Nope - Movie Review

Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea and Keith David.

Written & Directed by Jordan Peele.

★★½ 

Jordan Peele knows how to take a benign setting and make it sinister, be it a WASPy dinner party in Get Out or Hands Across America in Us. Here, he points his camera at the outskirts of Hollywood. We follow the Haywood siblings (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer), who train horses for TV shows and commercials, and we have Jupiter's Claim, a third-rate theme park centered on Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yuen), a child actor now making his living exploiting the projects of his youth.

If you've seen the preview, you know at some point aliens come into play. I'm glad that's the extent of what I knew about them, so I won't reveal more than that. This movie is about how these people on the ground deal with what's up in the sky. It's hard to pin down one theme of the movie. "Spectacle" is one. "Bad miracles" is another. There's also a theme about animals who can go wild, be it the horses who get spooked, or as we see in the opening scene, a chimpanzee gets triggered on a TV set and attacks the crew.

The chimp was on a 1990's sitcom where Ricky was one of the actors, one of the only ones the chimp didn't attack. It's obviously affected Ricky, but I thought the movie would tie the past and present together in some "everything falls into place" way in the third act, and that moment never came. Peele leaves a lot up to the audience to interpret. 

While it had some decent scares in the middle, I'd say Get Out and Us were more suspenseful overall. This is his Signs. Signs was M. Night Shyamalan's third movie, and while it wasn't as good as The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, it was still okay. There's a lot I liked about this movie, but whenever I think about it, its problems are what I think about first. About coincidences, and characters jumping to conclusions that only movie characters would do. And that shoe. We see a shoe unnaturally standing upright in a scene, but it's never explained what made it stand up and why that matters. But it apparently does, because they refer to it a couple times. For some reason...

I think my expectations were too high. 

Last-Second 2020 Oscar Nomination predictions

Nominations will be out tomorrow so here are my last-second guesses.

PICTURE

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Mank

Minari

Nomadland

One Night in Miami

Promising Young Woman

Sound of Metal

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Maybe: Da 5 Bloods, News of the World

Should Be But Won't: The Outpost

There will likely be 9 nominees, so there's my top 8, and I think one of those two titles will be the final one.

DIRECTOR

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari

Emerald Ferrell, Promising Young Woman

David Fincher, Mank

Aaron Sorkin, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Chloe Zhao, Nomadland

Maybe: Regina King, One Night in Miami

Should Be But Won't: Josephine Decker, Shirley

ACTOR

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Anthony Hopkins, The Father

Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods

Gary Oldman, Mank

Maybe: Steven Yuen, Minari

Should Be But Won't: Kingsley Ben-Adir, One Night in Miami

ACTRESS

Viola Davis, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman

Frances McDormand, Nomadland

Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

Rosamund Pike, I Care a Lot

Maybe: Andra Day, The Unites States v. Billie Holiday

Should Be But Won't: Elizabeth Moss, Shirley

SUPPORTING ACTOR

Sasha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Daniel Kaluuya, Judas & the Black Messiah

Bill Murray, On the Rocks

Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami

Paul Raci, Sound of Metal

Maybe: Chadwick Boseman, Da 5 Bloods

Should Be But Won't: Michael Stuhlbarg, Shirley

SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilms

Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy

Olivia Colman, The Father

Amanda Seyfried, Mank

Youn Yuh-jung, Minari

Maybe: Jodie Foster, The Mauritanian

Should Be But Won't: Elizabeth Debicki, Tenet

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Mank

Minari

Promising Young Woman

Sound of Metal

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Maybe: Another Round

Should Be But Won't: Palm Springs

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Father

First Cow

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Nomadland

One Night in Miami

Maybe: The White Tiger

Should Be But Won't: The Outpost

Get Out - Movie Review

Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howery, Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel.
Written & Directed by Jordan Peele.

★★★½

Jordan Peele of Key & Peele fame has created a bizarre horror-comedy that plays with social commentary without sacrificing laughs or scares.

Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris, a young African-American man who's about to go visit his girlfriend Rose's parents' house in the Hamptons. It's a Guess Who's Coming to Dinner scenario, even though Rose has assured him her parents are progressive as can be.

And they are, though those there's something off with these upper-class WASPs. They're trying a little too hard to relate. They have a black groundskeeper and maid who don't seem right. They have a locked basement. They have a party where all of their other rich old friends are gathering, and all engage in uncomfortable racially-lined banter.

By the way, this movie still would have worked if Chris was white, and this would have been more about the generational divide, but by adding that extra element, the movie has that much more to say.