Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Both the writing and direction of this film are credited to Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza.  The latter is a former  U.S. Navy SEAL and the film is based on his experience of an incident du ring the Iraq War. More specifically it's about Mendoza's platoon breaking into a local house to carry out some surveillance in support of a wider military operation.  Unfortunately the house becomes a target for insurgents, and the question is whether the platoon can be rescued. The film aims for absolute realism so there's no score and events are shown in real-time.  It makes for a thoroughly gripping and tense viewing experience, and at times a terrifying one. The sense that I was watching c inéma vérité was enhanced by the fact that none of the actors were familiar to me, except for Kit Connor from the excellent Netflix series 'Heartstopper' who I somehow failed to recognise (that's military camouflage for you, I guess). As one example of how nothing here is sugar-coated t...

One might expect a film about a US civil war set in the near future to be saying something about the state of America now. But since the civil war involves a Democrat state (California) and a Republican state (Texas) combining, it's clear that this film is not doing that - at least not directly. Maybe the intention (in part at least) is to serve as a warning about where the polarisation of American society is leading to.  But the main focus of the film is journalism, since the four main characters are members of that profession.  Well, really two main characters: Lee, a veteran photojournalist (Kirsten Dunst) and Jessie  (Cailee Spaeny) , a young woman who wants to follow in her footsteps.   I found the character of Jessie unconvincing given  that the screenplay doesn't do a great job of fleshing out her character.   To me she comes across as a rather annoying teenager although this may say more about me than it does about the performance.  There'...