i’m sorry but i don’t think alex garland is a smart filmmaker. he certainly knows how to direct. i’d even say he’s a good director. and yet he’s not a smart filmmaker in my eyes. i’ve yet to see his all time beloved ex machina and also warfare but so far i couldn’t stand anything i’ve seen from his filmography. men being an absolute shitshow shouldn’t be news to anyone but even annihilation wasn’t a good film. i might be the only human being on this planet who thinks so but the way garland mutilated the novel the film is based on is still astonishing to me.

he just always… misses the point. he looks at it and then just completely misses it. the shell of an alex garland movie doesn’t even seem too wrong but once we get to the core of it i’m left irritated and unsettled (not in a good way).

with civil war it’s, again, the same thing for me. this film feels so rooted in a somewhat liberal “neutrality” that i really can’t tell what it actually stands for. or does it even stand for anything in begin with? it remains this “what happened to this country?” type of movie where i’m just like… well, fascism happened guys. it’s so exclusively focused on the term “war” that it doesn’t actually condemn and depict the fascist uprise it portrays.