Thirteen Tweeets about Civil War (2024) : #CivilWarAndAlexGarland (work in progress)

Thirteen Tweeets about Civil War (2024) : #CivilWarAndAlexGarland (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

Thirteen Tweeets about Civil War (2024) : #CivilWarAndAlexGarland (work in progress)

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 :

Hanging affectless exchanges in the air may make other, flat scenes seem pacy, but is unsubtle.

* Ostensibly.#CivilWarAndAlexGarland

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 26, 2024

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.

But...#CivilWarAndAlexGarland

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 27, 2024

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.

* Very ably and effectively played by Woody Norman.#CivilWarAndAlexGarland

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 28, 2024

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

pic.twitter.com/7xpsDoupp2

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 3, 2024

pic.twitter.com/wV1ChQlPEY

— 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.

* As well as a stultifying effect that tends to lead to ours !#CivilWarAndAlexGarland

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2024

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...

At its conclusion, which took a fair old while to get to, the same disappointment as when Kubrick chooses to leave us with this image.

[Afterwards, it became clear very quickly that elements of The White Hotel infused a highly psychopathic version of The Wizard of Oz (1939)...] pic.twitter.com/ROJx8TP6jv

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 1, 2024

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 December

C'mon C'mon (2021) : The [spoilery] view from Bi-Polar Land (work in progress)

In a not a very humble opinion, claiming bi-polar / schizo-affective rights*, Th'Agent will say that :

C'mon C'mon (2021) is mightily deserving of your non-generic attention, and

Excellently acts as a companion to Her (2013) - they talk to ea. oth.

* Or bi-polar depression ? pic.twitter.com/g0u6drg8WF

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 13, 2021

The latter's in the representative (for once !) trailer, plus another reminder of the excellent ethos and work of Kirsten Johnson, whose @Cameraperson16 (2016) is now overdue for #UCFF to re-watch :https://t.co/bCV1CpatBd

['All the raw edges, but with respect and compassion']

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 13, 2021

Impossible to think in such terms ?

However, in C'mon C'mon (2021) - with the words Buy / BYE, above each other on a nearby building and backgrounded by the cab - Jesse gets into the back, with barely a word to Johnny.@cmoncmonmovie has at least six other verbal cues / clues !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 20, 2021

Knock-out reading of Star Child here ! :https://t.co/6Mo38orB7V https://t.co/3CbrWOqJyl

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 15, 2021

But, of course, Butler's tale and its telling are themselves beautiful, wise and useful to us - if we knew of their existence.

The link, in #UCFF's case, must have been either Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice or from somewhere in the tales and re-tellings of Jorge Luis Borges...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 15, 2021

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)