More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
1) Even with a road-trip* (especially ?), a director should earn the right to behave as if a film's emotionally taken anyone somewhere else :
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 26, 2024
Hanging affectless exchanges in the air may make other, flat scenes seem pacy, but is unsubtle.
* Ostensibly.#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
2) Civil War (2024) establishes no more on-screen relationship or rapport between Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) than with Joe (Wagner Moura) or Sammy (Stephen McKinley), yet thinks us willing to behave as if it had done.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2024
But...#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
3) Also from A24, but wholly unlike C'mon, C'mon (2021) - a different type of Jesse, and Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) learning from his nephew* in a process of the former's unmasking and self-realization.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 28, 2024
* Very ably and effectively played by Woody Norman.#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
4) However, it has a reason *not* to be that type of film, which relates to why Joe, who is already accompanying Lee, is on the trip and – which seems plausible – to what makes him tick, but Joe is 'thinly written' and this feint does not earn its place.#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 1, 2024
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2024
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2024
6) At first, maybe the lack of good or considered dialogue could be read as denoting the characters' fatigue*, but the misdirections also [need to] abound to make us not just want to quit.
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024
* As well as a stultifying effect that tends to lead to ours !#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
7) (A film set in Austria (?) that Michael Haneke made in German – then, 10yrs later and with an American cast, re-shot in English – dares us to leave, too : it and a Peter Gabriel song [on the album Up (2002)] tells us all that Garland does in 109 mins.)#CivilWarAndAlexGarland
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2024
More to come...
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
