Female Film Critics 24/375
Conspiracy theorists may latch onto Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia, but – for the rest of us – its surreal, satirical concept is beyond bizarre. Loosely adapted from Jang Joon Hwan’s South Korean black comedy horror/thriller Save the Green Planet (2003), Will Tracy’s screenplay revolves around bike-riding, bee-keeping Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons), a disaffected loner who lives with his younger cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis) in a dilapidated Southern farmhouse.
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Director Yorgos Lanthimos embeds a strong social critique in his provocative films and then routinely undermines his promising insights by indulging in sensationalism, especially repulsive violence. It is not surprising, then, that he would decide to remake South Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 absurdist, sadistic, black comedy science fiction film Save the Green Planet, now titled Bugonia. Diverging minimally from the original, the plot revolves around delusional conspiracy theorist Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons) who abducts Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), CEO of the Auxolith pharmaceutical company.
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One of 2025’s most anticipated ‘new’ Netflix releases – Zero Day – marking Robert De Niro’s first leading role in a television series – is a dreadful disappointment. Obviously ‘green lit’ before the Trump tidal wave swept the Presidential election, it’s filled with unfulfilled promises. As a political thriller, it has a provocative premise: a catastrophic terrorist cyberattack disables computers throughout the nation. Planes crash. Cars collide. Hospitals shut down. Wall Street, including the New York Stock Exchange, halts. All forms of digital communication cease to exist. The concept is truly terrifying.
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Call me a philistine but I wouldn’t wish having to watch Yorgos Lanthimos’ dreadful 165-minute Kinds of Kindness dirge on my worst enemy! After intriguing audiences with Poor Things (2023) and The Favourite (2018), which were – at least – comprehensible, Greek ‘auteur’ Lanthimos reunites with his co-screenwriter Efthimis Filippou to create a trilogy of bizarre, almost incoherent cinematic ‘essays’ exploring themes of dominance/control, faith and love.
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Deliberately pushing all your ‘fear’ buttons, Alex Garland’s Civil War is obviously intended to be a cautionary tale but it falls short in so many ways. The dystopian story begins sometime in the near-immediate future in war-torn New York City, where water is rationed and residents are battling the police. Several military-embedded journalists are preparing to undertake the precarious drive to Washington, D.C. hoping to interview the divisive President, who has disbanded the FBI and ordered air strikes on civilians.
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Filmmaker Alex Garland’s fourth directorial feature hits harder than most war films. Civil War is a painfully realistic portrayal of a journey across dystopian future America driven by haunting characters, graphic visuals and heart-pounding sound effects. The film focuses on a team of four journalists following the Second American Civil War. Caught between the American government and “Western Forces”, they set out on a suicide mission through a surge of war crimes to reach the president before rebel coalitions strike the White House.
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Civil War warns but doesn’t inform. Writer/director Alex Garland’s new film Civil War is just that, about a U.S. civil war. Don’t look for any issues beyond learning that California and Texas, yes, those two alone and together, have. As a dystopian reality terrorizes the country, four journalists undertake a road trip from New York to Charlottesville, Virginia, front lines of the rebellion.
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In Civil War, writer-director Alex Garland depicts the last days of democracy, staging intense courtyard firefights, street riots, and soldiers firing RPGs at the Lincoln Memorial. Yet his dystopian vision isn’t just out to provoke. Reminiscent of other journalism war films such as 1984’s The Killing Fields, with characters struggling to make sense out of chaos, this is an intelligent, propulsive, and shattering film about the costs of division and the toll of recording history.
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What’s in a name? In the case of writer/director Alex Garland’s Civil War, it might mean the difference between the success of a worthy film and a stumble at the box office. He’s not trying to make a stand about what’s happening in America. He’s not trying to be subjective in that way. Civil War is more about the impact of combat journalists committed to uncovering the raw truth of war; that it is brutal and senseless. Folks walking into the theater hungry for him to take a political stand about the potential dangers of polarization currently happening in the US will not be sated. If, however, they are looking for a powerful cinematic experience that shakes them to their foundations, that they’ll get. Not exactly an enjoyable experience, Civil War is a near-constant assault to the senses that amps up the tension moment by moment to the film’s last frames that will become essential viewing in anyone’s list of great war movies.
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They shoot journalists don’t they? In Alex Garland’s Civil War they sure do…and everything else that moves within an inch of its life. This Civil War is not an historical drama, but a cautionary tale of what could lie ahead for the United States when democracy teeters on the brink of collapse. Set in the near future, Civil War is an almost documentary type chronicling of embedded war journalists on a road trip to Washington, D.C. trying to get one last interview with the President before he flees the White House. Civil War isn’t meant to be political. Garland doesn’t even give a reason for the unrest. All we know is California and Texas have seceded from the Union and have banded together to form the Western Federation in an attempt to take control of the dystopian government. There’s no right or wrong. No good or bad.
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