[editor’s note: this list was originally published in April 2024. It has since been updated to include new movies from Garland.]

Alex Garland is a director who you either love or hate. But regardless of how you feel about him, it’s likely you can’t stop arguing about him. And the English filmmaker has certainly given audiences something to argue about again with his last two films, “Civil War” and “Warfare.”

Set in an unspecified future/alternate history, 2023’s “Civil War” focuses on an armed conflict across America that has caused the nation to splinter. But what exactly caused the conflict, as well as what the opposing militias are fighting for, is a question the movie — which takes the form of a travelogue journeying with a group of reporters across America and through the bloodshed — has absolutely zero interest in answering. Instead, Garland zeroes in on recreating scenes of violence that Americans have witnessed via photographs and video on foreign soil, now in a much closer context, in an effect...