Yeah, this is a LATE edition, but Baltimore Comic Con started today, and I had…different priorities than blogging. I’m really gonna have to write about this con, because I have thoughts, but that’s gonna have to wait til next week…
Yesterday, I watched Civil War, as it was recently added to Max. This movie sort of made me rethink my movie buying habits, as I tend to buy a lot of movies I’ve never seen, but wish to see, and figure it’ll be easier to do so when I feel like it, because I own it. This is one of those movies that was certainly on that list, and I’d even been looking for a sale on it. Well, I’m here to say I’m so glad I never found one, because I never need to see this movie again.
Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, was the controversial film that depicted an America that felt like it was a mere heartbeat away. In the film, the United States is at war with the Western Forces, comprised of California and…Texas? Kirsten Dunst plays a celebrated war photojournalist who is currently documenting the conflict. When rumor comes down that the Western Forces are planning to invade Washington on July 4th (#Symbolism), Dunst and her colleague decide to try to get into DC to interview the President before it happens, as “it’s the last story left to tell”. The problem, though, is that the highway system is pretty much gone, and the US Government sees journalists as the enemy. So, they’re about to embark on a hard journey to an unwelcome destination.
I bet this movie hit differently when it was in theaters, as it’s really amazing what a few months can do. When the trailer dropped, folks were actually scared it would trigger a real conflict. The country feels more divided than ever, so would this movie just give folks ideas? But then everyone boarded the Kamala Bus, and now we’re dancing to “Hope & Change (Remix)”. So, watching it now…it didn’t work for me. Like, it tries. Boy, does it try. It lacks the humor of Don’t Look Up!, but isn’t as quite on the nose as Crash. It’s a movie with a message, but I don’t know if it really achieved getting it across. It’s a movie with a plot, but it lacks a story. We know nothing about these characters, nor do we ever really learn anything over the course of the film. No one has an arc. It’s a collection of small, quiet moments, that are permeated by loud conflict. It really wants to convey how, in war, death becomes so commonplace that life becomes unremarkable. It’s somewhat reminiscent of 1997’s Welcome to Sarajevo. It’s about how war makes us lose our humanity, and struggle to find it. One character says, “Over the past few days, I have never been more scared in my life. And I’ve also never felt more alive.”
It also points out how, over the course of these conflicts, it isn’t as clear who the “Good Guys” are supposed to be. There’s another scene, where the protagonists come across some soldiers who are pinned down by a shooter holed up in a house. When they ask the soldiers what’s going on, they glibly reply, “There’s someone in that house. And they’re shooting at us.” Dunst asks who they’re receiving orders from, and they’re like “We’re not receiving orders from anyone. What part of this don’t you understand?” Everyone’s fighting, but no one knows what they’re fighting for, what they’re fighting to preserve.
The movie, seemingly, goes out of its way to stay vague about the cause of the conflict. The details we do have are scarce: Nick Offerman plays the US president, who is on his 3rd term, and hasn’t given an interview in the past 14 months. I like to think the movie depicts him as “bad”, mainly because of how he’s taken down. We know nothing of the Western Forces, nor their cause, but we know they’re winning, and folks seem to be OK with that. Plus, there are the subtle clues, like how a 3-term president probably isn’t a great guy, simply because that would require a Constitutional amendment, and we’ve been led to believe that anyone who would go through with such a thing isn’t doing it for the best reasons. Ya know, the whole “Term limits are good” thing that keeps us from having a dictator.
Another thing it really goes out of its way to do is showcase the “power of The Press”. I never really understood this concept until I read the comic series DMZ. It was at that time when I discovered members of the Press have some sort of special immunity in wartime, as their job is to report back on the conflict to those who aren’t there. As long as they’re clearly identified as Press, they really aren’t to be dragged into the conflict, though they may end up as collateral damage by getting too close to the action. So, that was somewhat the most fantastical aspect of the movie, in that it’s the whole “This could be your world, very soon” warning, while extolling the virtues of The Press! In this economy? Have you seen the state of American news media?! You know how librarians take to social media to remind us of all the great services that libraries offer folks, which may not be common knowledge? This movie felt like that, but for photojournalists. “They’re out there, risking their lives, to bring you The Story!” Yeah, but these days they just sit on The Story til they get a book deal. Then they do the talk show circuit to sell said book. All the while, sharing anecdotes beginning with “You wouldn’t believe what I saw…” yet leaving out the part on how they did absolutely nothing to stop the terrible thing that they witnessed, nor did they inform anyone at the time.
Anyway, I felt DMZ was a much better depiction of a modern day American civil war, as it explored the different interests involved, as well as power players and their motivations. You began to see how some actors benefited from the conflict, as others’ lives only got worse. That’s why it was fitting that, as the movie ended, Max said “You Might Also Like…”, and suggested the DMZ miniseries as the first option. Game recognizes Game!
Will Around The Web
Adam and I are back with a new episode of Remember That Show?, this time focusing on the short-lived 1993 children’s variety show Xuxa. Yeah, you remember it. Guys my age like to say the Pink Ranger was their first crush, but that’s only because they knew her name. They saw Xuxa, even if just once, and we’re here to unlock that sense memory! You can check out the episode here, or on all major podcast platforms. Plus, the show is on social media now! So, be sure to follow @remembershowpod on X and Instagram!
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- Krysten Ritter is about to become the next Ted McGinley/Tim Meadows, as her starring vehicle, Orphan Black: Echoes, has been canceled after one season.
- Oh, and the Lisa Kudrow starring Time Bandits was also canceled at Apple TV+. Man, does Hollywood hate women or something?
- Jane’s Addiction have seemingly broken up, following an onstage altercation between band members. Not to be outdone, REO Speedwagon have decided to take it on the run, as they’ve also broken up.
- Playboy Playmate of the Month July 1997 (Don’t ask how I know that…) Daphnee Duplaix has been cast in the upcoming CBS African-American soap opera, Beyond The Gates.
- What could be considered one of the first examples of an MLM, Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy. Ya see, if they could figure out how to keep spaghetti sauce from permanently staining those containers, they wouldn’t be in this mess!
- Bluesky celebrated the milestone of hitting 10M users, resulting in the one and only time I’ll be officially considered one of the “1%”.
This is really shaping up to be a great season of television. I had sort of checked out of network television in recent seasons, sticking with old reliables, like Family Guy and American Dad. New shows get canceled too quickly these days, and the shows I tend to like get canceled in the firs round. So, why bother? That said, there was a trailer that really caught my attention to the point where I knew I’d have to give the show a chance. That show was ABC’s High Potential.
Starring Kaitlin Olson, of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame, Olson plays Morgan, who’s a single mother of three, who tends to be outspoken and can’t hold down steady employment. We go on to discover that she has High Intellectual Potential, with an IQ of 160. She gets tangled up in some legal stuff, and the police sort of coerce her into becoming a consultant because it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Olson conveys what her experience is like, in that she can’t sleep and she can’t let anything go. Her mind is always racing, which negatively affects her relationships and jobs. But she’s got a mystery of her own to solve: The father of her oldest daughter mysteriously disappeared 15 years ago, and everyone believed he just skipped town. Knowing that he wasn’t the kind of man to abandon his family, she has never given up the suspicion that there was more to his disappearance. So, she’ll help the cops, and they’ll help her solve her mystery.
In a lot of ways, this is just Psych, which is a show I loved. If you weren’t a Psych fan (and, really, how is that possible? It was on, like, 8 years!), Shawn Spencer convinced the police department that he was psychic when, in actuality, his hardass cop father had raised him to be uber perceptive. So, he noticed things that most people would miss. Same here. Morgan lives in the details. Olson is great, though, because she’s sort of playing her Sunny character, Sweet Dee, in a new setting. I tend to watch all of the Sunny cast’s side projects because they’re usually just playing some version of those characters. There’s not a lot of range there, but they’re also SO good at it. In AP Bio, Glenn Howerton was just playing What If Dennis Reynolds Was a Teacher? Every Charlie Day role is basically What Would Charlie Be If The Gang Stopped Shitting on Him? And this is basically What Would Sweet Dee Be Without The Influence of the Rest of The Gang?
She’s so damn great in this show, but she’s doing a lot of heavy lifting, because the rest of the cast are a bunch of duds. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not. I mean, Morgan comes off more outlandish and outspoken against a boring backdrop, but they could have done better than this. There’s the swarthy ethnically ambiguous detective who may be a future love interest, though I hope they don’t go there. There’s Judy Reyes from Scrubs, only now she’s playing Hardass Puerto Rican Detective, which is something of a standard trope in procedurals these days. And former Batwoman star Javicia Leslie is…the computer specialist? A secretary? I don’t really know what she’s doing there. No, the show IS Morgan, but I can see that getting old fast. Another ABC show I loved, Forever, was similar in that Ioann Gruffudd was great as the series lead, but he had nothing to play off of. He WAS the show, and that wasn’t enough to get it a second season.
For now, though, I’m not worried about the future. I just know I’ve got a weekly show to add to my DVR (I mean, I guess I could just do Hulu, but that feels…passive?), and I’m looking forward to seeing where the show goes next. So, that’s why High Potential had the West Week Ever.
