Civil War

This violent tale of anaesthetised reporters is just a war yarn with a twist.

There’s a cautionary message then in the madness: stop or perish; the choice is entirely ours.

In Alex Garland's tense film, journalists risk everything to document the US at war with itself.

It's very powerful.

Clamorously making its claim on viewers’ attention by subject matter alone, rather than by artistry or world view, the film is a kind of advertisement for itself.

Look at it as a movie for posterity, and it becomes a worthwhile movie to savor, but nothing else—and you’ll survive. Admire Civil War as an amazing film of imagination and cinematic verve but nothing else—and you will, too.

Garland seems poised to be make political points, to show how our current political dysfunction could lead to something far worse… but he never follows through.

This easy digital fakeness is there to get the audience used to it...

Rather than glorifying war, the film is artful and meditative, making us feel the pointlessness of this violence, how unglamorous and exhausting and unheroic it is.

It’s not always subtle, and in some cases it’s even frustrating with some of its narrative decisions, but nothing can deny its uncanny ability to leave you horrified by how war, civil or otherwise, can be truly monstrous from any humanist angle.