i think alex garland should make video games, his movies always seem like the kind of stuff that would make him like the single most thoughtful and introspective AAA video game developer in history but just come across as kind of half-baked in cinema i guess. again i am not like super familiar with his work tho
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Main reason I decided to post about the film: I thought it might be nice to have an opinion from someone who has actually seen it.
Yeah, if you find that quote especially offensive, then you are probably not going to like Civil War. Ask yourself, how well is the current trend of increasing political polarization working out for us?
That is all Iām going to say about the movie. Iām not here to change anyoneās mind or anything. Just wanted to put my thoughts on it out there.
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he wrote the ninja theory dmc
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American political polarization isnāt a problem in and of itself; itās a symptom of a total lack of real popular representation in the US at the same time that capitalism is turning the screws harder than it used to and environmental collapse is looming. In this environment, of course tensions are rising. Thereās no positive change and no effective political release valve.
IMO, an artist trying to make political art in 2024 and deciding that polarization is the most important issue to talk about is someone who has nothing to say.
Edit: I admit I havenāt seen the movie. Maybe itās good. I kinda liked Ex Machina. I just donāt think this is a filmmaker who has much of interest or substance to say about politics, so I donāt want to see his movie about politics.
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Iām just saying itās hard to take seriously the message āpolarization is tearing the body politic apart! special thanks to the terf queen and to andy ngo, who has never been the same after his near deadly milkshake encounterā
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I agree it would be crazy if the credits said that
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Thank you for your well-considered thoughts. In my view polarization is one of the impediments to solving our real problems. But I agree that lack of real popular representation is probably the biggest problem in the current US political system. And in the US political gerrymandering plays a major role in both representation and polarization.
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Damn I called that shit like Babe Ruth
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A friend asked if I wanted to go see Civil War (heās a big fan of Alex Garland for some reason) this past weekend and I said no, because to me it looks like the type of movie that should have ābased on real life twitter scrollingsā in its credits and also sort of looks like the centrist version of those alt-right PureFlix movies. Iām probably wrong on both counts but the whole concept of the movie just sounds tiresome.
It does look like itās probably pretty well made as a film. I liked Ex Machina well enough the first time I saw it (second time I think I felt kinda bored) but Annihilation was pretty meh in my opinion. I think Alex Garland is just extremely unremarkable as a filmmaker. His movies are like if you adapt a 10 page sci-fi novella with an interesting hook, but donāt fill out the rest of the runtime with anything interesting.
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Boy one side wants the right to exist and the other wants to round them up and kill the/leave them to die in the gutter (until the police need to clean the area so destroy everything they own). Hmm I guess both sides have issues!
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Alex Garland is really good at creating an irreal mood in all his movies, but his writing is not the strongest. He could make a good PKD adaptation of like Valis, I bet. I think itās a shame heās quitting directing when he should probably just quit writing, if he was to stop doing anything.
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i fucking hated Civil War. awful, myopic shit.
for a film so obsessed with the aesthetics of war and it has absolute no interest in the real world impact of images.
Devs is the only decent Garland project because at least the length makes it fun to explore itās silly premise.
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Iām not sure Garland directing someone elseās scripts would be any good. Saw a tweet claiming his core audience would be ānarratively satisfied by a Pinterest moodboardā and it stuck with me. Even Annihilation, the movie that stuck with me the most out of his entire filmography, bases its entire strength on those few truly indelible images. But to really let them breathe in your mind, you kinda have to forget the rest of the film, since it fills all the space between with a suffocatingly expository/clean/literal minded treatment of the scriptās core themes.
Itās like his thinking-in-images part of the brain distrusts his screenwriter brainās ability to do its job, and vice versa. Even worse, he finds no space for tonal variety (or anything that goes beyond the rigidly defined scope of the project, really), and instead of being confident about delivering speculative fiction, it feels like heās trying to cover his ass by sticking to this, I donāt know, confident solemnity that impresses a lot of people and indie movie execs. And when itās not enough to mystify his intentions, the effect is demoralizing.
I truly believe Men is a crime against art, a movie that insists on dealing in symbolism but makes every symbol a 1:1 kind of thing. It never deals in specificity, instead it reduces womenās life experience to suffering from trauma and being victimized (in the name of fighting against misogyny, supposedly) in this po-faced way without realizing itās always goofy as hell. Itās like Garland was constantly screaming in your ear that heās one of the good ones, those who get it, but the only thing he gets is severely outdated, lib-brained pop feminism. That ending has a rhythm of a dumb Adult Swim sketch, Smile (2022) if it refused to understand what it is, a real emperor is naked moment, and it made me doubt he really is cut out for anything but high concept work.
It really sucks how he insists on calling his experience with Dredd (which he supposedly ghost directed) ācrudeā in all sorts of ways since it feels like he was destined to be a beloved genre craftsman if he either put more trust in the images or the heart of the story, but seems to consider genre beneath him. And I mean, I get it, he made an impressive reputation for himself this way, but itās so hollow, and each Civil War related interview seems to make people more sick of his nonsense, and justifiably so.
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this feels right but itās also v funny cause Iāve seen annihilation twice and both times totally lost it at the helplessly hoping needle drop, maybe I just hate CSNY (okay, helpless and country girl are good) but itās just so ham-fisted, I kinda love it I think. that movie is a stinker though.
I saw an alex g & big thief double header for free like two years ago and both of those are terrible live bands, would probably still put the experience above any alex garland movies Iāve seen. or they might tie with sunshine, but with that Iām going off my memory of seeing it ~15 years ago and being sort of enamored with how insistently stupid it was
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I get you, I mean I literally spent the whole first scene wondering if he just keeps the monkey mask on the whole movie lol. I was being serious tho itās very obvious what itās about for a casual viewer
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Sunshine is fairly compelling until the second half shits the bed and turns into an insistently idiotic slasher film
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rewatched Sunshine and 28 Days Later last year and both held up better than i expected. i think iāve liked each of Garlandās directorial efforts less than the last, though (have not seen Civil War yet).
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the crazy family (1984) - watched this at a screening and enjoyed it, starts off as a more wry and funny, absurdity of family life kind of thing then abruptly escalates into a crazed horror movie / tag team wrestling version of the same thing as all the characters get kitted up and try to kill each other. gets impressively tasteless in ways good (the teen son putting on bicycle lights to relive the tsuyama massacre and fighting grampa who is dressed like a ww2 officer and screaming about mutilating women) and less good (there sure is some elaborate shibari on the teenage actress??) but i kind of liked how uneasily that stuff sits with the cuter and more restrained tone at the start. some good synth music.
sheās obsessed with my husband (2024) - the new lifetime movie from the auteur behind the original stalked by my doctor trilogy, this is also one of his many collaborations with someone in florida called barbie castro (good āmid hardcore bandā name) who is devoted to putting her daughter in as many of these things as possible.
great mindsā¦ anyway in terms of lifetime product this is a good one with that distinctive crazed quality that you want in the genre, everything seems just a little bit extra, the slow motion shots of the husband towelling off cutting to his evil milf stalker watching and (implied) jacking off, the husband and wife sex scene broken up by shots of the stalker assembling poison pie ingredients. sneaky shots of injecting a pie and scuttling around like a gremlin to cut brakes and such. some of the director trademarks like unannounced fantasy sequences and of course having the end involve an orgy of metal on head violence (golf clubs in the doctor movies, a shovel here). itās also funny how much of the plot involves money troubles when every shot of the mcmansion house is likeā¦ multiple decorative guitars on wall, marble stone countertop and tiling, bronze knickknacks everywhereā¦ final chase involves being chased with a knife through a big backyard sign reading HOT TUB SUNDAY. i hope the castros make many more of these. why was the usa so hard on these guys. itās also kind of funny to me that so many of these movies have a plot thread about the glamorous evil milf sort of seducing away the daughter by giving her fashion tips and such. like insult to injury on top of the frame you for murder thing.
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Beautiful Mind ā Jennifer Conelly has been starring in this? 
Angel has fallen ā not deep enough to hit the bottom of the barrel, where it def belongs.
The Lobster ā well and truly a Johnnie To movie, in the best sense. Nothing else comes closer than emulating the weird plot points of a good olā To flick than this does, so 4 
s out of five for that!
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Elle - holy shit, wow
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