Film
John Maguire on Film: Alex Garland’s Civil War shines, but Amy Winehouse biopic falls flat
Kirsten Dunst is terrific in Garland’s dystopian road movie, but Back To Black struggles to find the essence of the late superstar
As we brace ourselves for another potentially calamitous US presidential election, the British writer and director Alex Garland imagines an America in which the nation’s divisions have escalated into bloody conflict.
As provocative and convincing as its declamatory title, Civil War isn’t interested in taking sides in this unfolding dystopia. In a film that is neither anti-Trump nor pro-Biden, the root cause of the nation’s unnervingly plausible implosion is barely mentioned and never fully explained.
