Civil War

[Frank Cox]

I don't usually play political movies but there's so little else available these days and this one looked at least somewhat interesting.

And it turned out to be a substantially better movie than I expected.

The story is straight-forward and actually pretty good.

The battle scenes, especially the sound effects, are really top notch.

That first big explosion is certainly a HOLY CRAP moment. Wowza.

It's a surreal setting. Not over-the-top like Mad Max, but more like a zombie movie without the zombies -- standard towns and cities and countryside where everyone is just bristling with weapons, where bodies turn up around every second corner.

Anyway, pretty good show. Really great sound. And I won't delve into the messaging at all.

[Mike Blakesley]

We are playing this this week. Our booker said some smaller towns are doing well with it and others, "nothing." So we'll see where we fall.

It's kind of a disturbing movie. I didn't really get anything of a "message" out of it, outside of the "war is hell" notion which is pretty blatantly obvious. It really gets you up close and personal and makes you have an appreciation for what soldiers potentially go through in battle.

They were careful not to take an obvious political side. Even the "news" TV scenes that were shown had no indentifying network logos on them. The word "Republican" or "Democrat" is never mentioned in the movie. You get a notion of what side some characters fall on, but there's no preachiness to it. Quite a few very chilling moments.

The ending reminded me of the ending of "The Birds." It doesn't have a resolution, per se. It just stops after a certain event occurs, which I won't spoil here. But you're left with a "now what?" feeling.

Agreed on the sound. It gave our system a workout. The opening logo of the film is kind of cool in that it uses pink-noise flipping around from channel to channel. That was probably pretty cool in the Atmos mix.

[Frank Cox]

Turned out that I was in the "nothing" camp when it came to attendance for Civil War.

That didn't exactly surprise me, but there's so little else to play right now I figure if it will come close to breaking even at least it gave me something to do that week. My other option would be to close for the week but what would I do then? My wife told me that I was always pacing around like a caged tiger during the Covid closure.

Gonna be the same thing again this week with One Life. Apparently nobody gives a rat about this one either.

Oh well. Hopefully it'll pick up again in another week or two. It does get discouraging when there's a solid month or six weeks of movies that nobody wants to see.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I only live about ten miles from where the bloodiest civil war battle was fought. This was the battle of Franklin. The Confederates suffered almost 20k deaths there. Dead bodies were 6 feet high in some places, and the town of Franklin.only had about a hundred men left after the battle.The battle was said to effectively leave the Confederate army as useless. Today there is a large Cemetary there, and a large part of the battlefield. Carnton Plantation is also on that property... It's pretty amazing to see some of these places in person. There are also hundreds of large bronze marker signs all over Nashville and the surrounding towns where important Civil War stuff took place

[Barry Floyd]

We played Civil War this past weekend at the drive-in. It was our highest grossing screen. It was up against Abigail and Monkey Man on the other side, so it wasn't a lot of competition.

[Mike Blakesley]

It's doing OK for us, not great, but probably around average for an R-rated movie that wasn't a smash hit.

I thought sure we'd have some people bringing kids, but we haven't -- and it's SO R-rated that I thought we'd have some walkouts, but we haven't.

[Marcel Birgelen]

It seems like The Fall Guy was released a week earlier around here than in the U.S., which isn't very common those days. Yet, it's getting all the attention right now. Meanwhile, Civil War was released two weeks before and is barely managing to attract a crowd. The lack of advertising for this movie around here also didn't help, most people barely know about it...

[James Wyrembelski]

I had people coming to this thinking it was about the actual American Civil War.

[Mike Blakesley]

That’d be understandable, given the poster which really didn’t give much clue about the movie.

[Jon Dent]

The movie was good, but I could feel the contortions it was going through to avoid appearing 'political'. When you state that the main opposition force is the "Texas California coalition", the idea of those two states cooperating on ANYTHING, let alone a national insurrection against the government, is so unimaginable in our current political climate that it NEEDS some kind of explanation, but none is given. It would've been better if Garland had just avoided any background on the war itself because ultimately, it doesn't matter to the story about war journalism. The whole fact that it's set in America kind of feels like a publicity stunt for the movie's visibility at times.

Now granted, seeing all the nasty hallmarks of modern guerilla warfare taking place in a familiar setting can be jarring, and I can't complement Garland enough for NOT making urban warfare 'cinematic'. This is an ugly, dirty, bloody, LOUD movie where gunshots and explosions are appropriately deafening and the camera doesn't always catch what's going on.

The movie did surprisingly well for us. Not great by any means, but I live in a region where I can imagine some people reacting negatively to what little backstory is given, like a president who is unconstitutionally(?) in his third term, launches airstrikes on civilians, and looks a lot like Steve Bannon...

But what I really remember? Jesse Plemons..... He KILLS it in the sequence he appears in, so much so that he overshadows the rest of the film. The man plays 'cold psychopath' better than anybody.

[Jim Cassedy]

I had people coming to this thinking it
was about the actual American Civil War.

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[Marcel Birgelen]

I'd tell them that it's a documentary sent here from the future.