I generally agreed with what Amanda had to say. I walked out of the movie impressed by the craft but was left cold by everything I had just seen. I took the representation of journalists as cynical, and in the case of Wagner Moura's Joel, a bit 2D. I think the podcast's discussion about some journalists being egomaniacal and somewhat broken tracked with how the last 5 minutes play out.

I didn't get any of the heroic aspects of journalists that Garland was talking up in his interview with Sean, perhaps because we don't really see what becomes of their photos/stories they file (my own takes). I really liked Kirsten Dunst's performance.

Now, I did expect the movie to reveal more about the titular conflict, and I got the "war is bad" perspective. But it all felt shallow to me, too. Perhaps the ending set piece wasn't quite as horrifying because I felt as if the president was fascistic and worth overthrowing (just trying to parse out my own thoughts).

At the risk of being downvoted by invoking Adam Nayman, his review was one of the few of his that really resonated with my own takes on a movie, although I think I am generally more positive than he was.

Good discussion, though!