The Media Tourist

Kirsten Dunst plays a photojournalist in a battlezone that hits uncomfortably close to home

Kirsten Dunst & Cailee Spaeny in ‘Civil War.’

Civil War
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura & Stephen Henderson
Directed by Alex Garland
Rated R

In theaters Friday, April 12, 2024

As a team of journalists traverses a country that’s become a deadly battlefield, what they witness looks all too familiar to things we’ve seen on the evening news. But this war is different: It’s here, and it’s now—or it could be.

Set in an unspecified future that looks very much like today, Civil War follows a war-weary photographer (Kirsten Dunst), her adrenaline-junkie colleague (Wagner Moura), a young newshound wannabe (Cailee Spaney) and an older rival reporter (Stephen Henderson) on a perilous trek to the nation’s capital, where they hope to interview the besieged U.S president (Nick Offerman) before D.C. and the government fall to insurrectionist forces.

Civil War never defines or specifies the fractious divide that led to American-vs.-American infighting, but instead plunks us—and the characters—smack-dab down in the messy midst of it. There’s talk of successionist states, treason, an Antifa massacre and the disbandment of government agencies, but no direct reference to politics, parties or people. The movie suggests that, when war breaks out, ideology gets boiled down to brutal basics—an endless, senseless loop of kill or be killed, shooting because someone else is shooting at you.

Which side are you on, and what kind of American are you? It’s a loaded question, and how you answer it might cost you dearly.

It’s intentionally unnerving, unpleasant and terrifying as the journalists make their way toward Washington. Along the path of destruction, they see a crumbling civilization well on its way to collapse. A fuel stop off the interstate reveals a gruesome gas-station Gitmo; enemy hostages are hooded and executed by firing squad; highways are littered with abandoned vehicles and bodies; bombed-out buildings smoulder.

American currency is practically worthless, like “Confederate” dollars after the War Between the States—the original Civil War—ended in the 1860s. Civilians are armed with assault rifles, and Jesse Plemons adds another character to his growing catalogue of creep-out roles. And young Cailee Spaeney crawls out from a pit of corpses, which is even ickier than what she had to do as Elvis’ child bride in Priscilla.

It’s about war, yes, but it’s really about seeing war, watching it through the photos and videos of reporters in the line of fire, who risk their lives to reveal it—in the Ukraine, in Iraq, in the Persian Gulf, in Vietnam. It’s about journalism, the free press, and the media. Maybe you’ve heard that confidence in media has plummeted to an all-time low. That’s not good, but at least it’s not to the point where, as in the movie, we hear about journalists being shot on sight—at least not yet. That would give a whole new meaning to “deadline.”  

The movie asks how much death and destruction can you watch, through a camera lens or faraway, on a screen, before you become numb, burned out or even perversely pumped about what you’re seeing—images of suffering, barbarity and inhumanity. And what happens when those hard-hitting images—from those far-away places—hit a lot closer to home?

Director Alex Garland has made unsettling, thought-provoking movies before—Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men. But Civil War is in a league of its own. It’s an expertly crafted homeland horror show, an in-our-face wake-up call for a nation that seems to be on the precipice of a similarly polarized abyss, with no bridges left to cross.

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think it couldn’t happen a second time? Civil War pointedly asks us to think again.

—Neil Pond

After 40 years, the spooky-fun franchise feels like it’s run out of ‘Ghostbuster’ gas

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Starring Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard & McKenna Grace
Directed by Gil Kenan

In theaters Friday, March 22

Time to strap on those proton packs—here come the Ghostbusters, again.

Has it really been 40 years since the first Ghostbusters, back in 1984? Yep. Hasn’t there already been a couple of sequels (1989 and 2021), an all-female reboot (2016) and a slew of spinoff cartoons, comic books, theme park attractions, toys, and a hit song by Ray Parker Jr.?

Yep, yep, yep and yep.

So, is there any afterlife left in this spooky sci-fi comedy franchise?  Frozen Empire reunites stars from the original movie with later sequels for a gang’s-all-here retread of familiar faces, snappy quips, supernatural hijinks and Scooby Doo-ish scares that works hard to connect four decades of nostalgic movie dots and ghostbusting lore from before. It will likely find a decent audience of true-blue fans who dig its boisterous, noisy amusement-park vibes, but this overcrowded mashup and its complicated, convoluted plot feels like a franchise that may have finally run out of ghostbusting gas.

In this latest romp, the extended family of newbie ‘busters (Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and McKenna Grace) have relocated from the Midwest (in Ghosbusters: Afterlife) to New York City (the original setting), where they join forces with OG stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts when an ancient artifact unleashes a malevolent force that threatens to turn the world into a giant ice cube. Is it getting cold in here, or is it just a banished Byzantine demon doing his Mr. Freeze thing?

New additions this time around include Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswald, who provide bits of comedic freshness to the somewhat stale shenanigans, in which much of the fun is choked out by the overloaded, overcooked plot. Emily Alyn Lind (she was young Tanya Harding in I, Tonya) plays a chess-loving friendly ghost (no, not Casper) with an agenda of her own, furthering the teen-misfit plotline of Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace). Turns out Nanjiani’s character has ties to a long-ago group of Old World ghostbusters, and if you’ve ever wanted to see the prolific actor/comedian in Mesopotamian body armor, hurling fireballs at a giant horned demon, well, here’s your chance.  Some classic spooks (the cartoonish Slimer) make encore appearances, along with new apparitions (like the Hell’s Kitchen Sewer Dragon). There are all the gizmos—proton blasters, ghost traps, the Ectomobile converted hearse and the Ectocycle. There’s a bunch of cutesy little marshmallow men, the bite-size spawn of the movie’s original menace, the gigantic Stay Puft monster that lumbered through Manhattan.

Aykroyd blathers earnestly about parapsychology, Murray looks bored and bemused, and Rudd plays the decent, do-the-right-thing kinda guy that’s become his acting trademark. Potts gets a handful of lines, but not much else. And I’m not sure what to make of one of the movie’s other new “characters,” a spirit called the Possessor, which can take over inanimate objects. Honestly, the Possessor doesn’t seem much of a threat, inhabiting a garbage bag, a folding chair and a tricycle. And by all appearances, ghosts and those who bust ‘em have all but taken over one of North America’s most bustling, heavily populated metropolises, muscling out everyone except a scant handful of pedestrians and ordinary citizens. Or maybe the film spent all its budget on ectoplasmic dodads, and couldn’t afford to hire a lot of extras.

In an early scene, one of the kids (Wolfhard) complains that he’s not getting paid for being a ghostbuster. “We’re all being paid,” Rudd’s character tells him, “in memories.”

Memories are about all that Ghostbusters seems to have left in this sequel that does little to recapture the magic or fresh comedic surprises that were once essential ingredients, as necessary as green slime. Like you’d feel after scarfing a bagful of little marshmallow men, it’s mostly running on empty movie calories.

—Neil Pond

Kristen Stewart stars in a gritty neo-noir story of muscles, mullets and murder

Love Lies Bleeding
Starring Kristen Stewart, Katy O’Brian, Ed Harris & Dave Franco
Directed by Rose Glass
Rated R

In theaters now

There’s love, lies and bleeding aplenty in this gloriously gritty love story about two young women, toxic family ties and good things that go bad and keep getting worse.

In her second feature film (after the acclaimed Saint Maude in 2019), British director Rose Glass bears down on mullets, muscles and murder in late ‘80s America, where a mousy gym manager, Lou (Kristen Stewart), falls for a hunky female bodybuilder, Jackie (Katy O’Brian). Pretty soon there’s hot sapphic sex, crazily bulging biceps, Ed Harris caressing a caterpillar, and a growing body count at the bottom of a smoldering New Mexico gorge.

It all meshes in the bold, brutally unpredictable twists of Loves Lies Bleeding, which (in case you’re wondering) has no connection to the Elton John song of the same title from 1973’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. The road in this movie is a dark desert highway, and the movie barrels down it with bruising neo-noir propulsion as Lou and Jackie find themselves falling ever deeper into each other, bound together in a hopelessly tangled web of lust, rage and vengeance, and racing to cover up a crime.  

The performances are all wowza. Stewart adds to the growing breadth of her wide-ranging career arc, from swooning over sexy vampires and werewolves in the Twilight flicks to her Oscar-nominated starring role as Princess Diana in Spencer. O’Brian, who’s had roles in The Mandalorian and a couple of Marvel movies, flexes her real-life background as a former bodybuilder into full, brawny play as Jackie, who dreams of oiling up and winning a big competition in Las Vegas. Ed Harris (above) is pure seething menace as Lou’s estranged father, sporting a Crypt Keeper ‘do and determined to keep the skeletons of his violent past buried.

There’s also James Franco is a philandering sleazeball and Anna Baryshnikov, who costarred in the AppleTV+ series Dickenson, as the local meth head, Daisy, whose sexual obsession with Lou becomes a fatal attraction.

It’s wild and wicked and crazily original; bodies pile up so quickly, I became concerned that Lou wouldn’t have enough rugs to roll them in and dispose of them all. When Jackie’s muscles bulge and enlarge and pop out of her skin, like the biceps of the Incredible Hulk, we’re not to meant to take it literally, but rather as a hyper-visual projection of her escalating emotions. When James Franco beats his wife (Jena Malone) so badly she ends up in the hospital, well, he’ll find out he shouldn’t have done that. And when Harris’ character crunches down on a beetle, it just shows how he’s one badass, beetle-biting hombre that you don’t want to mess with.

Throughout the movie, Jackie shoots herself up with steroids; Lou even holds the syringe, with no judgement. “Your body, your choice,” she says. The raw, visceral thrills of Love Lies Bleeding might not be everyone’s choice for a soothing afternoon matinee. But for more adventurous moviegoers, it’s a buckle-up blast about the things we do, and might do, for love—blood, lies and all.

—Neil Pond

New country music movie gets some things right—and a few wrong

The Neon Highway
Starring Beau Bridges & Rob Mayes
Directed by William Wages
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, March 15

In The Neon Highway, an aspiring singer-songwriter (Rob Mayes) hitches up with a washed-up former country legend (Beau Bridges) to get a song recorded in Nashville. But the “new” Nashville has changed a lot since yesteryear, and the two aren’t exactly greeted with open arms when they get to Music City. It’s a modest little music-centric melodrama with humor, heart and hope, a B-movie about second chances that features cameos by a handful of real-life music-makers, including Pam Tillis, Lee Brice and former BR-549 front man Chuck Mead, providing a backdrop of authenticity.

Bridges, a veteran actor with more than 200 movie and TV roles, gives his character, Claude Allen, an aura of weary experience, worn down by the grind after the hits have stopped coming. Mayes has done primarily television work and even released several singles as a singer-songwriter, which meshes with his role as Wayne Collins, whose fledgling career never recovered from a tragic setback several years ago. His song, “The Neon Highway,” is about hitting the road, taking the stage and performing again—a dream both characters share.  

But The Neon Highway is a bit off-key, alas, in its depiction of Nashville and its best-known export. For starters, it doesn’t look like Nashville, mainly because it was filmed almost entirely in Georgia, home to director William Wages, a former cinematographer turned TV director who’s also one of the film’s cowriters. There are no identifiable Nashville landmarks, but there is a plug for Leopold’s, the Georgia-based ice cream company owned—not coincidentally—by the film’s producer.

But one thing in particular rings realistically true: The rejection and indifference felt by Wayne and Claude when they get to Nashville is echoed by the experiences of thousands of songwriters and artists who know how rough the road to success can be. The movie hits some flat notes with cliches and hokum, and often seems dated about how the wheels of Nashville’s modern music business really turn; record execs, for instance, don’t dress like Urban Cowboy extras from the ‘80s, with Western shirts and rodeo-size belt buckles. And whatever the “sound” of Music City might be, wafting on the breeze as Claude and Wayne arrive on the outskirts of what the movie pretends is Nashville—well, it’s likely not a sonorous violin version of “Danny Boy.”

In the movie, Wayne’s job—as an installer for a telecom company—proves a novel (if highly unconventional) way of getting his song released. Don’t give up your day job, as the old showbiz adage goes.

Bridges, as movie fans likely know, has a younger brother, Jeff, whose long string of popular films include The Big Lebowski, Iron Man, Tron: Legacy, the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit, and his own country music movie, the well-received Crazy Heart. Both actor sibs have also dabbled in music, and they’ve made a handful of flicks together; one of them, The Fabulous Baker Boys, was nominated for four Oscars. Hey, maybe they should reteam for a movie about country music singers Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam—and call it The Fabulous Bakersfield Boys. Just a thought.

The Neon Highway means well and it has its heart in the right place, somewhere in there between three chords and the truth. And it definitely does show how, as another old Nashville songwriting adage goes, it all begins with a song—even when things look a lot like Georgia. 

—Neil Pond