Annihilation (2018) -- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, dir. Alex Garland, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book

A thread for Devs, the new Alex Garland show on FX/HBO (with SPOILERS)

Saw Men tonight. Good build-up for the first half, some beautiful shots, and a final 30 minutes that was insane and felt twice as long. Between this, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and her weird turn in Fargo, Jessie Buckley seems to be the default actress for--I'm not sure how to describe whatever it is.

she's in The Lost Daughter too, although a bit less - whatever it is

I like a lot of Alex Garland, writer and director, but I'm really not sure what could convince me to see the new one. When I was last in the theatre and saw the trailer, even this little old lady in the back piped up "Why would I want to see that?"

You talking about the civil war movie?

Yeah. Not sure I really need it.

There’s a new book in the series coming this year.

Civil War was extremely unsettling overall, particularly the short Jesse Plemons scene, which might be as scary as anything I've seen in a horror movie as of late.

there are definitely eyerolly bits but it's fairly po-faced as things go

some are making it out to be like The Day After for a new generation, and some of the 'violence-porn to SHOCK U out of complacency' is in this film for sure, but I don't really find the description accurate.

really hits a lot of themes, not any very deeply, it kind of wants you to sit with your own discomfort for a bit. you're kind of left to your own fill-in-the-blanks on every character's past/personality, and there's no real examination of how the conflict began, you're also somewhat meant to piece that together; but I didn't think that was a bad thing, I don't think it would have been satisfying for constant drip-coffee dialogue pointing out "this here event and that here event led us here today".

a lot of 'fog of war', where enemies often don't know who or why they're fighting, who's winning/losing, and some of the conflict seems as expressions of localized despair and rage as opposed to part of a bigger mission. the scarier parts of the movie aren't the depictions of wanton violence, but the moments of beauty that torture people with memories of more civilized times before they inevitably drive by people hanging from a pole or see burnt out husks of cars littering the road, people standing in FEMA-esque lines waiting for water.

obviously given what the US is going through right now it's not easy to watch something like this, but it's also far enough away from our current reality that it isn't massively triggering. for one, the film assumes California and Texas would ever collaborate on anything, or that a Floridian militia could ever become organized and terrifying on a national scale.

It's essentially like from the journalists' perspective? That's my impression.. I might check it out in the future but no big rush to see this in the theaater

Yea entirely from theirs

I'll let you know. I may go to a screening tonight.

I thought it was very very good

Annihilation is screening this month at the imax screen at the OMSI Sci-Fi Film Fest in Portland, OR.

They are also screening Stalker.

(Not Solaris, tho, which is disappointing)

Nice write-up Neanderthal. I saw this yesterday and enjoyed it

my kid came home from school annoyed today that his government teacher went off on the movie in a very predictable fashion, primarily that there wasn't enough explicit stuff about race and that 'the only person of color sacrificed himself for a white girl'. my son didn't want to get into it with her but was fuming that she overlooked the explicitly cuban journalist, and that she seemed to not pick up on every element of subtext in the film (like, the entire Jesse Plemmons sequence). It's a complaint I've seen a lot online. IMO it's really quite obvious that Offerman is a Trump stand-in (third term, 'greatest victory in the history of mankind', 'antifa massacre', disbanding the FBI); it's only the inclusion of Texas in the WF that makes this not a 100% proxy for the current situation. I did think perhaps it would have been wise to not have a white girl as the main protagonist, but then she would not have lived past the Jesse Plemmons scene and would never have made it to the end of the movie. I think the film did an amazing job of telling a story from a unique POV, and developed very realistic characters for whom the viewer builds an incredible amount of empathy in 2 hours.

The final 15 minutes or so of this film are among the most intense scenes I've ever seen in a theater (I generally avoid war films).

(I guess that actor is Brazillian but since the character was from Florida I assumed he was Cuban)

This was a great film with a terrible name that almost kept me from watching it. Glad it didn't

I've seen your takeaway in lots of places, but I still can't quite bring myself to watch this, at least not in the theaters. Maybe it is just the title, but the title is terrible enough to give it the discomforting tinge of from-the-headlines exploitation.

Obviously "Civil War" is a great title, very eye-catching, but what would have been a better fit?

(By both great and terrible title, I mean, yeah, it's certainly eye-catching, from a marketing standpoint, which is great, but it's terrible because of what it conveys, which may or may not reflect the plot/premise of the film itself, which I and of course others find uncomfortable, given this country sometimes feels like it is teetering on the brink.)

Josh you should go watch it. If it's about civil war, it's maybe 1% of what the movie is about. Just pretend it was called "war journalist - 5 stars and two thumbs up from everyone - best picture nominee".

I think it has more to say about the current situation in Gaza than the sitch in America. But then again I'm not a US citizen so maybe it is saying things to US citizens that our kind aren't picking up (doubt it tho)

I think this film particularly benefits from the cinema experience too. There are many tense scenes made more palpable by it.

I found the "cars" scene more tense than the obviously tense scene that came afterwards. My heart rate was up!

Maybe a terrible headline could help

https://i.postimg.cc/CxWWHBR4/Screenshot-20240419-231131-Chrome.jpg

It really doesn't want to say much at all about "civil war", but it's a great backdrop for the things it does want to say

Loved the cowardice of this movie. Great stuff! 👍

it's an accurate headline.
Josh, you won't lose much by skipping this movie

yeah reviews like that are, IMO, off base; as I said above, it's like they can't deal with subtext. Subtext is not cowardice.

subtext is for cowards, as the Garth Marengi meme frequently reminds us

Akm otm. Poor reflection on the viewer if they come away from this thinking "wimpy politics".

also apparently Lee dies at the end? I thought kevlar + no blood meant she just got knocked down big time.... kinda the ending I prefer tbh

yeah she dies, as it's meant to show how the events of the movie eventually break through her hardened shell. Earlier she implies in the movie that if Jessie was shot and killed, she would shoot it dispassionately like a journalist, so we're meant to see that the earlier events of the film change her a bit when she actually runs to her rescue instead of shooting Jessie's death

I got that, I actually thought it was one of the only groan worthy moments of the film. I just didn't think they made it super clear she died. Think it's less "groany" if she didn't so I'm choosing to believe that's what happened. Kevlar!!!!

I thought her breakdown during the siege did enough to clarify "hard exterior broken. Real woman feeling things again". And it did so in a not so tropey way. The sacrifice for the younger version of herself was so telegraphed I wish they missed it. But oh well. Didn't ruin the film, but it was its low point imo

can we discuss the film without making little digs at each other? thx

That's fair, I apologies for my "poor reflection on the viewer" post. Sorry.

Nothing could make me interested in seeing this movie

otm

Wouldn't go quite that far, if it turns out that at some point a character turns to the camera and goes "what's so civil about war anyway?" that might sway me.

if Axl Rose made an appearance it might've been worth it

i'm frankly confused by the resistance to viewing this film

i'm frankly confused by the resistance to viewing this film

It seems stupid and NPR-brained and Garland's previous movies, Annihilation aside, weren't that great?

I guess I like his work more than you do as I think most of the movies he's written the screenplays for are good. I don't know what "NPR-brained" means.

"NPR brained" to Uri Berliner means something different than it probably does to you, and to me.

Putting California and Texas on the same side of the fictional war is enough for me to decide that this is a fundamentally unserious work of fiction

it's actually about ethics in photojournalism

I will die on the hill that Men is a very good horror film, and the ending is inspired

lol I watched Annihilation, stuck it in my top 20, and I have no memory of it.

They say the name of the movie at the end

More like they are it is the name of the movie

The California-Texas alliance, the president who's coded as a mixture of Biden and Trump, the reference to an "Antifa massacre" without a clarification on whether Antifa was massacred or committed the massacre, the strict avoidance of actual political ideology throughout the film, the general anxiety over partisanship/political tensions without ever taking a side... I do think of this movie as profoundly politically unserious in a particularly American liberal way. It's trying so hard to avoid angering any viewers that it ties itself into incoherent knots. NPR brained is right.

The movie isn't about the politics that lead to Civil War, it's about a hyperbolic depiction of what it would actually look like.

Offerman didn't code as Biden to me AT ALL. his opening monologue is Trumpian and he disbands the FBI, and illegally stays in office a third term, and drops missiles on Americans, all while insisting he's winning the war even as his own army is surrendering. What exactly about that codes as Biden?

For those itt bragging about how you won't see it, congrats, you want a medal? You can either trust those of us who have seen it and aren't NPR brained or you can keep insisting the movie is what you say it is without ever seeing it. Your choice

Like I'll gladly have discussion with people who have seen it and disagree with me but I ain't gonna debate it with people who haven't and still inexplicably want to say what it is