Movie Recap (04.21.24)
War journalists, democracy camp, and neighbors
This week's reviews include a photojournalistic trip across a war-torn America, a democracy laboratory for teenage girls, and the lives of two disparate neighbors.
Civil War
R | Action | 1h 49m | Theaters
Directed by Alex Garland
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Cailee Spaeny
The Gist of It: A group of journalists, led by war-torn photojournalist Lee (Dunst), races through a dystopian America to reach the White House and document the potential toppling of the president.
What Works: Director Garland makes a few heterodox choices to subvert expectations and prevent his dystopian nightmare from becoming just another brainless action film. He’s far more concerned with commenting on the state of journalistic duty and even the ethics of war coverage than the political strife that initially triggered the conflict. The results are mixed at best.
What Doesn’t: Not all narrative elements congeal into a cohesive whole, with certain scenes just floating there, not adding much to the story. Worst of all, the characters feel like shadows, mere echoes of real people. It's challenging to become emotionally invested in such a cold and distressing story when the characters feel disposable.
My Verdict: Much like war itself, Civil War feels raw, unsettling, and at times, chaotic, in more than one way. Reservations notwithstanding, the film deserves praise for its originality and the filmmakers' commitment to blending a provocative message with a healthy dose of escapism.
Girls State
PG-13 | Documentary | 1h 35m | Apple TV+
Directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss
The Gist of It: This companion documentary to Boys State follows 500 adolescent girls as they gather for a week-long camp in Lindenwood University in Missouri to organize a functioning government.
What Works: The filmmakers skillfully capture the participants’ journey from political neophytes to eager and curious citizens in the making.
What Doesn’t: The focus is somewhat narrow, as we follow participants with fairly conventional political stances. It would have been far more compelling to also explore the experiences of those with heterodox views, or those who see themselves as politically unaffiliated or without strong opinions on the issues. After all, about a third of the country falls outside the traditional liberal/conservative spectrum.
My Verdict: Seeing so many young girls gather for the sole purpose of improving their confidence and understanding of liberal democracy should be cause for optimism and even celebration. However, the film also inadvertently reveals that we still have much work to do, as many participants seem to have internalized the same partisan and tribal instincts that continue to polarize us. Overall, this is an insightful film that could have gone even further in its exploration of youth political culture.
Pared con Pared (Love, Divided)
PG-13 | Romantic Comedy | 1h 38m | Netflix
Directed by Patricia Font
Starring Aitana, Fernando Guallar, and Natalia Rodríguez
The Gist of It: One of the most watched movies on Netflix this week, this Spanish rom-com revolves around two neighbors—Valentina, a pianist (Aitana) and David (Guallar), an inventor who detests noise—who share a paper-thin wall. Despite their diverging lifestyles, a unique friendship blossoms between them.
What Works: Sparks fly between the two charismatic and very attractive leads every moment they share the screen. The concept of two neighbors sharing a wall and becoming friends is amusing at first, but I wish the film hadn't played it so safe and predictable.
What Doesn’t: The premise never rises above its sitcom trappings. Despite the leads' best efforts, the clichéd and often eye-rolling dialogue and plot hold the film back.
My Verdict: Innocuous and light but also tortuously bland, I didn’t fall head over heels for Love, Divided, but rom-com fans might be more forgiving.
Thank you! I'm in the process of writing my first book that is also looking at future conflicts and opportunities, so I'm sure I came into this movie overly excited and with quite a bit of bias.
On another note, I'm 100% with you on the "Girls State" documentary pushing the alignment of youth into clearly defined conservative/liberal camps and this not being representative of reality.
Super valuable reviews, I will use your Substack to guide future movie nights.
Regarding Civil War, a movie I feel is very much worth watching, there were some aspects that thoroughly annoyed me:
1. When the main characters are at the gas station and imply that Canadian dollars are worth so much more than US dollars in this dystopian world, it’s just laughable: Canada is going through similar social tensions as the US and has a similar monetary policy. Of course, there could be a scenario where the Canadian dollar stays stable compared to the US dollar, but there is just a glaring omission of crypto here that irritates me. If the dollar goes to nothing, Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptos will have shot up in dollar terms making them obvious candidates for post-hyperinflation commerce.
2. The main journalists in the movie work for Reuters and the New York Times. The same seems to go for all the other cool journalists in the hotel meet up, as well as those they run into later in the movie: They all work for major publications that we know today. This means that they are totally ignoring the smaller, often more unbiased and more original independent journalists like those that choose to publish on Substack today and those brave individuals that are producing a lot of the photos, videos and commentary in the Ukraine and Gaza wars just using their smartphones. The producers of this movie effectively laugh at these newer, smaller creators by omitting them and paying lip service to the good, old mainstream.
3. The country and its biggest cities are shown as a total wasteland because of the failure of government. Everything turns into chaos, abject violence and war. In my opinion this is a false assumption about human nature: If the top levels of our governments disappeared, I believe it would take us quite a while to even notice, if it’s not blared at us through the media. But the movie goes even further and ridicules the families of the female leads who are “on their farms pretending none of this is happening”. It also depicts the town that is peaceful and ignoring the war in a condescending way, briefly showing the allure of this isolated, harmonious existence before attempting to “pull up the curtain” and invalidate the fairytale by showing gunmen on the roofs of the town’s buildings. Ultimately, gunmen or not, these townspeople are presenting a potentially superior societal model than our current big country model and the movie brushed over it, instead implying that the WF and other similar factions will fight it out and we will land in a new status quo not so different from the current one.
In the end, I find that behind the smoke and mirrors of edgy violence and a captivating (yet as you say, somewhat superficial) storyline this movie is actually quite bland, as it just panders to the current power systems. It does this instead of taking the opportunity to show viable, more equitable, less centralized alternatives made possible by new technologies like the internet and crypto that do not require overlords, democratically elected or not, for people to be able to organize in a harmonious way.