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

I don't really need a fictional movie (or book, or any art) to just tell me explicitly all the things I already believe. I prefer it when that's backgrounded in service of the characters.

otherwise, this is just the Handmaid's Tale (the tv series). which, you know, was good but I gave up on it after a while.

if I only posted my opinions about things I'm familiar with that wouldn't be much fun

fwiw I think the film being studiously divorced from real politics is a problem because that's stupid, not because that's immoral or something

things shouldn't be stupid!

if I only posted my opinions about things I'm familiar with that wouldn't be much fun

no one is claiming talking about things you have no immediate knowledge of isn't fun! It's a hobby I'm well acquainted with. I just try to not label it a virtue.

hard agree that things shouldn't be stupid tho. n-e-ways, bad posting silby, sorry to say.

I'm not on my A game

i don't know why people are saying the film isn't political. it's completely political. it's not polemical. what do people want, someone to give a speech in the middle of the movie explaining why fascism is bad? the movie shows you in practically every frame why fascism is bad. or maybe it should end with the dictator not really being bad at all but we all learn that we were the fascists the entire time as some kind of twist?

xp we all have off days.

akm, again, completely otm.

Akm otm throughout.

Neanderthal too. Maybe watch the film?

Spoilers: It's a really good film

Don’t care to

I mean I might who knows the future is unwritten

Probably not though

you gotta admire the dedication

No you don’t!

lol

I still haven't read an explanation or review of it that makes me want to see it

this was a politically incoherent mess and i did not enjoy it

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.

― OneSecondBefore, Friday, April 19, 2024 11:22 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lol ok u beat me to it

i saw this today with my dad and my sister in east tennessee. there were i think 5 other people in the movie theater. it was a matinee. pretty crazy fuckin film. i'm surprised no one's mentioned how well it's made. the photography, the sound. it's amazing. the choppers overhead felt real.

re how the movie assiduously refuses any mapping of current party politics onto the different military forces it's the right choice imo because otherwise we'd be cheering on one side when they blow the shit out of the other, or vice versa, at least a little bit, and the movie doesn't want to let you get that comfortable

xpost the president is clearly trumpian for the reasons i think akm spells out above - but the various secessionary forces all disagree with each other (i think sammy says they'll all tear each other apart when d.c. falls)

the plemons character has enough bullshit racist nativist political ideology to fill the rosebowl and the movie's not exactly subtle about it

you can say that if you were making this movie you'd have a Texas-Missouri alliance instead or something, but in this movie, the one you actually saw, it's a Texas-California alliance. why? because the filmmakers are mush-brained NPR centrists who don't want to offend anyone? i really don't think that's why.

people are rioting for water in new york city which is about as water-secure as a major metropolis gets iirc - something Very Big has torn society apart and one of the consequences is no water. maybe the Texas-California alliance is about getting access to water. Maybe one of the other factions has blocked it and the trumpy guy won't step in. idk. none of that is important for the story this movie is telling

I saw "dude takes 3rd term, is obvious scumbag for bombing 'his' civilians" within the first 3rd of the movie and that was enough to put aside any claims of 'political' cowardness. They're clear good guys and bad guys inferred by this movie, and they're not very controversial claims of whose on which side. The parallels of what Yahu's doing in Gaza and how journalists are being treated by that kind of government.... you know, I really didn't think this film was being subtle about its politics when it chooses to address politics (like, 2% of the movie, thankfully).

Maybe Andrew should have set the movie in Australia so Americans could enjoy it

*Alex. Brainfart

I think this movie will grow in appreciation as years go on, however the future of the country goes

The Texas-California alliance sounds implausible if the movie is meant to take place in the world we live in now. But one thing we know is that Kirsten Dunst's character built her reputation on photos of "the Antifa Massacre" that she took when she was in college. Assuming the character is the same age as Dunst (41), this event happened roughly 20 years before the events of the movie.

So the movie is either set at least 20 years in the future, enough time for political realities to shift (less than 30 years ago, states like Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia voted Democratic in a presidential election). Or it's set in an alternate-reality present or near future that doesn't neatly map onto the real world.

It doesn't really matter because Garland isn't really interested in worldbuilding. But, as Max points out, that doesn't mean that the movie can't still work effectively as a pulp thriller:

"Ultimately the movie seems much less concerned with making a particular political or moral statement (or even exploring the politics or morals of its fictional scenario) than it does with efficiently and energetically moving its truck of adrenaline junkies from one suspenseful action set-piece to the next. It’s like finding a 1967 alternate-history novel published by Del Rey with the tagline 'They Crossed a War Zone Between New York and D.C.--to Photograph the President’s Murder!""

https://maxread.substack.com/p/what-is-the-civil-war-in-civil-war

Del Rey Books was established in 1977, but ok.

Not familiar with that publisher; I was imagining a mass-market paperback published by Bantam or Signet.

Other than that, I thought the essay was fine. Still not sure if I'll see the movie.

i think it probably works a lot better if you don’t know much about it before going in but i guess you’re past that point

it’s a very intense experience

my only knock on it is that the last 20 minutes play out a little like a videogame fantasy.. i was also confused about what seemed like suicide on lee’s part. why does she stay up like that? clearly something has changed in her, but it feels out of character even so

Tracer OTM. This film isn't trying to be a satire about current US politics. It could jist as well have been set in Australia or any other country and ultimately been the same

I agree, it's an incredibly well produced film. Every helicopter, round of ammo, explosion, feels real. And when Dunst melts down towards the end, I felt it. Enjoyed the characters and the acting a lot too

i recall that scene Tracer alludes to as being in slow motion, so I don't think she's staying up for very long. i could be wrong

the way they filmed it it felt deliberate to me. if they'd wanted to show her getting clipped by a bullet as she tumbled on top of jessie, like an accidental consequence of her action, they could have, but she really just sways there for a second, looking down. it was like once jessie was safe she had no reason to keep living? she had nothing left to accomplish? idk

Don't forget, there had to be enough time for Jessie to take a few photos of the occasion, for character development reasons

The Symmetry must be obeyed

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

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Monday, April 15, 2024 8:09 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol he sounded Venezuelan to me

The politics for all the reasons Neanderthal and Tracer Hand mentioned are....explicit. The Texas-California alliance is the odd one, but we've seen any number of convenient political alliances in the last century. When the film does go into equivalences is showing the barbarism of the WF soldiers (is Plemons and his unit one of them? I couldn't tell. I may have missed it). Maybe the anti-faux-Trump forces realized they needed to get as dirty as he did?

I thought that pulp book line was going to be about this book my mom's old boss co-wrote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas-Israeli_War:_1999

When the film does go into equivalences is showing the barbarism of the WF soldiers (is Plemons and his unit one of them? I couldn't tell. I may have missed it).

no, I think they were simply a militia, who may or may not have supported the President, but were absolutely happy to use the resultant chaos to further their own awful goals.

I thought one of the most interesting scenes was the one with the house and the invisible sniper, and the guys they encountered hunkered down. it's completely unclear, and maybe irrelevant, who is who. When asked what's going on, the answer was "that guy is shooting at us. we are shooting at him".

Ah, makes sense.

Yeah, that sniper shot (blurring him was a shrewd touch) creeped me out.

I thought for a moment that the shot of the white woman, Latin American man, and Hong Kong reporter in front of Plemons' militia was on-the-nose, but the NPR affiliate reporters I know are a diverse lot.

Stephen McKinley was best in show as he almost always is.

xposts yeah the movie couldn’t really make it clearer that that line of interrogation is not what it’s about

Stephen McKinley is getting a lot of work these days!

I thought that pulp book line was going to be about this book my mom's old boss co-wrote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas-Israeli_War:_1999

So, I watched this thing at my local AMC theater today at 2:35 in one of the smaller screening rooms: 50 seats at most. I'd say it was half-full. It impressed me -- I can count on five people at most on a Monday afternoon.

Not Waldrop, Saunders - he gave me a copy when I was 11 or 12 but I don't remember anything about it aside from the title (and later wondering if the guys from Lift to Experience read it). I think he and Waldrop ended up not on good terms over the years.

Quite fun to see nick offerman getting clipped

This movie was extremely intense in the watching, and a day or two later, but I’ve thought about it zero times since. It doesn’t have a conventional structure where the protagonist learns a lesson about themselves or whatever - it’s kind of a shaggy dog story, video-gamey - get from A to B. Or in a lot of ways like a turn-based role-playing game. These different obstacles and enemies, a band of travelers with different skills, various signs of impending dread. I think it is really valuable as a way of confronting war and how fucking horrible it is, and as an intense experience, but beyond that there’s not much to chew on tbh