What to watch: Unsettling ‘Civil War’ is the ultimate what-if movie
Also: "Fallout" brilliantly shows how a video game can be a great movie; and Robert Downey Jr. helps turn Park Chan-wook's epic "The Sympathizer" into a 4-star triumph.
War is at the center of three of the best new films/shows to catch this week — be it in the chilling premise of Americans fighting Americans (“Civil War”), in the form of the aftermath of a nuclear attack (“Fallout”) or yet another look at the Vietnam War (“The Sympathizer”).
Here’s our roundup.
“Civil War”: The joyless eyes and weathered face of photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) tell her story, one of an entrenched sense of hopeless resignation as she and her colleagues cover a war that pits California and Texas and other states against the government and its supporters. Alex Garland’s intense dystopian “what if” movie — which is far less polarizing than you’d think — serves as a warning of the perils of national disharmony, constant conflict and the human desire to dominate and win at any cost, even when we’ve lost sight of what it is we’re fighting for. Lee has seen these developments play out too many times in other nations, yet she’s never flinched from capturing the savagery — the scorched, bullet-ridden corpses of men, women and children — on camera. Now to her ultimate dismay, the war zone has come to her home turf, and Lee confronts an existential dread over how her efforts to catalog the carnage overseas has failed to prevent America from following the same path. Garland’s button-pushing feature seems all too plausible given the climate of hair-trigger anger and bitterness in which America exists today. Thankfully, the assured London-based screenwriter/director of “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation” resists recklessly fanning the flames.
“Civil War” mostly follows four journalists. There is Lee; her adrenaline-junkie journalist partner Joel (Wagner Moura, who we need to see more of); a budding, over-eager photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny of “Priscilla,” showing quite the range) and old-school veteran newsman Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson, ideally cast). Lee and Joel are on the way to interview the beleaguered president (Nick Offerman, in what amounts to a cameo). Along the way, they happen upon one horrific sight after another — a gas station where the car wash has been turned into a torture chamber; a lethal soldier (a bloodcurdling Jesse Plemons) with a narrow vision of his own righteous justice; and even a Christmas holiday display that’s equally horrific and comedic. Garland’s dystopian supposition shows us that in a nation when citizens take up arms against each other, it is everyone who fails. Details: 3½ stars out of 4; opens April 12 in theaters.
“Fallout”: Two of the largest sinkholes that showrunners/filmmakers fall into when adapting a popular video game can be: 1.) offending fans by changing too much, and/or 2.) creating a narrative that fails to speak to people unfamiliar with the game. “Fallout,” Prime Video’s eight-part series, leaps past those death traps due to executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (HBO’s “Westworld”) and showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner. Their respect for the game and its scenario — a dystopian Earth more than 200 years after a nuclear attack — and their decision to fill out the characters’ back stories make for a riveting series. Doses of humor helps too. Told in eight bingeable episodes using a limited amount of CGI, “Fallout” tracks the gory, R-rated-like dilemmas of three characters. Lucy (Ella Purnell) is a plucky, privileged Vault-dweller (the cushy underground environment created for the wealthy to avoid the nuke fallout). She’s looking to save a kidnapped dad who’s now occupying space on the earth’s surface, a scrappy, desert-like wasteland. While on that pilgrimage, she runs into two others: Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire in the militaristic Brotherhood of Steel who gets an unexpected shot at advancing in rank; The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a bounty hunter risen from the dead who’s a former cowboy screen star (his flashback scenes are the best ). Each is intent on grabbing a certain artifact, the identity of which I will not spoil. The quest leads to revelations about the underground network, run-ins with dubious characters from above and below and — most welcome of all — tussles with mutant roaches and an underwater beast. “Fallout” never lags for one second and dangles from one cliffhanger to the next. The cast makes it all engaging — Goggins, in particular, rips into the show’s juiciest part and does wonders with it. This’ll be a major hit, and it deserves to be. Details: 3 stars; all eight episodes drop at 6 p.m. April 10 on Prime Video.
“The Sympathizer”: “Oldboy” filmmaker Park Chan-wook and co-showrunner Don McKellar’s series adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a cinematic tour de force – with Park paving the way with the first three, and best, of seven episodes. Anyone who’s familiar with the book’s tricky material realizes that’s an impressive feat to pull off. “The Sympathizer” skips from drama to satire to comedy as it wraps itself around complex issues about identity, the immigrant experience, America’s struggle to grasp Asian culture and history and the feeling of always being the outsider. It does so with vision, depth and detail. Actor Hoa Xuande beautifully handles the difficult task of bringing to life the nameless Captain, the show’s duplicitous protagonist who’s an undercover double agent during the Vietnam War era. His mother was Vietnamese, his dad, French.
The series opens with The Captain imprisoned in Vietnam where he’s ordered to write down his recollections — which provide chances to flash back to his “Three Musketeers”-like friendship with two other boys, his work and relationship with an anti-Communist known as The General (Toan Le) and his family members, a nail-biting flight out of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, the people he meets and even targets in Los Angeles, and the insane consultancy role he lands in on an overblown, excessive Vietnam War movie.
Through these experiences, the General also encounters larger-than-life characters — key ones played to the hilt by Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr., an actor who specializes in chewing up the scenery. Wisely, the directing and producing team (Downey Jr. is a producer) hands him the drapes, the carpet, and the entire household to rip apart. It’s a smart move with Downey Jr. providing much of the humor and sometimes the menace in a variety of roles. Also memorable — and deserving of another Emmy nomination — is Sandra Oh, the exasperated assistant to Downey Jr.’s professor and the older lover to The Captain. “The Sympathizer” walks a tightrope but is fearless about tackling uncomfortable subject matter. It’s smart and mesmerizing. Details: 4 stars; first episode debuts 9 p.m. April 14 on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.
“Housekeeping for Beginners”: What constitutes a family in a home that’s filled with queer friends all living in a hostile culture’s shadows? And what does someone who’s ill-equipped to shoulder parental duties do when those responsibilities are thrust upon them? Those questions thread throughout Goran Stolevski’s third feature, a painfully honest, ultimately beautiful exploration of how each member of a resilient, very human makeshift North Macedonia family navigates growing pains once Dita (Anamaria Marinca), a social worker who’s grieving her lover’s death, becomes mom to two daughters — a precocious little girl and a rebellious teen. To pass themselves off as anything but gay, Dita draws in unwilling but sexually active housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor) to “pass” as the husband even though he’s far more interested in his younger and more joyous lover (Samson Selim). Stolevski creates a wonderful group of flawed but understandable characters and then illustrates just how brave they are as they pull together to negotiate and overcome treacherous encounters. In the end, isn’t that what family should be about? Details: 3½ stars; in theaters April 12.
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.