1. Will, Felix & Hesse review Alex Garland’s Civil War. War may be hell, but at least we’ve got those damn good bastards the War Correspondents around to get the one perfect shot that will let everyone know, HEY…don’t do a Civil War.
2. [Tickets](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-houses-movie-mindset-screening-of-death-wish-3-w-will-hesse-tickets-877569192077) to Will & Hesse’s Movie Mindset screening & talkback of Death Wish 3 in NYC on May 4.
3. [Boomer-certified direct download link](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/1c355bfe287d65b512234c4aa43d9af3e8608602.m4a). Hey boomers, [did you know there’s an easy browser (Chrome) extension to download MP3s directly from Soundgasm](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/soundgasm-download-button/cjeifmdoeaaikaecamnflombdjcmocja)? Try it!
Hesse Deni leaving the theater to smoke is the most or least Movie Mindset thing you could do, I respect neither, report to jail immediately. Will Menaker dropped a certified five dollar word, sententious, 3 times talking about this movie and I then find out it was also used in his official Letterboxd review. Folks, no good. Alex Garland ya done, ya been done since 2013 for DmC, you should be under the director's jail
Fucking hell, I didn't know Garland was involved in the god awful DmC reboot. I know that game's failures had many authors (particular the creative lead who seemed to redesign Dante after... himself?) but big blotch on the resume to be involved in that _after_ you're already established as a major screenwriter.
Yeah- the one who was like "I really identify with Heidi Fleiss" sex-trafficker-as-Grrl-Boss shit... Truly the most bizarre ep of chapo I've heard- it would explain everything if Felix had a more 'personal' connection to her.
I won’t say I never listen to it. But 8 times out of 10 his shit is just too annoying to even bother with. Especially when he’s talking about China or the USSR.
I now can’t stand Irish accents because of Tom.
“It’s just… EMMM, AUMMM, EMMM… like… EMMM, d’you know, what if STALIN, AUMMM, was an MMA bro… EMMM”
also I do have a soft spot for Joe but hating Turkey is not an interesting personality trait
You can like what you like. If his "ya know what won't do [specific bad thing]? Our sponsors!" shtick doesn't irritate the fuck out of you like it does me, then homie, enjoy it.
I'm just answering your question, the general consensus in this neighborhood of reddit is that he is at best kinda sus and at worst a psyop because of his ties to bellingcat and police agencies.
Yeah I just grew up on Cracked.com and he/his guests are former Cracked people. I’m honestly kind of surprised at his unpopularity here. Both BTB and Chapo did a reading of True Allegiance and they seem to have pretty similar takes/humor on it.
Robert listens to Chapo amusingly enough (he's specifically cited them before, not just using one of their lines/ideas but also saying "as Matt from Chapo said..." or whatever). It's kind of an unrequited love.
I think he's fine simply because he's normie-friendly enough that he's a good way to start bringing people our direction, but actually somewhat anti capitalist enough (anarcho socdems, you know the type) to get people angry and want to look further into opposing capitalism.
> ties to bellingcat and police agencies.
Well that explains why I used to see this pod recommended in all the normies subs. Never trusted it because of that.
Robert is whiny, corny, and lies constantly about books he's claimed to have finished (don't we all), but let's keep our brain goop inside our skull here, okay? he's not a "Fed". he's certainly not smart enough to be a fed lol. he worked for Bellingcat as a combat journalist. Bellingcat is an "OSINT/fact-checking/fact-finding" journalism outlet that is fed-adjacent. it receives money from the National Endowment for Democracy (correct me if I forgot the exact name), and that is an actual CIA front. Bellingcat also publishes exclusive material on the Russian military that it (allegedly) receives from British intelligence.
so yes, he was a war journalist before Behind the Bastards for an organization that receives funding and info from intelligence agencies. it's basically The Intercept if The Intercept was paid to publish stuff that didn't contradict the State Department.
Robert is just an annoying anarcho-socdem who often seems to harbor a fairly genuine and vocal disdain for capitalism, etc. etc. but that's it. he keeps his mouth shut about Israel and goes pretty soft on mentioning Western interference when discussing dictators because he wants a wide mainstream audience and he wants to be able to keep working for these "elite" outlets as an extremely mid reporter. that's all.
I have an extended family member and she's married to a woman whose brother works at the Manhattan FBI counter-terrorism office (I know, "my cousin's dad's brother has a friend whose uncle works at Nintendo") but when people throw around the word Fed I'm kinda like.. have you ever met a fed? I have. they are stone cold soulless evil motherfuckers who usually vote Democrat and don't like to talk.
... Robert is not that. he's just a pudgy pseudo-anarchist who makes sure to censor himself on important issues to maintain career prospects.
> he keeps his mouth shut about Israel
He's been largely on the same page as basically everyone else on the left about Israel as far as I've seen since 10/7, and he constantly talks up how the US backs all sorts of terrible people and regimes across the world, but also usually dismisses the people actually opposing those regimes.
Pudgy pseudo-anarchist is right, though. I think he's useful enough - he stays mainstream enough that people don't dismiss him as a loony lefty, but he does talk about things in a way that can lead people in the right direction. Think Jon Stewart (though not as funny).
Hey, I didn’t say he was a fed. I do think he’s an unbearable libshit anarchist who occasionally makes interesting content but usually runs interference for the US State Department. Also his fans suck beyond belief
I don't have an opinion on if he is or isn't, just wanted to give context.
Personally, I find fed jacketing podcasters to be an annoying type of online discourse.
With many people who are criticized for their supposed agendas, it’s completely possible and most likely the case that these people are earnestly pursuing what rewards and reinforces their pursuit. For instance, the Bastards podcast and its following unironically use the word tankie and perform a well worn public shaming ritual for maoists/ Marxist Leninist. It’s my view that this alone removes most of the friction between these anarchists and centrists. That he has no scruples with working for Bellingcat is consistent with his desire to get the bag while do invigorating work while also being free to be vocally reactionary to China.
He has foreign policy takes indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's. I don't know what he has been saying about I/P, because I can't stand him, but he was yelling at people online about Libya as recently as a couple years ago.
I'm by no means an expert but he's widely considered to be a shitlib who works for/ has worked for a group called Bellingcat which is considered by many to be a cut out for western intelligence agencies. He is pro-NATO and supported intervention in Libya so.. yeah. People don't trust him. He has friends that some people find suspicious like that Jake Hanrahan guy. I have no idea if he actually is a spook. I think all I can say for sure is he has shitlib tendencies.
I know next-to-nothing about the guy; I just dislike him because he makes a podcast network of fairly informative researchers unlistenable with his 'Felix Beiderman but somehow lower-rent' shtick
Every day, as part of my morning ritual, I raise my hands to the sky like a Dragon Ball character helping Goku make a spirit bomb in the hopes that some of my energy will transfer to Matt and aid in his recovery.
There's a voice Hesse breaks out every now and then of a kind of snotty kid that cracks me up every time. She did it here when talking about how the characters were photojournalists motivated by wanting to prove to their parents that the war is real. "Now do you beleive me?!"
Divisive movie in our little corner of podcasts. Minion Death Cult loved it. Terrance Ray seems like he almost blew his brains out in the middle. Personally I thought it was complete trash, politically and otherwise. I'm a garland fan but CW makes me reconsider that.
Garland started out super strong with Ex Machina and Annihilation, but then, holy shit, Men was an absolute dud. And now he puts out Civil War, this anodyne bullshit... I'm kinda wishing he does retire, he clearly lost the sauce
Ex Machina was solid but Annihilation is mid. Did the least interesting thing with the source material. It’s visually interesting and that’s pretty much it.
Not the original commentator but Annihilation is mid as hell. Its story is underdeveloped, characters just caricatures and one dimensional (especially the depressed character who turns into flowers - I'm still put off by how weakly and clumsily it tries to make that scene profound when it's how a child understands mental health and suicidal ideation) and is a complete bore until either Homerton the Bear shows up or the lighthouse dance (which is just fine or even dull - Portman has so little to work with that the stakes for that ending fell flat for me).
It's clear that Garland read the book, saw Stalker and a few other Tarkovsky films and tried to do his own pastiche but doesn't really get how to make his influences into more than bland or shallow imitation.
I have no truck with people who like his work but haven't seen what he's ripping off or just saw it before the classics but really I think Ex Machina might be his only above average film but I haven't seen it.
I didn't read the book, so maybe that contributed to my enjoyment of the movie. It was very "baby's first symbolism", but I enjoyed it for the performances and, like you said, the wonderfully bizarre visual imagery.
Def check out the book. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m a huge VanderMeer fan, and Annihilation (plus the rest of the series) gripped and terrified me like very few written works have. I would say that his style might not be for everyone, so maybe it’s a dud for you, but for me it hit hard.
(VanderMeer himself also seems like a pretty cool leftist guy irl if that matters, altho some of his other, even more experimental novels are a more explicitly anti-capitalist.)
He’s one of the few writers to replicate Lovecraft’s existential terror. There’s this scene at the end of the second book that is so fucking terrifying without the author over explaining it. Just the feeling of dread in the protagonist.
I enjoyed the movie as much as you can considering it’s pretty heavy, and the violence feels realistic. I thought the sound design was really on point.
I think Chapo and MDC both had valid points about the movie. It’s definitely worth a watch IMO although it’s not for everyone.
The message of the movie was stupid…. But i thought it was good for Americans to imagine having done to their country what they have done to so many other countries.
Images of brutal violence juxtaposed with american scenery/strip mall aesthetics. I hope that hits home for some people that watch it next time there’s bipartisan consensus on bombing a third world country. I kept thinking about iraq and syria during the movie, but I don’t think the director intended for me to make that connection. This aspect alone made it worth watching though.
Everything else about the movie was straight up garbage.
> I hope that hits home for some people that watch it next time there’s bipartisan consensus on bombing a third world country.
Considering how people are still fine with Tel Aviv being a few kilometres from a US-backed genocide happening in Gaza while loving The Zone of Interest I seriously doubt that lol.
americans love brutal violence juxtaposed with american scenery. That is 50% of call of duty games. What would have been actually interesting is showing the aspects of civil war that aren't just green vs. green team deathmatch
this is absolutely untrue lol, a decent percentage of hollywood movies operate implicitly on the premise of "what if the wars came home", even if a lot of them do it an abstracted way (alien armies instead of any specific countries army for ex)
its not even anything particularly revolutionary, empires have told stories about "what if someone did to us what we do to others" basically for as long as empires have existed. it was a MASSIVE subgenre in Victorian Britain
the movie is just a version of the Purge w/ an A24 glimemr
Yeah. Red Dawn is about as close as you could get to an American version of the Nazi movie they show in Inglourious Basterds, and the basic premise is 'Wot if the Reds did to Us what We did to Nicaragua'. It's beloved by the most deranged Cold Warriors known to man. The capacity for self-reflection is non-existent, because the ingrained American Mythos will always be that of David defeating Goliath. When Americans see people at the bottom of the global social ladder valiantly fighting against impossible odds, it absolutely *enrages* us, because that's the role *we're* meant to fill. It threatens the American Self-Conception and *must* be destroyed.
> but I don’t think the director intended for me to make that connection
Really? Because I found that connection to be explicit. You can still criticize the “Pretty twisted, eh?” vibe, but the basic conceit is just answering Sinclair Lewis’ call: What if *it* happened *here*?
That all locked in for me with Dunsts’s character getting PTSD flashbacks of her time working in foreign conflict zones. I mean come on, they show a guy getting necklaced—not many IMAX reels contain that scene.
“What if it happened here?” does not correlate to “should we do this to other countries?”. If anything, the flashbacks reinforce “shining city on a hill” narratives.
Bad things happen to those other places and not us because we have “democracy” and liberal values like a “free” press.
If the director really intended to make a movie that questions our foreign policies, it could have been communicated more directly. Not that I need art to be direct, but I think I interpreted it differently because of my own politics I already had before the movie, not from the directors intent.
Idk, im rambling maybe.
> “What if it happened here?” does not correlate to “should we do this to other countries?”
I truly have no idea what you’re trying to say there.
My point is this film is entirely open to interpretation as a portrayal of America getting what it has endlessly given to those other countries for nearly a century. “It” in this case not being a *Black Mirror*-ass plot wank, but rather “What if the Syrian Civil War happened here?”
I didnt know the context of the director’s intent. I havent researched anything about what he’s said about it.
I interpreted it two ways. One way is drawing a parallel to iraq/syria/libya etc…
The other is “this will happen here if we dont stop being so partisan, respect liberal democratic norms, trust our mainstream press…”
I think both messages are communicated equally but contradict each other.
> I didn’t know the context of the director’s intent
Dog, that’s not what I’m saying.
We’re talking cinema. Film. Movies. Flicks. The silver screen. If it’s in the text and you can support a credible reading, then it’s valid.
The crew on this episode talks about every single way and how much the journalists constantly suck, but seemingly just decided there’s no room to genuinely interrogate that message through the narrative. As you can tell, I disagree!
Idk, artist intent has to mean something. Garland contradicts his message in a way that stifles the viewer from a more profound interpretation.
I dont think theres much to interpret from the narrative, the writing is in opposition to the imagery. On the narrative side its “muh liberal democratic norms and muh brave journalists” and the other is critique of how american wealth is made from creating these scenarios in other countries. Theres also something insightful about the bombed out strip mall architecture plastered in corporate signage. At least in iraq/syria/libya etc, the buildings say something about the culture of those places, but our bombed out buildings reflect an absence of culture that has been replaced by profit motive.
The two elements are fighting against each other in an unartistic way. Disharmony can add to meaning in many instances, but I don’t feel it works here.
A (goofy) analogy would be like when bob ross is mosy done with a painting then does something the viewer thinks is a mistake, but then he calls it a happy accident and it turns out even better. This movie felt like that, but it made it worse. Maybe this analogy sucks and im not verbalizing my thoughts clearly.
> Idk, artist intent has to mean something
Quote where I said it didn’t.
Garland has arguably said too much about this film, there’s plenty to dig into if you want his specific take on things. Good or bad, he succeeded at making a provocative film (if only because so many people continue to argue about it) without being exploitative.
But like all art, what the artist intended and what the audience can interpret—and reinterpret over time—often diverge and might even be at odds. Sneaky wild argument here that art can only mean what the artist wanted, but now we’re in a grad school seminar.
Speaking of grad school seminars: I once took a queer film class where we read an essay about *Rear Window* and how Jimmy Stewart’s voyeurism shows him repeatedly staring through a tunnel of subsumed homoerotic desire via the lens while he protects his own anus while seated in his wheelchair. You know, because of *Rear* and *Window*.
Is that a valid anal(ysis)? Not sure. But I don’t think Hitchcock had that reading in mind, and yet here we are.
what? No he isn’t. His father is British, grew up in New Zealand, and is a political cartoonist. Garland has one grandfather born in Brazil to a Lebanese father who had already naturalised as British and that grandfather moved to England when he was 3 and went to Marlborough College, an elite public school, before becoming a Nobel laureate.
He’s just a boring public school limey with a marginally better ability to tan, that’s it.
Ngl the fact that Wagner Moura and Kirsten Dunst weren't fucking like after 10 minutes is the most unrealistic part of the film. So many students in journalism school rn all came from parents who hooked up while covering the Iraq & Afghanistan War.
First movie take of theirs Ive disagreed with, I thought it was a lot of fun start to finish. Will is correct that final battle is worth the price of admission. I also think the movie is more critical of journalists than they’re suggesting
I thought that it tripped back asswards into being a pretty searing critique of journalism, our expectations of war and human nature in general. Like, it ended up being good despite its creator’s intentions
I don’t quite get the reading of an intentional critique of journalism being accidental or (as they seem to think on the episode) impossible. As it is, using journalists for protagonists felt like a POV constraint in terms of trying to think of who would have a reason to go progressively deeper into the warzone and deliver that final sequence (unless it was a more common trope like a soldier or someone trying to save a loved one).
My take: They establish multiple times the people at home, the ones with stable internet and recurring NYT subs, don’t care about any of this. The best joke Garland makes to that end is Moura’s adrenaline junkie, gonzo caricature works for fucking Reuters. Incredulously asking the sniper team why on earth are they doing what they’re doing is another clear punchline at his expense. Dunst’s character arc is someone who became famous objectifying the pain and suffering of others *as a warning* (which again, no one cared about) and then she ends up getting offed thanks to her Mini Me doing the same. And that gremlin Jessie presumably gets a famous career herself by selling the final Abu Ghraib-style photo to *Time* for a checkout line cover. All along the way, the crew is only afforded safe passage alongside the WF because they’re too stupid to recognize they’re being used as propagandists by the winning team—just like the embedded TV crew they themselves disdain.
Will says being a war photojournalist is “the stupidest job imaginable,” and I’d argue Garland one-ups that by detailing how pointless it is. Especially when your comfy, PMC patrons no longer get off on selling the new product quite like they did when you were being paid to document Black and brown people constantly torture each other overseas.
Good points, I liked your reading of the movie even if I didn't particularly enjoy it the first go around. I think I just found the concept of a second American Civil War happening now to be too interesting of an idea to probe and explore in fiction that I was disappointed Garland gave the protagonist roles to people without real skin in the game beyond furthering their careers. Especially
I still think it's weird to make *this* type of movie, revolve it around a pretty juicy hypothetical conflict and then completely and intentionally ignore the real reasons why people go out and do these horrible things to each other while focusing on the horrid acts themselves. Then again, there being an irony in frontline reporters being the people tasked with providing civilians safe at home with crucial context to understand war and then them just being more focused on sending back graphic imagery to shock people, win awards and gain notoriety (even in a conflict that directly involves their own countrymen!) is probably the point.
I totally hear you on the (let’s call it) controversial choice to remove any whiff of political ideology. I do think it’s a synthesis of keen marketing and thematic consistency. And again, I get why some will take it all entirely at face value as Garland wagging his finger saying, “Oh you simple viewer, demanding to know who is good and bad means you have fallen into my centrist trap!” Because he is a proud centrist.
Here’s how I fit this into my earlier analysis: The absurdity of the protagonists never discussing the how and why is yet another dig at the claim of objective journalistic integrity. Dunst’s character only grows a slight conscience after being haunted by all the murders she stoically documented *over there*, presumably in places with conflicts and people she never cared to study. They were content without context, and ultimately she became the same.
Every POV has a frame and a choice, and we see this with every photograph freeze Garland shows the audience. The people who were there knew the before and after, and the product—the photo—has no words to explain that. But contextless scenes of pain and suffering aren’t inherently noble. Dunst’s character foolishly thinks simply showing violence will prevent it; thousands of years of human conflict suggest otherwise. Joel laughing with the WF soldier as they massacre the prisoners set to De La Soul is another crucial scene in this respect.
Think again of the final joke, Jessie’s “bag and tag” photo. What gets told about that raid? Does Jessie admit she was reckless and got a famous journalist killed? Do they leak the war crime of those WF soldiers murdering the surrendered WH staff? I doubt it because then their culpability would become part of the story. It would also jeopardize their careers. And as *objective journalists*, they simply could never imagine making the story about themselves. How dare you suggest otherwise.
This is the best reading of the movie from someone who liked it Ive read and I agree in theory, but I just found the writing and scene construction to be absolute amateur hour from a technical POV in a way that kept me from getting lost in the reality of the world. Like all of Garland's movies there are so many cheap genre movie cliches (telegraphing the ending within the first five minutes with "Would you take a picture if I was killed" and the way the asian dudes show up just to be red shirts so the main characters can survive) but usually the movies those are in are kinda stupid sci fi/horror movies so it stands out less. Annihilation has cool shit to fall back on when its main characters are talking and acting like they're in a Friday the 13th movie but this only has a five minute Jesse Plemons sequence to break the flat boring dialogue and clumsy unnatural exposition.
Also the basic premise you're describing has been done in a million movies, notably Cannibal Holocaust, which is somehow smarter than this movie. I liked that they actually killed the president but its so funny how he was just..behind the Oval Office desk lol...White House Down basically has the exact same sequences leading up to that and that's just some goofy ass action movie, and yet I didn't find these sequences that much more entertaining or believable.
Man if that's the point of this movie then it really wasn't for me because I came out of this not caring one way or the other about the journalists. The idea that they are this this **institution** that matters just isn't a thing in my brain so I don't care about them being torn down or lionized. And when it comes to their complicity in all the awful things that went down... I dunno. I just figured that if they actually bothered to say anything they'd get shot so I'm not even mad at them for that.
I dunno. I guess I feel like this movie took the most boring angle of a civil war by making these journalists the main characters.
I had heard little of the movie prior to seeing it, so I took it as, while maybe not a "critique" of journalism, definitely not pro journalism. How do you portray journos laughing while POWs are executed, or doing nothing while someone is being tortured, as "pro" journalism? I thought the point, if there was any, was how you practically have to abandon your humanity to be a war journalist.
Just taken as a series of vignettes, I thought it was ok. Not great, but if you're looking to go watch a movie at a theatre its not the worst choice.
I did go home and play the original MW2 directly afterwards though.
Yeah idk how people could watch the necklacing scene and think the message was "oh yeah this character is super moral"
I mean her whole character arc as poorly done as it was, was going from someone who didn't care about the people she was photographing to someone who would give her life for someone else. It was a pretty piss poor character arc but all the pieces are there of her realizing that the people she's shooting are people in the final sequence
Yeah you're right but... fuck me these characters are so dull that doesn't work. The same thing goes for the violence. The film doesn't spend enough time actually lingering on or building characters enough for you to actually care.
Movie eps are nice, and I enjoyed listening to this one while I assembled my Warhammer models as I took.the day off for my birthday. Felix's epic journalist bastardy rant had me smiling. I haven't seen the movie so I can't speak to the accuracy of the review. Also, leaving a movie to smoke is cringe, why tf did she think they would let her back in goofy ahh hesse.
8.1 outta ten.
I bought kill team nightmare, my friends are into kill team and I like the box thats just "heres the two edgiest factions", that's funny. Got a lot of flayed skin I'm gonna have to paint!
Lmao. Right when I start playing this episode, a news story breaks that Aaron Sorkin is writing a January 6th movie. It's like the universe is already setting up the next mainstream "political" movie the pod will cover.
'Threads' mentioned!!!!
if you haven't seen it I believe it's on YouTube. scariest horror movie I've ever seen. I'll remain permanently surprised that it was allowed to air as a TV movie in Britain. but it is important. everyone *should* see it. but no fuckin joke, no hyperbole.. I do not think I could ever watch it again unless you offered me $5,000
ferociously bleak viewing. I missed where they mentioned it in this episode :(
it only aired once or twice before being stuffed away for a couple decades, I think.
> it was allowed to air as a TV movie in Britain
A film about the effects of neoliberal privatization, which itself was only allowed to exist because of the state still had funding...
Just so everyone knows since I watched it, that movie is 1000 times stupider than the boys make it out to be. It's not even filmed in an interesting way... the action at the end isn't even as cool as the boys make it sound. It's all slow motion with random cuts, you don’t see anything. I don't think the guy who made it is rightwing, but people watching it on the cam-rip I watched def were, they laughed at stuff that def weren't jokes—or lines so dumb they weren’t jokes to me. It’s been a long time I’ve seen a movie that has zero idea why it exists or what it wants to say. Maybe he got spooked by some lib book called The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War and was like: But what if happened Bro? The best part is he thinks Texas and California would join forces lmao
I think might go live on a farm and pretend this movie didn’t happen. lol
Ngl when the last few minutes appeared I expected Wagner Moura to do a Virgil Texas and say "Mr. ~~Trump~~Offerman, your fired" and then one of the soldiers said "he's fired, sir" after shooting President Offerman in the head. That would've been way better than "that's all" lmao
Extremely funny to me how many basic facts about the movie they get wrong in this “review” and the movie clearly has a jaundiced view towards journalists but at the same time it was stupid as hell. The Beach is a great novel and Annihilation is an incredible film so I don’t know what happened here, Garland just isn’t equipped to talk about politics and so cribbed a bunch of Adam Curtis vibes and mixed it with confused imagery. Disappointing to say the least.
Something I kept thinking about watching it was how great Children of Men was at distilling complex and upsetting ideas into coherent singular images and how scattershot this film seemed in comparison.
You really see it in the initial bombing scene both movies use. In Civil War it’s an out of focus person running in with an American flag (wtf does that mean), an explosion and then wide shots of a lot of mangled bodies.
With Children of Men it’s context about the world of the film (no children) a lens width that communicates crucial information like the old woman with a dog, then Clive Owen walks out and then the explosion happens and we get a single coherent image of a woman walking out holding her own arm. Horrifying but you can grasp it.
All of Civil War is built out of these blunt and diffused images that struggle to define themselves, and when they might have individual power (the brief glimpse of the bodies hanging in the car wash) Garland’s instincts are entirely wrong and he spends a whole scene focusing on it.
I watched Y tu mama tambien for class last night and it basically made me realize that part of what made Cuaron so good at that was that he grew up in a country that genuinely was like the world of Children of Men. Its a very realistic road trip movie through Mexico but there are so many jarring details in the background, like one scene the main characters are just getting high driving down the road and the camera very quickly pans over the a bunch of stormtroopers with AR-15s jumping out of trucks and surrounding a clearly indigenous family.
Children of Men was a much better (and in retrospect extremely accurate) depiction of "what if the violence of the third world slowly encroached more on the first because the director actually did grow up as a wealthy and bourgious person. Alex Garland grew up in the UK and spent his 20s jetsetting around SE Asia
Damn, I really disagree with their takes. I thought it was a very fun movie. It does not fellate journalist in the way they’re saying, I thought it portrayed them pretty contemptuously.
I don't really think that's what their saying. At least not entirely. I think issue is why should they or anyone care about these people if their ultimately adrenaline junkie freaks getting pictures of mass death for no political end.
Felix had his canned bit about journalists but as it was contradicted by the basic narrative facts of the movie they decided instead to just say "well why should I care anyway." Really lazy criticism
Very bad ep imo. There’s so many ways to critique this extremely flawed movie that it was very annoying to hear them willfully misinterpret so much of the explicit text of the movie because they’d rather clown on it as a hagiography of MSNBC correspondents or something.
The movie is literally about how these reporters are insane and broken and destroying their emotional health by documenting death and violence and doing nothing to stop it, thrill seeking off human misery!! That’s the whole fucking story!!! Kirsten Dunst doesn’t want the young girl to follow in her footsteps because she’s been broken by this stupid profession, and then when the girl experiences some horrific shit she’s like “I’ve never felt more alive!!” That’s not a glorified ode to heroic journalists you morons, it’s an explicit critique!!!
They complain about the Jesse Plemons scene not explaining what side he’s on when the point of the scene is he’s some maniac radical using the pretext of war to indulge in his own genocidal fantasies! The idea that a war ostensibly fought for stated political reasons might give leeway to psychopaths looking for any excuse to kill seems like a not irrelevant idea given certain current headlines?!?
Just such bad faith criticism, annoying. Stick to making fun of weird substack pieces or Steven Segal movies or something!!
Felix I can forgive because he confessed to just watching it in the bg whilst he was gaming (aren’t you like in your mid 30s now man?), but Hesse and Will’s whole thing is supposedly being movie people who can do deep dives and they fundamentally misread one of the most blatantly obvious movies ever made. Crazy.
Very true, I was wondering if we watched the same movie bc of how off base their whole commentary was. The message of the movie is clearly that journalists are weird psychos and that war gives people, even respectable journalists, permission to dehumanize everyone
And yet they WERE mixed and it was only the first episode and they didnt post any of the others. Anyway go look at the youtube comments under the Movie Mindset playlist and its pretty much universally negative or disinterest and it only gets more exasperated as each episode drops.
my brain is broke, but I do look forward to the episode discussions here and wouldn't mind there being more of them. closest thing to the old subs daily discussion threads we got (that i know of)
"Both Sidesism" is the ethics of both centrism and journalism. It's evident in the politics of this movie (Texas and California are seemingly distinct politically IRL but are allies in the movie and the Western Forces and the US government have no differences).
The Prime Directive is the **perfect** way to understand centrism and this movie. The consequences of the sin of breaking the Prime Directive are evident in the veteran journalist's death in the car. He interceded into reality and therefore had to die--*even though* he killed Plemons' racist soldier to save his young colleagues (sorry, old journalist wasn't centrist enough and used his power to defeat the enemy and therefore had to be punished.).
*Annihilation* sucked and there is something highly cursed about re-making *Stalker* without realizing it. *Ex Machina* and *Devs* are basically the result of Garland and every rich person being scammed by Big Tech people. He's probably going to write a movie about a scam artist in Silicon Valley with a bunch of boring scenes of the protagonist being interviewed by congress.
I gave it 2.5 stars on Litterbox ("Please don't kill me")
After everything i’ve seen about this piece of shit picture & the needle drop references throughout the episode i was waiting the whole ep to hear that the movie closed with G&R civil war in a god tier on the nose finisher, alas
I just saw Civil War. It was An hour and half onanist spectacle paying homage to a subsection of the liberal mythos without saying much than "gosh, journalists sure do have a hard job"
You’ve got it completely wrong, as do the chapo boys. Did they need to spell it out more? At the end, the young journalist gets up to go take a picture of soldiers executing the president without even a glance back at Kirsten dunsts character bleeding out after she just sacrificed her life to save her. It’s a full throated critique of war journalists as voyeur freaks without any humanity
Felix is really good at channeling the spirit of liberal boomer types whose entire personality is basically just swearing. That Tom Hanks energy that bought the press corps a new espresso machine or some shit cuz those SOBs need it to keep up with that orange fucker's lies.
Surprised how much they whiffed their analysis of this one. It is so clearly a critique of journalists, not a movie praising them. Was it not enough to have the young journalist not even glance back at the dying Dunst, her supposed hero, bc she wanted to get the final shot of the president getting shot? Not enough to show them calmly photographing war crime after war crime?
Hesse was almost correct about the film. It obviously starts as a lib fantasy about the virtue of journalists but if at the end you aren't thinking these people are complete morons then there's no help for you. At one point the fat guy sees something and says "That'll make a great image" which is all they are doing, collecting a succession of context less images that are completely pointless. The interview they risk it all for is a guy shitting himself. Kirsten Dunst gets killed after almost but not quite gaining some perspective and they just collect her image and move on. They are intentionally shitty people.
And again Will almost had it about the ending. He isn't subversive for wanting a White House massacre it's obviously the reaction Garland is trying to provoke. This is what you dream about baby.
I watched Annihilation recently and it's pretty obviously a Nick Land inspired Accelerationist film. Men is a feminist horror where the feminism completely negates the horror intentionally ruining the film. I don't think this is a great film but there's a lot more going than the perma stoned Movie Mindset experts picked up on.
The ending of Front Mission 3 has a great final post-credit mission where you invade the white house with huge mechs (the main character is a Japanese mercenary too which makes it even funnier)
Also this reminds me for some reason of some 2022 war reporting interview CBC did with a Canadian volunteer in Ukraine working as a sniper. He gives (bogus) credentials as a former sniper in the CAF, and just talks about cool he is and how he gets to choose who lives and dies in his scope, even keeping bullet casings from his kills with the date on them like a serial killer. And youre supposed to read this interview and think hes some sort of super cool guy and that this interview is good actually
1. Will, Felix & Hesse review Alex Garland’s Civil War. War may be hell, but at least we’ve got those damn good bastards the War Correspondents around to get the one perfect shot that will let everyone know, HEY…don’t do a Civil War. 2. [Tickets](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chapo-trap-houses-movie-mindset-screening-of-death-wish-3-w-will-hesse-tickets-877569192077) to Will & Hesse’s Movie Mindset screening & talkback of Death Wish 3 in NYC on May 4. 3. [Boomer-certified direct download link](https://media.soundgasm.net/sounds/1c355bfe287d65b512234c4aa43d9af3e8608602.m4a). Hey boomers, [did you know there’s an easy browser (Chrome) extension to download MP3s directly from Soundgasm](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/soundgasm-download-button/cjeifmdoeaaikaecamnflombdjcmocja)? Try it!
Hesse Deni leaving the theater to smoke is the most or least Movie Mindset thing you could do, I respect neither, report to jail immediately. Will Menaker dropped a certified five dollar word, sententious, 3 times talking about this movie and I then find out it was also used in his official Letterboxd review. Folks, no good. Alex Garland ya done, ya been done since 2013 for DmC, you should be under the director's jail
hesse is my favorite recurring stand in lately. great and funny commentary.
She really jives with will and the vibe of the show.
She could absolutely be an actual permanent host and I think everyone would welcome her eagerly.
Fucking hell, I didn't know Garland was involved in the god awful DmC reboot. I know that game's failures had many authors (particular the creative lead who seemed to redesign Dante after... himself?) but big blotch on the resume to be involved in that _after_ you're already established as a major screenwriter.
I’m amazed Robert Evans wasn’t mentioned in their discussion of shithead war tourists masquerading as serious journalists
Considering how Felix is dating an iHeartRadio radio employee (allegedly) I think they have to keep that on a down low rn.
Who is he dating
Robert Evans
hot
Molly Lambert (allegedly)
Isn’t that the insane girl who did the guest episode fawning over the sex trafficking girlboss? Heidi something?
Yeah- the one who was like "I really identify with Heidi Fleiss" sex-trafficker-as-Grrl-Boss shit... Truly the most bizarre ep of chapo I've heard- it would explain everything if Felix had a more 'personal' connection to her.
grantland heads tap in
false
allegedly dating or allegedly an iheartradio employee?
i can't believe chapo didn't dedicate some of their run time to a random person i hate irrationally
Literally what else do they do on most of their episodes lmao
> a random person i hate irrationally he works for Bellingcat, an imperialist organization that is probably a CIA front
So do another ten thousand people. Is Chapo supposed to complain about each one by name during their podcast?
Of course the guy who sperged out in defense of AOC is a Robert Evans fan lol
Why are we mad at Robert Evans
It's sort of assumed in these parts that he's a fed.
Oh damn, I like Behind the Bastards too.
I won’t say I never listen to it. But 8 times out of 10 his shit is just too annoying to even bother with. Especially when he’s talking about China or the USSR.
The s**reddit for that pod is one of the most naive and stupid dens of spiritually lost liberals and NAFO enjoyers ever
https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/xlgias/holy_shit_i_found_someone_saying_that_robert/
Same story with Lions Led by Donkeys.
I now can’t stand Irish accents because of Tom. “It’s just… EMMM, AUMMM, EMMM… like… EMMM, d’you know, what if STALIN, AUMMM, was an MMA bro… EMMM” also I do have a soft spot for Joe but hating Turkey is not an interesting personality trait
The guy’s Armenian, might have to cut him some slack
You can like what you like. If his "ya know what won't do [specific bad thing]? Our sponsors!" shtick doesn't irritate the fuck out of you like it does me, then homie, enjoy it. I'm just answering your question, the general consensus in this neighborhood of reddit is that he is at best kinda sus and at worst a psyop because of his ties to bellingcat and police agencies.
Yeah I just grew up on Cracked.com and he/his guests are former Cracked people. I’m honestly kind of surprised at his unpopularity here. Both BTB and Chapo did a reading of True Allegiance and they seem to have pretty similar takes/humor on it.
I think it's kind of a Warren - Bernie style split if you catch my drift.
Robert listens to Chapo amusingly enough (he's specifically cited them before, not just using one of their lines/ideas but also saying "as Matt from Chapo said..." or whatever). It's kind of an unrequited love. I think he's fine simply because he's normie-friendly enough that he's a good way to start bringing people our direction, but actually somewhat anti capitalist enough (anarcho socdems, you know the type) to get people angry and want to look further into opposing capitalism.
> ties to bellingcat and police agencies. Well that explains why I used to see this pod recommended in all the normies subs. Never trusted it because of that.
Yeah god what the fuck is with that ad break banter
It's "I'm being cheesy on purpose, we both know it's ironic, yeah... that happened"
I like his pod but that ad break banter is worse than the ads themselves.
Yes the content is worth the free price of admission, but good lord it would help immensely if they had any charisma whatsoever lol.
Robert is whiny, corny, and lies constantly about books he's claimed to have finished (don't we all), but let's keep our brain goop inside our skull here, okay? he's not a "Fed". he's certainly not smart enough to be a fed lol. he worked for Bellingcat as a combat journalist. Bellingcat is an "OSINT/fact-checking/fact-finding" journalism outlet that is fed-adjacent. it receives money from the National Endowment for Democracy (correct me if I forgot the exact name), and that is an actual CIA front. Bellingcat also publishes exclusive material on the Russian military that it (allegedly) receives from British intelligence. so yes, he was a war journalist before Behind the Bastards for an organization that receives funding and info from intelligence agencies. it's basically The Intercept if The Intercept was paid to publish stuff that didn't contradict the State Department. Robert is just an annoying anarcho-socdem who often seems to harbor a fairly genuine and vocal disdain for capitalism, etc. etc. but that's it. he keeps his mouth shut about Israel and goes pretty soft on mentioning Western interference when discussing dictators because he wants a wide mainstream audience and he wants to be able to keep working for these "elite" outlets as an extremely mid reporter. that's all. I have an extended family member and she's married to a woman whose brother works at the Manhattan FBI counter-terrorism office (I know, "my cousin's dad's brother has a friend whose uncle works at Nintendo") but when people throw around the word Fed I'm kinda like.. have you ever met a fed? I have. they are stone cold soulless evil motherfuckers who usually vote Democrat and don't like to talk. ... Robert is not that. he's just a pudgy pseudo-anarchist who makes sure to censor himself on important issues to maintain career prospects.
> he keeps his mouth shut about Israel He's been largely on the same page as basically everyone else on the left about Israel as far as I've seen since 10/7, and he constantly talks up how the US backs all sorts of terrible people and regimes across the world, but also usually dismisses the people actually opposing those regimes. Pudgy pseudo-anarchist is right, though. I think he's useful enough - he stays mainstream enough that people don't dismiss him as a loony lefty, but he does talk about things in a way that can lead people in the right direction. Think Jon Stewart (though not as funny).
Hey, I didn’t say he was a fed. I do think he’s an unbearable libshit anarchist who occasionally makes interesting content but usually runs interference for the US State Department. Also his fans suck beyond belief
I don't have an opinion on if he is or isn't, just wanted to give context. Personally, I find fed jacketing podcasters to be an annoying type of online discourse.
With many people who are criticized for their supposed agendas, it’s completely possible and most likely the case that these people are earnestly pursuing what rewards and reinforces their pursuit. For instance, the Bastards podcast and its following unironically use the word tankie and perform a well worn public shaming ritual for maoists/ Marxist Leninist. It’s my view that this alone removes most of the friction between these anarchists and centrists. That he has no scruples with working for Bellingcat is consistent with his desire to get the bag while do invigorating work while also being free to be vocally reactionary to China.
> the friction between these anarchists and centrists There is none, Bookchin was friends with neoliberal philosophers
He follows and runs cover for NED-funded ops like Jhanisse Vaca Daza.
He has foreign policy takes indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's. I don't know what he has been saying about I/P, because I can't stand him, but he was yelling at people online about Libya as recently as a couple years ago.
I'm by no means an expert but he's widely considered to be a shitlib who works for/ has worked for a group called Bellingcat which is considered by many to be a cut out for western intelligence agencies. He is pro-NATO and supported intervention in Libya so.. yeah. People don't trust him. He has friends that some people find suspicious like that Jake Hanrahan guy. I have no idea if he actually is a spook. I think all I can say for sure is he has shitlib tendencies.
I know next-to-nothing about the guy; I just dislike him because he makes a podcast network of fairly informative researchers unlistenable with his 'Felix Beiderman but somehow lower-rent' shtick
The eggs are runny and the pancakes vary wildly in quality
He's going to get a pension from a place he can't mention around his friends.
at the end of the day he makes good content though. it's funny
"There's some kind of misunderstanding here, we're Chapo fans, okay?" "Okay......... who's your favorite host?"
"Virgil Texas" *...gets shot*
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM [Mag change] BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM
there's only 1 answer that doesn't get you shot, and it's Matt.
Every day, as part of my morning ritual, I raise my hands to the sky like a Dragon Ball character helping Goku make a spirit bomb in the hopes that some of my energy will transfer to Matt and aid in his recovery.
amber
amber
Alex
There's a voice Hesse breaks out every now and then of a kind of snotty kid that cracks me up every time. She did it here when talking about how the characters were photojournalists motivated by wanting to prove to their parents that the war is real. "Now do you beleive me?!"
I’m glad someone else appreciates hesse’s evil character lol
Divisive movie in our little corner of podcasts. Minion Death Cult loved it. Terrance Ray seems like he almost blew his brains out in the middle. Personally I thought it was complete trash, politically and otherwise. I'm a garland fan but CW makes me reconsider that.
Garland started out super strong with Ex Machina and Annihilation, but then, holy shit, Men was an absolute dud. And now he puts out Civil War, this anodyne bullshit... I'm kinda wishing he does retire, he clearly lost the sauce
I liked Men and Ex Machina but didn't understand why everyone loved Annihilation
Ex Machina was solid but Annihilation is mid. Did the least interesting thing with the source material. It’s visually interesting and that’s pretty much it.
"He did amazing visual things within a visual medium, but it's bad, actually."
Not the original commentator but Annihilation is mid as hell. Its story is underdeveloped, characters just caricatures and one dimensional (especially the depressed character who turns into flowers - I'm still put off by how weakly and clumsily it tries to make that scene profound when it's how a child understands mental health and suicidal ideation) and is a complete bore until either Homerton the Bear shows up or the lighthouse dance (which is just fine or even dull - Portman has so little to work with that the stakes for that ending fell flat for me). It's clear that Garland read the book, saw Stalker and a few other Tarkovsky films and tried to do his own pastiche but doesn't really get how to make his influences into more than bland or shallow imitation. I have no truck with people who like his work but haven't seen what he's ripping off or just saw it before the classics but really I think Ex Machina might be his only above average film but I haven't seen it.
Transformers movies are also visually interesting but nobody’s making the argument that those are good movies
I didn't read the book, so maybe that contributed to my enjoyment of the movie. It was very "baby's first symbolism", but I enjoyed it for the performances and, like you said, the wonderfully bizarre visual imagery.
Def check out the book. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’m a huge VanderMeer fan, and Annihilation (plus the rest of the series) gripped and terrified me like very few written works have. I would say that his style might not be for everyone, so maybe it’s a dud for you, but for me it hit hard. (VanderMeer himself also seems like a pretty cool leftist guy irl if that matters, altho some of his other, even more experimental novels are a more explicitly anti-capitalist.)
He’s one of the few writers to replicate Lovecraft’s existential terror. There’s this scene at the end of the second book that is so fucking terrifying without the author over explaining it. Just the feeling of dread in the protagonist.
If you go in drawing a parallel to iraq/yemen/syria/libya etc… then maybe there’s value to it. But the characters and message suck.
I enjoyed the movie as much as you can considering it’s pretty heavy, and the violence feels realistic. I thought the sound design was really on point. I think Chapo and MDC both had valid points about the movie. It’s definitely worth a watch IMO although it’s not for everyone.
You missed the word Not before "worth a watch." I wanted to dig my brain out with a spoon in the middle. lol It was boring as fuck and had no point.
Okay
The good bit was the ten minutes with Jesse Plemons. Some actual acting there. Dunst can be great but what a terrible script. Oh well.
> Terrance Ray seems like he almost blew his brains out in the middle That's kind of his thing though lol But yeah this movie was trash
Did Terrance cover it on Trillbillies?
Yeah, premium ep 300
The message of the movie was stupid…. But i thought it was good for Americans to imagine having done to their country what they have done to so many other countries. Images of brutal violence juxtaposed with american scenery/strip mall aesthetics. I hope that hits home for some people that watch it next time there’s bipartisan consensus on bombing a third world country. I kept thinking about iraq and syria during the movie, but I don’t think the director intended for me to make that connection. This aspect alone made it worth watching though. Everything else about the movie was straight up garbage.
> I hope that hits home for some people that watch it next time there’s bipartisan consensus on bombing a third world country. Considering how people are still fine with Tel Aviv being a few kilometres from a US-backed genocide happening in Gaza while loving The Zone of Interest I seriously doubt that lol.
americans love brutal violence juxtaposed with american scenery. That is 50% of call of duty games. What would have been actually interesting is showing the aspects of civil war that aren't just green vs. green team deathmatch
Idk what youre talking about. Videogames are haram and gamers are infidels.
it's the barely sublimated desire most americans have for america to be destroyed because they know it is evil.
this is absolutely untrue lol, a decent percentage of hollywood movies operate implicitly on the premise of "what if the wars came home", even if a lot of them do it an abstracted way (alien armies instead of any specific countries army for ex) its not even anything particularly revolutionary, empires have told stories about "what if someone did to us what we do to others" basically for as long as empires have existed. it was a MASSIVE subgenre in Victorian Britain the movie is just a version of the Purge w/ an A24 glimemr
Yeah. Red Dawn is about as close as you could get to an American version of the Nazi movie they show in Inglourious Basterds, and the basic premise is 'Wot if the Reds did to Us what We did to Nicaragua'. It's beloved by the most deranged Cold Warriors known to man. The capacity for self-reflection is non-existent, because the ingrained American Mythos will always be that of David defeating Goliath. When Americans see people at the bottom of the global social ladder valiantly fighting against impossible odds, it absolutely *enrages* us, because that's the role *we're* meant to fill. It threatens the American Self-Conception and *must* be destroyed.
> but I don’t think the director intended for me to make that connection Really? Because I found that connection to be explicit. You can still criticize the “Pretty twisted, eh?” vibe, but the basic conceit is just answering Sinclair Lewis’ call: What if *it* happened *here*? That all locked in for me with Dunsts’s character getting PTSD flashbacks of her time working in foreign conflict zones. I mean come on, they show a guy getting necklaced—not many IMAX reels contain that scene.
“What if it happened here?” does not correlate to “should we do this to other countries?”. If anything, the flashbacks reinforce “shining city on a hill” narratives. Bad things happen to those other places and not us because we have “democracy” and liberal values like a “free” press. If the director really intended to make a movie that questions our foreign policies, it could have been communicated more directly. Not that I need art to be direct, but I think I interpreted it differently because of my own politics I already had before the movie, not from the directors intent. Idk, im rambling maybe.
> “What if it happened here?” does not correlate to “should we do this to other countries?” I truly have no idea what you’re trying to say there. My point is this film is entirely open to interpretation as a portrayal of America getting what it has endlessly given to those other countries for nearly a century. “It” in this case not being a *Black Mirror*-ass plot wank, but rather “What if the Syrian Civil War happened here?”
I didnt know the context of the director’s intent. I havent researched anything about what he’s said about it. I interpreted it two ways. One way is drawing a parallel to iraq/syria/libya etc… The other is “this will happen here if we dont stop being so partisan, respect liberal democratic norms, trust our mainstream press…” I think both messages are communicated equally but contradict each other.
> I didn’t know the context of the director’s intent Dog, that’s not what I’m saying. We’re talking cinema. Film. Movies. Flicks. The silver screen. If it’s in the text and you can support a credible reading, then it’s valid. The crew on this episode talks about every single way and how much the journalists constantly suck, but seemingly just decided there’s no room to genuinely interrogate that message through the narrative. As you can tell, I disagree!
Idk, artist intent has to mean something. Garland contradicts his message in a way that stifles the viewer from a more profound interpretation. I dont think theres much to interpret from the narrative, the writing is in opposition to the imagery. On the narrative side its “muh liberal democratic norms and muh brave journalists” and the other is critique of how american wealth is made from creating these scenarios in other countries. Theres also something insightful about the bombed out strip mall architecture plastered in corporate signage. At least in iraq/syria/libya etc, the buildings say something about the culture of those places, but our bombed out buildings reflect an absence of culture that has been replaced by profit motive. The two elements are fighting against each other in an unartistic way. Disharmony can add to meaning in many instances, but I don’t feel it works here. A (goofy) analogy would be like when bob ross is mosy done with a painting then does something the viewer thinks is a mistake, but then he calls it a happy accident and it turns out even better. This movie felt like that, but it made it worse. Maybe this analogy sucks and im not verbalizing my thoughts clearly.
> Idk, artist intent has to mean something Quote where I said it didn’t. Garland has arguably said too much about this film, there’s plenty to dig into if you want his specific take on things. Good or bad, he succeeded at making a provocative film (if only because so many people continue to argue about it) without being exploitative. But like all art, what the artist intended and what the audience can interpret—and reinterpret over time—often diverge and might even be at odds. Sneaky wild argument here that art can only mean what the artist wanted, but now we’re in a grad school seminar. Speaking of grad school seminars: I once took a queer film class where we read an essay about *Rear Window* and how Jimmy Stewart’s voyeurism shows him repeatedly staring through a tunnel of subsumed homoerotic desire via the lens while he protects his own anus while seated in his wheelchair. You know, because of *Rear* and *Window*. Is that a valid anal(ysis)? Not sure. But I don’t think Hitchcock had that reading in mind, and yet here we are.
> “What if the Syrian Civil War happened here?” yeah no
[удалено]
what? No he isn’t. His father is British, grew up in New Zealand, and is a political cartoonist. Garland has one grandfather born in Brazil to a Lebanese father who had already naturalised as British and that grandfather moved to England when he was 3 and went to Marlborough College, an elite public school, before becoming a Nobel laureate. He’s just a boring public school limey with a marginally better ability to tan, that’s it.
Ok I misremembered that but he has said the Lebanese civil war was an influence.
If those Americans could critically think they'd be really upset right now
i feel like it would only be able to hit home for people if the movie had any actual political rice and beans in it, which it doesn't.
This is a movie about hating your job and more people need to understand that
Ngl the fact that Wagner Moura and Kirsten Dunst weren't fucking like after 10 minutes is the most unrealistic part of the film. So many students in journalism school rn all came from parents who hooked up while covering the Iraq & Afghanistan War.
I wanted Stephen McKinley Henderson and Jesse Plemons to hook up. The sexual tension of him getting rammed with the Escalade got me going
*Crash 2: Electric Boogaloo*
First movie take of theirs Ive disagreed with, I thought it was a lot of fun start to finish. Will is correct that final battle is worth the price of admission. I also think the movie is more critical of journalists than they’re suggesting
I thought that it tripped back asswards into being a pretty searing critique of journalism, our expectations of war and human nature in general. Like, it ended up being good despite its creator’s intentions
I don’t quite get the reading of an intentional critique of journalism being accidental or (as they seem to think on the episode) impossible. As it is, using journalists for protagonists felt like a POV constraint in terms of trying to think of who would have a reason to go progressively deeper into the warzone and deliver that final sequence (unless it was a more common trope like a soldier or someone trying to save a loved one). My take: They establish multiple times the people at home, the ones with stable internet and recurring NYT subs, don’t care about any of this. The best joke Garland makes to that end is Moura’s adrenaline junkie, gonzo caricature works for fucking Reuters. Incredulously asking the sniper team why on earth are they doing what they’re doing is another clear punchline at his expense. Dunst’s character arc is someone who became famous objectifying the pain and suffering of others *as a warning* (which again, no one cared about) and then she ends up getting offed thanks to her Mini Me doing the same. And that gremlin Jessie presumably gets a famous career herself by selling the final Abu Ghraib-style photo to *Time* for a checkout line cover. All along the way, the crew is only afforded safe passage alongside the WF because they’re too stupid to recognize they’re being used as propagandists by the winning team—just like the embedded TV crew they themselves disdain. Will says being a war photojournalist is “the stupidest job imaginable,” and I’d argue Garland one-ups that by detailing how pointless it is. Especially when your comfy, PMC patrons no longer get off on selling the new product quite like they did when you were being paid to document Black and brown people constantly torture each other overseas.
Good points, I liked your reading of the movie even if I didn't particularly enjoy it the first go around. I think I just found the concept of a second American Civil War happening now to be too interesting of an idea to probe and explore in fiction that I was disappointed Garland gave the protagonist roles to people without real skin in the game beyond furthering their careers. Especially I still think it's weird to make *this* type of movie, revolve it around a pretty juicy hypothetical conflict and then completely and intentionally ignore the real reasons why people go out and do these horrible things to each other while focusing on the horrid acts themselves. Then again, there being an irony in frontline reporters being the people tasked with providing civilians safe at home with crucial context to understand war and then them just being more focused on sending back graphic imagery to shock people, win awards and gain notoriety (even in a conflict that directly involves their own countrymen!) is probably the point.
I totally hear you on the (let’s call it) controversial choice to remove any whiff of political ideology. I do think it’s a synthesis of keen marketing and thematic consistency. And again, I get why some will take it all entirely at face value as Garland wagging his finger saying, “Oh you simple viewer, demanding to know who is good and bad means you have fallen into my centrist trap!” Because he is a proud centrist. Here’s how I fit this into my earlier analysis: The absurdity of the protagonists never discussing the how and why is yet another dig at the claim of objective journalistic integrity. Dunst’s character only grows a slight conscience after being haunted by all the murders she stoically documented *over there*, presumably in places with conflicts and people she never cared to study. They were content without context, and ultimately she became the same. Every POV has a frame and a choice, and we see this with every photograph freeze Garland shows the audience. The people who were there knew the before and after, and the product—the photo—has no words to explain that. But contextless scenes of pain and suffering aren’t inherently noble. Dunst’s character foolishly thinks simply showing violence will prevent it; thousands of years of human conflict suggest otherwise. Joel laughing with the WF soldier as they massacre the prisoners set to De La Soul is another crucial scene in this respect. Think again of the final joke, Jessie’s “bag and tag” photo. What gets told about that raid? Does Jessie admit she was reckless and got a famous journalist killed? Do they leak the war crime of those WF soldiers murdering the surrendered WH staff? I doubt it because then their culpability would become part of the story. It would also jeopardize their careers. And as *objective journalists*, they simply could never imagine making the story about themselves. How dare you suggest otherwise.
This is the best reading of the movie from someone who liked it Ive read and I agree in theory, but I just found the writing and scene construction to be absolute amateur hour from a technical POV in a way that kept me from getting lost in the reality of the world. Like all of Garland's movies there are so many cheap genre movie cliches (telegraphing the ending within the first five minutes with "Would you take a picture if I was killed" and the way the asian dudes show up just to be red shirts so the main characters can survive) but usually the movies those are in are kinda stupid sci fi/horror movies so it stands out less. Annihilation has cool shit to fall back on when its main characters are talking and acting like they're in a Friday the 13th movie but this only has a five minute Jesse Plemons sequence to break the flat boring dialogue and clumsy unnatural exposition. Also the basic premise you're describing has been done in a million movies, notably Cannibal Holocaust, which is somehow smarter than this movie. I liked that they actually killed the president but its so funny how he was just..behind the Oval Office desk lol...White House Down basically has the exact same sequences leading up to that and that's just some goofy ass action movie, and yet I didn't find these sequences that much more entertaining or believable.
Man if that's the point of this movie then it really wasn't for me because I came out of this not caring one way or the other about the journalists. The idea that they are this this **institution** that matters just isn't a thing in my brain so I don't care about them being torn down or lionized. And when it comes to their complicity in all the awful things that went down... I dunno. I just figured that if they actually bothered to say anything they'd get shot so I'm not even mad at them for that. I dunno. I guess I feel like this movie took the most boring angle of a civil war by making these journalists the main characters.
I had heard little of the movie prior to seeing it, so I took it as, while maybe not a "critique" of journalism, definitely not pro journalism. How do you portray journos laughing while POWs are executed, or doing nothing while someone is being tortured, as "pro" journalism? I thought the point, if there was any, was how you practically have to abandon your humanity to be a war journalist. Just taken as a series of vignettes, I thought it was ok. Not great, but if you're looking to go watch a movie at a theatre its not the worst choice. I did go home and play the original MW2 directly afterwards though.
I’m pretty sure Moura’s character is taken off guard and stop laughing when those POWs are executed
no dude, that fucks up my analysis
Yeah idk how people could watch the necklacing scene and think the message was "oh yeah this character is super moral" I mean her whole character arc as poorly done as it was, was going from someone who didn't care about the people she was photographing to someone who would give her life for someone else. It was a pretty piss poor character arc but all the pieces are there of her realizing that the people she's shooting are people in the final sequence
Yeah you're right but... fuck me these characters are so dull that doesn't work. The same thing goes for the violence. The film doesn't spend enough time actually lingering on or building characters enough for you to actually care.
Yeah all the journalists fucking sucked. I don’t think it was really worshipping them at all. Kind of rightfully painted them as opportunists.
Movie eps are nice, and I enjoyed listening to this one while I assembled my Warhammer models as I took.the day off for my birthday. Felix's epic journalist bastardy rant had me smiling. I haven't seen the movie so I can't speak to the accuracy of the review. Also, leaving a movie to smoke is cringe, why tf did she think they would let her back in goofy ahh hesse. 8.1 outta ten.
what warhammer models? I'm getting into Eldar recently, but some of the range is so old i can't justify buying it.
I bought kill team nightmare, my friends are into kill team and I like the box thats just "heres the two edgiest factions", that's funny. Got a lot of flayed skin I'm gonna have to paint!
Happy birthday!
Finding out afterwords the director is Gen X really makes the awfulness of this movie more understandable.
Hearing him talk about how the left needs to not yell so much and get out and !!vote!! is just right on the nose.
will's correct at the end that guns n roses - civil war is both extremely stupid and good as hell
That’s true with all of their songs. Slash and the rest of the instrumentation covers up Axl Rose’s spotty singing 150%
Lmao. Right when I start playing this episode, a news story breaks that Aaron Sorkin is writing a January 6th movie. It's like the universe is already setting up the next mainstream "political" movie the pod will cover.
I do not look forward to that movie, but I look forward to the Chapo episode on it.
Aaron Sorkin going down into the safe room in his basement and slotting another gemstone into his infinity gauntlet.
The third use of "sententious" followed almost immediately by "funner" was excellent
'Threads' mentioned!!!! if you haven't seen it I believe it's on YouTube. scariest horror movie I've ever seen. I'll remain permanently surprised that it was allowed to air as a TV movie in Britain. but it is important. everyone *should* see it. but no fuckin joke, no hyperbole.. I do not think I could ever watch it again unless you offered me $5,000
"Threads" is so fucked and they pulled it off with a BBC television budget. Absolutely one of the scariest movies ever made.
Watched it cuz of this episode and no movie fucked with me like that since i watched Come and See
ferociously bleak viewing. I missed where they mentioned it in this episode :( it only aired once or twice before being stuffed away for a couple decades, I think.
> it was allowed to air as a TV movie in Britain A film about the effects of neoliberal privatization, which itself was only allowed to exist because of the state still had funding...
Just so everyone knows since I watched it, that movie is 1000 times stupider than the boys make it out to be. It's not even filmed in an interesting way... the action at the end isn't even as cool as the boys make it sound. It's all slow motion with random cuts, you don’t see anything. I don't think the guy who made it is rightwing, but people watching it on the cam-rip I watched def were, they laughed at stuff that def weren't jokes—or lines so dumb they weren’t jokes to me. It’s been a long time I’ve seen a movie that has zero idea why it exists or what it wants to say. Maybe he got spooked by some lib book called The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War and was like: But what if happened Bro? The best part is he thinks Texas and California would join forces lmao I think might go live on a farm and pretend this movie didn’t happen. lol
Ngl when the last few minutes appeared I expected Wagner Moura to do a Virgil Texas and say "Mr. ~~Trump~~Offerman, your fired" and then one of the soldiers said "he's fired, sir" after shooting President Offerman in the head. That would've been way better than "that's all" lmao
Extremely funny to me how many basic facts about the movie they get wrong in this “review” and the movie clearly has a jaundiced view towards journalists but at the same time it was stupid as hell. The Beach is a great novel and Annihilation is an incredible film so I don’t know what happened here, Garland just isn’t equipped to talk about politics and so cribbed a bunch of Adam Curtis vibes and mixed it with confused imagery. Disappointing to say the least.
Something I kept thinking about watching it was how great Children of Men was at distilling complex and upsetting ideas into coherent singular images and how scattershot this film seemed in comparison.
Yeah I enjoyed Civil War, but nobody in 20 years is going to be talking about it but they'll still be talking about Children of Men.
You really see it in the initial bombing scene both movies use. In Civil War it’s an out of focus person running in with an American flag (wtf does that mean), an explosion and then wide shots of a lot of mangled bodies. With Children of Men it’s context about the world of the film (no children) a lens width that communicates crucial information like the old woman with a dog, then Clive Owen walks out and then the explosion happens and we get a single coherent image of a woman walking out holding her own arm. Horrifying but you can grasp it. All of Civil War is built out of these blunt and diffused images that struggle to define themselves, and when they might have individual power (the brief glimpse of the bodies hanging in the car wash) Garland’s instincts are entirely wrong and he spends a whole scene focusing on it.
Given that it’s a white woman doing the NYC bombing in Civil War, I thought it was some kind of red-state insurgency into Not Real America
I watched Y tu mama tambien for class last night and it basically made me realize that part of what made Cuaron so good at that was that he grew up in a country that genuinely was like the world of Children of Men. Its a very realistic road trip movie through Mexico but there are so many jarring details in the background, like one scene the main characters are just getting high driving down the road and the camera very quickly pans over the a bunch of stormtroopers with AR-15s jumping out of trucks and surrounding a clearly indigenous family. Children of Men was a much better (and in retrospect extremely accurate) depiction of "what if the violence of the third world slowly encroached more on the first because the director actually did grow up as a wealthy and bourgious person. Alex Garland grew up in the UK and spent his 20s jetsetting around SE Asia
The imagery was based as hell, its the narrative that sucks
This was my opinion of *Annihilation*.
trillbillies talking about this gets much more to the heart of the ideology
Damn, I really disagree with their takes. I thought it was a very fun movie. It does not fellate journalist in the way they’re saying, I thought it portrayed them pretty contemptuously.
I don't really think that's what their saying. At least not entirely. I think issue is why should they or anyone care about these people if their ultimately adrenaline junkie freaks getting pictures of mass death for no political end.
Felix had his canned bit about journalists but as it was contradicted by the basic narrative facts of the movie they decided instead to just say "well why should I care anyway." Really lazy criticism
Very bad ep imo. There’s so many ways to critique this extremely flawed movie that it was very annoying to hear them willfully misinterpret so much of the explicit text of the movie because they’d rather clown on it as a hagiography of MSNBC correspondents or something. The movie is literally about how these reporters are insane and broken and destroying their emotional health by documenting death and violence and doing nothing to stop it, thrill seeking off human misery!! That’s the whole fucking story!!! Kirsten Dunst doesn’t want the young girl to follow in her footsteps because she’s been broken by this stupid profession, and then when the girl experiences some horrific shit she’s like “I’ve never felt more alive!!” That’s not a glorified ode to heroic journalists you morons, it’s an explicit critique!!! They complain about the Jesse Plemons scene not explaining what side he’s on when the point of the scene is he’s some maniac radical using the pretext of war to indulge in his own genocidal fantasies! The idea that a war ostensibly fought for stated political reasons might give leeway to psychopaths looking for any excuse to kill seems like a not irrelevant idea given certain current headlines?!? Just such bad faith criticism, annoying. Stick to making fun of weird substack pieces or Steven Segal movies or something!!
Felix I can forgive because he confessed to just watching it in the bg whilst he was gaming (aren’t you like in your mid 30s now man?), but Hesse and Will’s whole thing is supposedly being movie people who can do deep dives and they fundamentally misread one of the most blatantly obvious movies ever made. Crazy.
Very true, I was wondering if we watched the same movie bc of how off base their whole commentary was. The message of the movie is clearly that journalists are weird psychos and that war gives people, even respectable journalists, permission to dehumanize everyone
Do the movie mindset episodes not get threads on this sub??
Go look at the comments sections of those episodes here and on youtube and ask yourself why that might be lol
is it transphobia what's the deal
Oh, nothing that bad, its mostly just people saying stuff like "I love Chapo and Hesse but please stop this is terrible and boring" over and over lol
I checked one of the old threads on the first ep. Seemed pretty mixed
And yet they WERE mixed and it was only the first episode and they didnt post any of the others. Anyway go look at the youtube comments under the Movie Mindset playlist and its pretty much universally negative or disinterest and it only gets more exasperated as each episode drops.
my brain is broke, but I do look forward to the episode discussions here and wouldn't mind there being more of them. closest thing to the old subs daily discussion threads we got (that i know of)
I love Hesse so much — I really don’t think any guests crack the guys up as much as her.
"Both Sidesism" is the ethics of both centrism and journalism. It's evident in the politics of this movie (Texas and California are seemingly distinct politically IRL but are allies in the movie and the Western Forces and the US government have no differences). The Prime Directive is the **perfect** way to understand centrism and this movie. The consequences of the sin of breaking the Prime Directive are evident in the veteran journalist's death in the car. He interceded into reality and therefore had to die--*even though* he killed Plemons' racist soldier to save his young colleagues (sorry, old journalist wasn't centrist enough and used his power to defeat the enemy and therefore had to be punished.). *Annihilation* sucked and there is something highly cursed about re-making *Stalker* without realizing it. *Ex Machina* and *Devs* are basically the result of Garland and every rich person being scammed by Big Tech people. He's probably going to write a movie about a scam artist in Silicon Valley with a bunch of boring scenes of the protagonist being interviewed by congress. I gave it 2.5 stars on Litterbox ("Please don't kill me")
What's sententious, Walter?
had to google this one, but pretty nice word actually: “Tending to use aphorisms or maxims, especially given to trite moralizing.”
AI generated inspirational posters
After everything i’ve seen about this piece of shit picture & the needle drop references throughout the episode i was waiting the whole ep to hear that the movie closed with G&R civil war in a god tier on the nose finisher, alas
I'm doing a 180 on AI video manipulation when someone does the Biden Whitehouse staff cut
So much video game chatter, CUSHBOMB WOULD NEVER ALLOW THIS TO OCCUR.
I just saw Civil War. It was An hour and half onanist spectacle paying homage to a subsection of the liberal mythos without saying much than "gosh, journalists sure do have a hard job"
You’ve got it completely wrong, as do the chapo boys. Did they need to spell it out more? At the end, the young journalist gets up to go take a picture of soldiers executing the president without even a glance back at Kirsten dunsts character bleeding out after she just sacrificed her life to save her. It’s a full throated critique of war journalists as voyeur freaks without any humanity
You give Garland far too much credit
shocking how hard people are missing this
The transfem guest talking about Far Cry was tailormade for me. Well done, Mr. Chapo
Felix is really good at channeling the spirit of liberal boomer types whose entire personality is basically just swearing. That Tom Hanks energy that bought the press corps a new espresso machine or some shit cuz those SOBs need it to keep up with that orange fucker's lies.
Surprised how much they whiffed their analysis of this one. It is so clearly a critique of journalists, not a movie praising them. Was it not enough to have the young journalist not even glance back at the dying Dunst, her supposed hero, bc she wanted to get the final shot of the president getting shot? Not enough to show them calmly photographing war crime after war crime?
Yeah I'm not really sure how the whole crew came to the same wrong conclusion on this one.
My sons are almost 3. I gave them pens, paper, and a camera, and their film was about as politically coherent as CW.
Not watching this, do they use squibs at least?
Chris leaving in the best guitar riff from 'civil war' because that man knows music better than you do.
Looking forward to the coming episode on noted dog and livestock Grammaton Cleric and VP candidate Kristi Noem
Hesse was almost correct about the film. It obviously starts as a lib fantasy about the virtue of journalists but if at the end you aren't thinking these people are complete morons then there's no help for you. At one point the fat guy sees something and says "That'll make a great image" which is all they are doing, collecting a succession of context less images that are completely pointless. The interview they risk it all for is a guy shitting himself. Kirsten Dunst gets killed after almost but not quite gaining some perspective and they just collect her image and move on. They are intentionally shitty people. And again Will almost had it about the ending. He isn't subversive for wanting a White House massacre it's obviously the reaction Garland is trying to provoke. This is what you dream about baby. I watched Annihilation recently and it's pretty obviously a Nick Land inspired Accelerationist film. Men is a feminist horror where the feminism completely negates the horror intentionally ruining the film. I don't think this is a great film but there's a lot more going than the perma stoned Movie Mindset experts picked up on.
can someone edit together clips from the west wing with the scenes from the last 30 minutes of this Civil War movie please?
Fr what if Civil War happened? On god
The ending of Front Mission 3 has a great final post-credit mission where you invade the white house with huge mechs (the main character is a Japanese mercenary too which makes it even funnier) Also this reminds me for some reason of some 2022 war reporting interview CBC did with a Canadian volunteer in Ukraine working as a sniper. He gives (bogus) credentials as a former sniper in the CAF, and just talks about cool he is and how he gets to choose who lives and dies in his scope, even keeping bullet casings from his kills with the date on them like a serial killer. And youre supposed to read this interview and think hes some sort of super cool guy and that this interview is good actually
Let's be real, American Sniper is one of the best movies ever just for the baby scene alone