A Movie About 'Civil War' Doesn't Want To Offend You
#268: "Civil War," "Ripley," "12 Angry Men," "Now You See Me"
Edition 268:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: Let’s talk about the state of the movies after a revelatory week at CinemaCon, and my first experience at The Sphere. Then I want to talk about a documentary sequel to my No. 1 movie of 2020. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” why are people so excited for this Joker sequel??
Civil War
When the trailer for A24’s Civil War first dropped, I remember putting it in my “Trailer Watch” section of the newsletter and saying something like wow, here’s a movie that feels like it’s touching the third rail of modern American society. The guard rails are off. Maybe it’s a movie that’s even a little bit dangerous. How exciting!
What I hadn’t accounted for at the time was what the movie represented to A24, the production company-turned-mini-studio that has grown like crazy over the past decade by producing interesting, original movies for adults (including TWO Best Picture winners!). At the end of last year, there were reports that the critical darling was trying to venture “big IP” blockbuster territory, to which I sighed heavily, crossed my fingers and hoped against hope that it wouldn’t play out the same way it had for Miramax and New Line Cinema (production companies of yore who began swimming in too deep of waters and eventually got eaten).
The first test of that was Civil War, whose $70 million budget is no joke for a big studio and is positively enormous for an indie. In some ways, A24 literally couldn’t afford to fail.
So it comes as no surprise to see the politics of this movie get sanitized. Yes, it’s an American civil war, but the various factions are about as defined as the bad guys from Top Gun: Maverick, and the political stand-ins are impossible to pin down (with one notable exception, which I’ll address in just a second).
Approaching this movie requires a kind of cognitive dissonance that I’m not sure is possible in 2024. The movie is not a political statement, instead asking you to think theoretically about a world where political divides (defined however you like) have escalated to the point of bloodshed, and to do so without pointing fingers.
This hands-off approach is going to be even more difficult for viewers when they discover that the protagonists of this movie are journalists (the crooked media!!), specifically war photographers, who are documenting the action for Reuters — again, maybe the only news outlet whose political leanings can’t easily be pinned down.
Even still, this isn’t one of those “journalists are heroes!” movies either. The movie accurately depicts the emotional remove that journalists go through when covering something, no matter how dramatic that thing is. The journalists in this movie and in real life, in my experience, don’t actually care about the outcome of the thing they’re covering so much as hoping their individual product (the story or photos, video, etc.) turns out well.
In an environment like a literal civil war, that mindset takes an enormous emotional toll on our protagonist, played by Kirsten Dunst. She’s basically dead inside. Then she meets a young, eager photographer played by Cailee Spaeny, and it’s a pretty conventional plot of the young buck wisening to the world and the old horse learning to feel again (excuse the mixed metaphors).
It’s pretty crazy, almost sacrilegious, to say this of an A24 movie, but it’s true — the main reason to go see this is the spectacle. Garland’s filmmaking prowess is basically above reproach at this point, and the familiar war movie visuals transposed onto familiar American backdrops was nothing short of shocking.
The action scenes are big, loud and so impressive it kind of undermines the movie’s anti-war message. Smaller moments, like Jessie Plemons’ one scene as a nihilistic rebel, are incredibly tense and effective. The movie kind of unfolds this way, episodically, without really stringing together a single coherent message.
And really, I wonder whether it really needs to. Maybe Garland is a victim of his own idea-rich success (Ex Machina, Annihilation), and I came into the movie with simply the wrong expectations. As a pure experiential war movie, this one is pretty top notch. And even given my criticisms, this is one of the best movies of the young (and admittedly weak) year.
Something New
Ripley: Nobody can question Steve Zaillian’s credentials as one of the best screenwriters of the past…well, ever: Schindler’s List, the first Mission: Impossible, Moneyball, and one of the best mini-series of all time, “The Night Of.” But I don’t think many people knew he had this kind of directing chops. Wow. This series is shot in black and white and styled almost like a 1960s Federico Fellini movie. Anyone familiar with Il Maestro knows how big of a compliment this is, and anyone not familiar with his work can read between the lines on how much this series will test his or her patience.
Yes, it is filmmaking of the highest order. Yes, the adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel is fantastic while cutting a unique path from the 1999 movie. Yes the acting from Andrew Scott is fantastic (as always). But it’s a black-and-white show, partially in Italian with subtitles, and very much paced like an Italian summer (l’estate italiano, if you will). It’s not boring, by any means, but it’s drama sort of wraps its hands around your neck so slowly that you don’t realize until you’re suffocating.
In a crowded TV landscape, I know it’s hard to commit to a new show. But almost immediately you’ll notice the cinematic quality of this show, and without spoilers you’re going to have to trust me that the plot is headed somewhere very exciting.
Something Old
12 Angry Men (1957, Amazon Prime Video): Ehem, anyone know why a movie about a jury might have been relevant this week? Was there, perhaps, a jury selection going on in the news? Who’s to say. All I know is that this is THE definitive courtroom drama, about a lone juror who tries to convince his colleagues to change their mind about a murder trial. And although it’s old and the production mostly takes place in a single room, I challenge anyone to watch this 1hr32min movie and tell me it’s anything other than entirely gripping. This is one of those foundational movies that you have to see at some point in your life. And you’ll be glad you did.
Something to Stream
Now You See Me (Max): One of the stranger announcements from CinemaCon last week was Lionsgate telling people they’re reviving the magician franchise (?) in 2025, a full nine years after the second movie. That sequel was so bad that for a long time it kind of ruined my enjoyment of the first movie from 2013, which previously I touted as exactly the type of popcorn entertainment Hollywood should be striving for.
It’s got a great cast starting with Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco and Isla Fisher as stage musicians who begin robbing real banks and giving the money out for free, Robin Hood-style. They get pursued by Mark Ruffalo, a cop, and Morgan Freeman, a sleuth, and for good measure let’s throw in Michael Caine, Michael Kelley, Mélanie Laurent and Common. Is it a little ridiculous? Ok, maybe more than a little. But it’s not dumb, and its cleverness is more than enough to whisk a viewer along on a fast-paced adventure and pay it off with a satisfying conclusion. Had that second abomination not happened, I would be ecstatic to be getting another one. Now, it wreaks of a cash grab.
Trailer Watch: Joker: Hit Man
Say what you will about the stacked Dune cast, but over the past six months, Glen Powell has pretty clearly jumped to the front of the line of up-and-coming movie stars. Anyone But You was a big hit (and he was the best part of it), he has the splashy blockbuster Twisters this summer, and he’s adding to that a prestige play with fellow Texan Richard Linklater (director of Dazed and Confused, the Before trilogy and Everybody Wants Some!). He plays some kind of government informant who poses as a hitman in sting operations, until he falls in love with a target (Adria Arjona, yes please!) and things get messy.
I don’t know if it’s intentional but it seems Powell continues to be drawn to these 1990s-style premises (or in the case of Twisters, remaking an actual 1990s movie). Quite frankly, I approve. This looks like a movie of the year candidate for me.
Hi Matt. What happened to the podcast? I usually listen to it while I'm out running but it's been several weeks since a new one dropped. The last one available is from March 15 - I miss your various musical interludes and your "What's going on movie lovers". I knew the end of the podcast was coming . . . Has it come?
And on another subject let me tell you a "12 Angry Men" story. SPOILER ALERT. Years ago I was at management conference/workshop. There were over one hundred of us in a banquet hall at a large hotel sitting at tables of eight. The leader of the workshop passed out a picture of the jury room with all the seated jurors. He told us that over the course of the movie all the jurors were going to change their mind from guilty to not guilty. Our task was to watch the first several minutes or so of the movie (before anyone changes their mind) and then individually write down our guess of the order in which they do change their minds. After doing this he gave us the same task of predicting the correct order but this time working as a group. He told us that in many years of doing this exercise no individual ever scored higher than their group. That was true for my group and for the entire workshop. I think I may have predicted 4 or 5 correctly, while my group scored 8 of 12. Several groups in the room scored a perfect 12. The point of the exercise is that group collaboration will produce better decisions. After the exercise was over we prevailed upon him to show the rest of the movie - he said that was also a common occurance.
Had similar feelings to you on “Civil War.” My only adds would be that (at times) the movie almost seems to have an anti-media view in that the images the main characters are taking only perpetuate the horrid violence. And the “we take the pictures so other people are supposed to ask the questions” line felt like the entire ethos of the movie in a nutshell