I mean, I was going to see this regardless but now my expectations are raised. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Good write up in the AV Club too, got an A EDIT: looked it up an they gave Men an A-, so still kinda ehhh
wouldn’t bat an eye if it’s paid media. In musicland, I’m routinely offered features/reviews if I take out an ad, or radio play in exhange for apparel promos etc on Apple Music, your release is inelligible for playlisting unless you use one of their products Apple Motion to make those animated album covers
The first reactions all come out at the same time typically, so A24’s social media manager was probably just monitoring mentions from prominent accounts.
More about the politics (or lack of ) from this movie. Again it seem like Garland is more interesting in showing the societal shock what would happen than he is exploring the politics of how/why it happened " The why of the war is not the point, and as such Garland keeps politics out of it. (Perhaps that also helps avoid polarizing could-be movie-goers?) " " Should you come into Civil War looking for left-wing jingoism and/or alt-right paranoia, we wish you good luck and godspeed. " " The political commentary is less of a conversation and more of a Rorschach test " " With this latest film, he sounds the alarm, wondering less about how a country walks blindly into its own destruction and more about what happens when it does. " " Civil War seems like the kind of movie people will mostly talk about for all the wrong reasons, and without seeing it first. It isn’t what those people will think it is. " " Civil War gives little to hold on to on the level of world-building, which leaves us with effective but limited visual provocation "
was looking forward to seeing this. that quote has me second guessing myself. i can respect wanting to critique American exceptionalism, and within its original context, i understand what he's trying to say about not bullying the other side, because "once somebody is considered morally wrong, their opponents can justify all sorts of extreme measures to stop them". but it's just a bad take. it feels like the same logic can also be applied to downplay a dangerous rhetoric that a political party espouses, like reducing politics to just "an ideological argument about how to run a state" feels very excusatory.
I think that the movie may be salvaged as a model for apocalypse, which i think he can be good at while also having stupid politics. Sounds like it’s not going to touch how sides get drawn or what really leads up to the Civil War, which sounds like it’s for the best. I maintain that differences between California and Texas not as great as people think, but that’s an annoying take for me to have and so I won’t go into it lol
Both Texas and California have a strong sense of state pride like they are unique among all the others so within the exploration of exceptionalism that would make a lot of sense.