Review: Nope

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

It's not often that you can describe a movie as a cross between Steven Spielberg (namely, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), "King Kong," a more violent version of M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" and Guy Debord's 1967  work of Marxist critical theory, "The Society of the Spectacle."

Director Jordan Peele follows up his cultural landmark "Get Out," a creepy horror movie that tackled racism, and "Us," which posed the question about who we as a society should fear, with a movie that blends horror and comedy with a sociopolitical message much like his earlier films, but with a theme that might require a little more of a lift from its audience.

This is far from a bad thing. In fact, parsing out what exactly Peele is trying to say in "Nope" is often more fun than some of the set pieces, which - although impressive - come a little too often as well as an ending that feels a little anticlimactic. That being said, the film features some very creepy moments, most of which are aided by the fantastic nighttime photography and the gorgeously desolate location in which it's set.

Most people are familiar with the aforementioned influences, but with Debord's work as the exception. Considered a seminal text of the Situationist movement, "The Society of the Spectacle" depicts a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced by representation. It is a society in which relations between commodities have replaced relations between people.

"All that was once directly lived has become mere representation," Debord writes, signifying the importance of the image - which has replaced genuine human interaction - in contemporary spectacle-driven society. "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images." 

Not only does the film air-quote Debord, but it literally quotes during its opening this biblical passage from Nahum 3:6: "I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle." Filth is undoubtedly dumped on the home of OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) - a brother-sister team that run a ranch in the middle of the California desert that trains horses for movies, and the descendants of Alistair A. Haywood, the Black man seen riding the horse in the first-ever moving picture - by a mysterious flying object over their home. 

Prior to that, the film opens on a more curious scene. The filming of a late-1990s sitcom in which a family has a pet chimpanzee is disrupted when the chimp goes nuts and either kills or disfigures several of the cast members, while a young actor named Ricky (who grows up to be a character portrayed by Steven Yeun) looks on in horror.

Ricky is currently the proprietor of an amusement park that appears to be the Haywoods' sole neighbor, and both Ricky's past and his present doings lend themselves readily to the film's various themes. For starters, during a scene in which the Haywoods pay Ricky a visit to try to buy back some of the horses they were forced to sell due to economic reasons, Ricky gets the opportunity to discuss being the witness to the chimp attack, and instead of relaying his actual experience, he describes the "Saturday Night Live" skit made about it because, it seems, talking about the representation of the horrific event appears easier than facing the actual thing itself.

Equally as important is the scheme that Ricky has going on in the desert. While the Haywoods - after having discovered the UFO floating in the skies above their home - are attempting to capture the "perfect image" by photographing the object with some fancy cameras they bought and the assistance of an electronics store clerk (Brandon Perea) and an acclaimed cameraman (Michael Wincott, whose character reminded me of the Robert Shaw figure from "Jaws"), Ricky draws crowds to his small amusement park with promises of UFO sightings. But much like the chimp who ran violently wild on the TV show he starred in, there's a lesson to be learned about the dangers of trying to make a deal with - or attempting to tame - a predator.

Although Peele allows his audience to fill in the blanks for themselves without spelling it out too much, one of the more fascinating concepts of "Nope" - from the Haywoods trying to capture the perfect image of the UFO (or is it?) to Ricky's commoditizing his horrors from the TV show set - is how modern society transforms the spectacle into the everyday by capturing and then regurgitating horrific images over and over again until they have become ingrained in our memory - think 9/11, the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the monk setting himself on fire to protest the Vietnam War and endless other images of chaos and death.

Ricky refers to the UFO as "The Viewers" and tells his audience that they - the aliens or whatever they are - are "watching us." In our spectacle-driven society, being alive means being watched - and when people stop watching you, you no longer exist. Or, in the case of "Nope," you cease to exist when you watch the wrong thing for too long.

There's a lot to unpack in this film, and while some have criticized "Nope" for having too much to say but not following through on it all, that's far from a complaint for me. Considering the various concepts that are thrown around with the kitchen sink makes for some compelling viewing. If anything weakens the film - but only just a little - it's the set pieces that drag on and don't amount to as much as you might expect. "Nope" is a great looking film with a fantastic sound design but, as is often the case, what you don't see is often more effective than what you do, and once the cat is out of the bag in this film there's only so much wonder left to be had.

While Peele's third feature isn't quite as groundbreaking as his first or frightening as his second, it's an interesting new direction for the filmmaker. While his first two pictures were smaller horror movies with sociopolitical messaging, his latest has blockbuster designs, but at the same time incorporates the type of intellectual pursuits you'd never expect from most big budget Hollywood movies. "Nope" may be my No. 3 of Peele's movies so far, but it's still well worth seeing.

Review: Where The Crawdads Sing

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

"Where the Crawdads Sing" arrives with a reasonable amount of expectation attached to it. Based on a bestselling debut novel by a 70-year-old woman - who has been the topic of unusual news stories - and noted as a Reese Witherspoon book club selection, while also drawing Taylor Swift to sing the theme song, the picture has a particularly high profile.

But while the film occasionally teeters into melodramatic territory - including a courtroom drama that takes place throughout the film as the rest is set in flashback - it's a reasonably well-made adaptation of a popular book that makes up for its faults with decent storytelling, solid atmosphere and a good performance by lead Daisy Edgar-Jones.

The film begins in October 1969 in the wilds of North Carolina, where Kya (Edgar-Jones) - known to those in town as the "marsh girl" in a derogatory way - lives. She is arrested and charged in the murder of Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson), a popular but smarmy and particularly nasty football player who is found dead in the swamp. 

As she awaits her trial - for which the prosecution will seek the death penalty - the film flashes back to her childhood in the marsh spent with her abusive father (Garret Dillahunt) as well as her mother and numerous siblings, all of whom eventually abandon the place, leaving Kya to her own devices. 

She survives due to her own wits and some occasional help - an early romance, Tate (Taylor John Smith) who ends up disappointing her, and a kind Black couple (Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.). who run a local store and strike up business with Kya when she's young.

The film isn't without its problems. It portrays Kya as a free spirit who depends only on herself as she lives alone in the marsh. The townsfolk mostly mistreat her - save for the shop owners, Tate and a lawyer played by David Strathairn, who later represents her at her trial - but Kya's relationships with the film's two love interests - the genuine, but flawed, Tate and the villainous Chase - occasionally portray her as naive to a point that borders on unbelievable. It's a little hard to swallow that Kya would be mistrustful of the town's residents, but would trust an obvious operator like Chase.

Also, Mabel and Jumpin' - the Black couple who help Kya by agreeing to do business with her - often seem to exist solely to help the white lady in distress, although the two actors portraying them bring warmth and do what they can with slightly underwritten characters. 

"Where the Crawdads Sing" is several things at once - a potboiler mystery, a courtroom drama, two love stories, a Southern-fried backwoods drama and a coming of age story. It juggles most of these elements pretty well - although I could have done with a little less of the courtroom drama, though I'm pleased to say that I was incorrect in guessing the film's plot twist, and had assumed it would have reared itself in the courtroom context in a cheesy manner. Thankfully, that didn't occur. The actual plot twist will likely elicit some strong reactions, but it works better narratively than what you might guess it will be.

All in all, the film might not be a great one, but it's an enjoyable - and beautifully shot - adaptation of a popular book. The novel has drawn some controversy, but much of that has been filtered out of the movie. It may not be the awards-garnering film that its producers likely intended, but it's not half bad.

Review: Girl In The Picture

Image courtesy of Netflix.

The new Netflix documentary "Girl in the Picture" runs the gamut of reactions it'll likely elicit from its audience - fascination, horror, disgust, heartbreak - during the course of its often shocking, winding true crime story that would have seemed too outrageous to be true if we hadn't lived through the past few years in this country.

In lesser hands, the film could come off as lurid because - let's face it - the story that inspired it certainly is. But director Skye Borgman's film unequivocally expresses outrage at those in the wrong in this story - although documentaries typically take a side about what they present, they often do it more subtly, but in this case a different approach was warranted.

It's difficult to discuss the case at the center of the documentary without giving anything away - that is, if I could even remember all of the numerous twists that take place - but suffice it to say it's a fascinating tale. When the story opens, we learn of a tragedy in 1990 during which a young woman named Tonya Hughes was seemingly killed in a hit and run in Oklahoma, and several weeks later her young son is kidnapped.

The man at the center of all this is Clarence, Tonya's husband, who authorities automatically suspect in her death, especially after he kidnaps her young son from the school he attends in the middle of the day and takes the principal hostage at gunpoint before leaving him tied up in the woods nearby.

The investigators interviewed in the film - who apparently felt a personal responsibility to get to the bottom of this bizarre case to the extent that it haunted them for decades - note that they knew Clarence would be hard to track, and it's right about this time that I can't really give any away any more details - about who Tonya Hughes was and who Clarence was, two questions that keep resulting in different answers the deeper the authorities dug.

The wealth of interviews obtained for this film is astounding - and it includes Tonya's childhood friends, a co-worker at a strip club where Tonya worked, various law enforcement officials and several other family members whose presence in the picture is fairly shocking, considering how difficult it likely was to figure out how everyone fit into the case.

True crime documentaries are a dime a dozen these days - they're all over the place, and while the subject matter is frequently interesting, the execution is occasionally lacking. That's not the case with "Girl in the Picture," which is mesmerizing not only due to the strangeness of the case involved, but also the breadth of the interviews and the tracking of details for a case that spanned nearly 27 years. Those who watch it will likely be engrossed.