Movie Meet-Up: CIVIL WAR (4/21) and Essential April TV
While my monthly movie meet-up is geared towards the best international films that are coming out that I don't want you to miss, I felt there was no more essential movie to experience mid-April than A24's buzzy new war film Civil War. Anyway, writer/director Alex Garland is English, does that count? He ought to bring a unique framing on a potential second American civil war.
In fact, from the trailers you can see that he has not gone the route you might think. He has not made obvious nods to the current red-blue divide, instead going for a more generic, timeless, ideology-neutral conflict to highlight the absurdity of Americans turning on Americans (or countrymen of any creed): the mental gymnastics required to separate "us" and "them". The movie is also poised to show the bravery of war photographers and the urgent need and respect we should have for frontline journalists.
Finally, on a more meta-cinematic level, critic Siddhant Adlakha had a "galaxy brain" take on Civil War by saying it gazes at the USA the way we frame action movies set in the Middle East. Our action movies frequently take place in made-up pseudo-Middle East countries and fail to bother to remotely explain the politics or provide any nuance to the conflicts. So it could be that Alex Garland is giving us a little taste of that disrespect for perspective.
Emphatically in the corner of Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” a visceral premonition that treats the U.S. the way Hollywood does the Middle East, and crafts such realistic and enrapturing war imagery that you can practically taste the gunpowder. #SXSW2024 https://t.co/yHdW5ejZuf
— Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) March 15, 2024
Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 4:30pm at the Bob Bullock IMAX Theatre
What I'm Watching: April TV
RIPLEY
Netflix, Streaming now
Writer Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List, The Irishman) is returning to the first and most often adapted of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley thrillers: The Talented Mr. Ripley. This one stars Andrew Scott as the title sociopath and has gorgeous high-contrast B&W photography. Early reviews are good, and I don't think Netflix would have let Zaillian eschew their normal low-contrast cinematography style (which is intended to encourage viewing on small devices) if they didn't think this could be a major awards contender this year.
THE SYMPATHIZER
HBO/Max, Premieres on Sunday April 14
Possibly my most anticipated release of the year, this limited series is a black comedy historical spy thriller based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. Robert Downey Jr. is playing multiple parts in this show to bold comic effect as the various white antagonists (from the main character's Communist Vietnamese point-of-view). The show was developed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) one of our greatest living filmmakers. And on top of all of this, Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles (City of God) directed an episode?? I couldn't be more in.