Short Takes

Reviewed: ‘Warfare’ and ‘The Annihilation of Fish’ 

‘Warfare’ (2025)

The brutality of war gets put on trial in the latest from director Alex Garland (“Men,” “Ex Machina”) working alongside Ray Mendoza, a 16-year Navy Seal and military consultant on movies such “The Outpost” (2019) and “Mile 22” (2018) who takes on more creative responsibilities here as co-director and co-writer. Mendoza worked in his former capacity on Garland’s last project, “Civil War” (2024), which eerily depicted a divided United States in the near dystopian future as a president tries to cling to a third term. Here, the two toss fiction aside for a reenactment of a 2006 Navy Seal surveillance mission in Ramadi, Iraq, that goes horribly off script when local jihadists ID the team and strategize an all-out assault on the platoon. It’s “Black Hawk Down” (2001) by way of “Assault on Precinct 13” (1976). As billed in the opening credits, the narrative is stitched together from the memories of those who endured the ever-surging siege – including Mendoza. As in “Black Hawk,” the filmmakers embed you with the team as it takes fire from unseen assailants on adjacent roofs or as IEDs explode, disorient and maim. (A content warning for grim scenes are a given.) The sound editing and subjective POVs are adroitly effective and the ensemble gives gritty goes from top to bottom, led by Will Poulter (also onscreen in an entirely different role in “Death of a Unicorn,” reviewed below) as a shellshocked squad leader; D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”) as Mendoza; and Charles Melton, so good in “May December” (2023), as the leader of the support squad called in for the evac. As the credits roll, you’ll see the real-life Seals alongside their thespian counterparts, though some real-life faces are blurred out. This perplexed me until I went to the press notes, which cited privacy, consent (not all were reached during the filmmaking process) and security concerns (both personal and because some are still in the service).

‘The Annihilation of Fish’ (1999)

Long in the vault after scathing reviews at the 1999 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, this dark comedy from revered filmmaker Charles Burnett, whose critical successes include “Killer of Sheep” (1978) and “To Sleep with Anger” (1990), finally makes its way to the screen thanks to the good work by the film preservation folks at Kino Lorber. Given the casting of Lynn Redgrave (“Shine”), Margot Kidder (“Superman”) and James Earl Jones and his sweet, sonorous baritone that so made Darth Vader and Mustafa jump off the screen, you’d think reading the instruction to a long form 1040 would be gold. Sadly not. Jones plays the title character Fish, a Jamaican immigrant and widower who, after time in mental health facilities, winds up in an L.A. boarding house run by Mrs. Muldroone (Kidder, who crushes it), whose spouse has also recently passed. Also moving into the complex is Redgrave’s Poinsettia, who has her own mental struggles. She and Fish both see dead people – kind of. Poinsettia’s obsessed with Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, dead since 1924, talks to him in public and even tries to marry him. Fish is haunted by a demon named Hank who likes to have wrestling matches. Fish enlists Poinsettia to referee the matches with his unseen foe. A romance kindles, and for a  moment it looks like these souls that have been tormented for so long might find solace in their golden years. But the demons in their heads take them to dark places. An elder romance – sex and all – is provocative and doesn’t often makes its way to the screen, but as delivered is an uneven mess, with dialogue that feels improvised and scenes that at times become uncomfortable to watch because the material and the tenor is so below the actors. Jones holds it together as a rooted and vulnerable Fish, but Redgrave’s Poinsettia feels like an amalgam of six disparate personas. Issues of lack of public attention to public health, the NRA and gun violence make their way into the meander but, like much in the film, none of it bites.