity of storytelling about people that resonate with me (because they do something that needs to be done, even if others don't understand) just as much as they infuriate me (because they act like ordinary adrenaline addicts). The last few minutes are pure provocation, which Alex Garland deserves for his long-standing genre diversity at the end (?) of his filmmaking career, but I can't help but wonder if such audacity brought joy to anyone other than himself. (11/06/2024)

Recall the three year old event when the Trump mob stormed the Capitol. Alex Garland sensitively and thoughtfully directs this theme, this societal schism, into disconnected mini-stories, with just these aforementioned protagonists (and they don't need a buffalo head to do it) killing because "real fucking America", all of which the protagonists, journalists, follow on their way to Washington. As long it stays in the road movie waters, with lots of iconic scenes, it's great. Unfortunately, Garland flips the switch at the end, and with the arrival in D.C., it becomes a regular war movie that felt like a mannerism in its denouement and showdown. Not only did it leave me cold at the end, but I actually thought "and that's it, Alex?". Too bad, we had the build-up to the movie event of the year, and well, it's not. But still an honest 4 stars (no stripes) for the impressive heaviness and disillusionment with humanity in the first two thirds. (19/04/2024)