Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

i think it it had a big enough budget to do what the script wants it to do

And one last trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgmq_8PlRY

sight unseen, i have to think Nope falls comfortably under the cultural category of "films that really need to be seen for the first time in the theater, preferably in a full house, preferably early in the run"

Goddamn it, I just looked at the release date and for about 5 minutes misread it as June 22 instead of July 22.

Yeah, opening weekend for me.

probably my most anticipated film this year

the second trailer made me far less excited, but i'm still looking forward to it

https://www.avclub.com/keke-palmer-dozens-of-takes-nope-monologue-1849194931/am

I’ve gotta figure out where and when I’m seeing this over the weekend.

Whoa.

Non-spoiler: a character wears a Jesus Lizard tee in this movie.

Enjoyed this a lot

psyched.

Tickets bought for tomorrow, really looking forward to it.

It's a bit different from his other two. Dialogue mumbled and piecemeal and could be easy to miss bits, but it's not at all hard to follow. Beautifully shot and a creative yet simple premise.

Polar opposite of Us, which I also loved.

utterly awesome movie

not one but two visual references to akira??? omfg

I kinda want to go see it again in the theater - feels like I might’ve missed some details or subtleties (and dialogue, it does get a little mumble-y).

Also I should probably see Us eventually

the scene with the blood flying out of the alien-flying-object and dripping onto the ranch house was fantastic

it was everything i dreamed

*bumps fist*

cocking my eye at ppl on letterboxd describing this as too convoluted and/or messy but then again i loved us. i just think this was much sparer and more balanced on the whole, and the times it did veer from the main narrative only made the world feel deeper (and scarier)

i also thought the character work was excellent. the snl monologue is demonstrative of this. at first it seems like exposition until you realize, when peele (like really exquisitely) overlays his actual experience of the event, that the character isn’t saying what he means

to some degree no one in this movie is saying what they mean until shit really goes down. typical hollywood

can’t tell if i’m saying utterly daft shit about this movie or not, need more ppl to see it yesterday

That monologue was head spinning

Otm brad

letterboxd needs to stop putting negative reviews of this movie in my feed. anyway seems like some ppl are struggling with the extremely understated quality of daniel kaluuya's performance, but imo he is an amazing character, and all of that character is brimming in the negative space around his performance

this ultimately ties into how i feel about the ending, which, idk if i'm right or anything, it's just a reading, but i read it as commentary on the nature of making art, that we only ever access truth through the most indirect paths, and even then it's only the briefest glimpse, a single snapshot we took when we weren't even looking directly at it. imo this contrasts pretty deliciously with the cosmic gumbo-ass director's approach to documenting truth as well as with the extremely-online-fame-chaser on the bike during the climax

I’ve seen that criticism of DK, too. Like, what, you don’t realize that he’s playing a particular kind of person?

I read him as someone who was hurting from the sudden death of his father who was I over his head keeping the family business alive but feeling like he's ill-equipped to do it

And if that was you, would you be verbose? Nah

Sorry I mean "Nope"

The moments when he went “nope” were among my favorites in this movie (there were many favorites).

I was listening to a podcast review, and one of the reviewers had been around horse dudes growing up, and this is apparently how a lot of horse dudes are - they’re very quiet and relate more to horses than to other people.

my friend jim wrote a spoiler-heavy letterboxd review that is among the more thoughtful i've read so far https://letterboxd.com/jimmc_grath/film/nope/

i feel like i was paying pretty close attention but i love that the film didn't(?) explicitly explain how the gordy's home incident tied into the rest of the plot, if it does at all... it could just be an inexplicable event that shaped the rest of steven yeun's character's life or it could have some resonance with the thing hovering behind the clouds. i'm suggesting the latter purely because of the suspended shoe, which also could just be an impossible image that yeun gets obsessed with and which feeds into his obsession over controlling and displaying this impossible image for others in the sky. anyway it's good to not tie these things up sometimes, because when i was talking about the movie with my gf and her friend we had three totally different ideas of what happened and how the incident figured into the present day events of the film

I think it may have tied in because Jupe used the incident for publicity purposes when opening his theme park, and having that little Gordy's Home museum in the back of his office, which he jokes that he 'charges' people to tour. To me that suggests that he is exactly the narcissistic opportunist type, who has a "UFO experience" and instead of telling anybody, secretly decides to create a ticketed event one mere month later featuring said "UFO/alien" without properly vetting the danger he was putting himself, his family, and the audience in. and of course, it blew up in his face.

oh yes absolutely! there's def a persistent theme of people exploiting their own tragedies for attention and money

and ppl having to process something inexplicable and horrible and unprocessable that happened to them and thus doing it in all the wrong ways

I understand the criticisms of DK's performance, but I also think they're wrong. I wasn't too fond of either of the main characters initially -- OJ too reserved, Emerald too self-absorbed -- but that changed by the end of the movie. I'm glad Peele is on a level where the studio can't force reshoots to make his leads "more relatable" or w/e. (Obviously there is also a whole racialized element to this, which I feel unqualified to speak to.)

The whole audience cracked up at the interaction between OJ and Em when the documentary filmmaker showed up with his non-electrical camera. Later I realized it felt like a moment straight out of the Key & Peele valet sketches.

as soon as Jupe mentioned the Gordy incident, I immediately knew exactly why there was someone in Jupe's audience with facial disfigurement in the trailer. and that they were going to show the incident in all of its horror (well-staged)

haha yeah i loved the appearance of his co-star

also loved the alien looking like a cowboy hat. kind of mad that the last set of trailers spoiled that a bit.

Saw this yesterday with my daughter and we loved it, though with a few reservations. One big way that Jupe's story ties in is that he didn't learn his lesson the first time that you can't tame or befriend a wild/predatory creature. Reaching out to knuckle bump your costars' apparent killer and feeding an alien horses, so much wtf Jupe! I haven't read every hidden text in this thread so sorry if I'm repeating the obvious.

Another random thought/connection:

When Parasite came out, I remember reading an interview, either with Bong or with his cinematographer, talking about how the whole set design process worked backwards from the director's hyper-specific vision for the film's final sequence (the father ascending the stairs out of the basement, into the sunny living room, with his son waiting there).

In my headcanon, I like to imagine a similar process played out as Peele set up that last shot of OJ framed by the gate, coming up out of the valley on horseback as the dust settles all around him. Like, How can you get a Black character into this iconic 1950s Western shot, and have the shot "make sense" in the context of the surrounding movie and carry the same affective weight that it would have in a classic Western, while telling an entirely original story in a contemporary setting?

Someone on the internet said the shot looks like the Muybridge film, which I don't agree with, but since the movie is sort of about spectacle, I do wonder if the entrance to Jupiter's Claim has the aspect ratio of a film frame

Also my idiotic fan theory is that all of Angel's band T-shirts have some narrative logic to them. Earth is mother nature, the Wipers is an apocalyptic event, Jesus Lizard is obviously the mix of the spiritual with the animal, being a Mr. Bungle got us into this mess and RATM will get us out

huge return to form after us which sucked ass. last 30 mins were peak spielberg level, nearly brought a tear to my eye in awe of the spellbinding magic of cinema. not as great of a script as get out, but i'm v relieved peel's still "got it"

Us is great, foh

other than tethered lupita (one of the craziest performances ever) i thoughtus was boring as hell and a clear sophomore slump

on the "good movie to write a thinkpiece about" v.s. "good movie to watch" spectrum, get out perfectly balances the two, us goes full thinkpiece, and nope leans more on the watchable end. the thinkpiece stuff in nope wasn't as flawlessly weaved into the narrative as in get out. i personally would've cut the whole steven yeun subplot (i couldn't follow the logic of keke palmer stealing his sign)

that is not a real spectrum!!!

or if it is it's the most reductive one possible through which to view these films

WOULD exist

one thing that kinda confused me: keke palmer finally gets her oprah shot at the well, but she seems to forget about it, the plate just lying there in the collection tray as the police arrive?

― Tracer Hand, Friday, September 2, 2022 12:39 PM (two days ago)

I mean, she is (understandably) more excited to see her brother isn’t dead plus it’s just a cool shot

― castanuts (DJP), Friday, September 2, 2022 12:51 PM (two days ago)

yeah that’s true. we don’t see what she’s looking at at first.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, September 2, 2022 12:55 PM (two days ago)

Hah Tracer I had the same reaction to Em in that final sequence -- "You worked so hard to get the shot, don't let the news crews snake it from you now!!"

I've already talked upthread about how much I loved the last image of O.J., but seeing it for a second time really made me appreciate the setup. You can tell by the expression on Em's face (as well as by her sudden disinterest in the photo printer) that she's witnessing something powerful. The camera stays with her reaction for an extraordinarily long time before cutting away, to the point where I started wondering if we would ever see what she was reacting to, or if the movie would end without showing us.

Thought this was pretty great - loved all the references but the thing itself isn’t derivative despite that. I will be thinking about it a while. I haven’t read previous comments so may be repeating others upthread.

The musical cues are (unsurprisingly for Peele) really superb.

And I wear my sunglasses at night
So I can, so I can
See the light that's right before my eyes

I really like seeing Steven Yeun in anything and he was used perfectly here. The snl monologue is such a great little moment for the character, both in this monologue and also during the Star Lasso Experience he alludes to the truth, in one case unknowingly.

I don’t really understand people’s confusion about the Gordy subplot. The key to the film is all in that - the exploitation of animals without regard to their comfort which obviously leads to tragedy when dealing with something that’s wild, the different lessons people take from freak occurrences, monetising tragedy…all stuff that’s important for the whole film. I thought it was interesting that Jupe references the sitcom dad’s outfit in his Star Lasso jacket with the white flowers and Mary Jo was brought there again - reminded by her presence of how there was a man who escaped the Hiroshima bombing to return to his hometown of Nagasaki the next day. The detail about her wheelchair on the roof was so awful.

The siblings are really something. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Keke Palmer’s acting before. The costume choices for them added so much to it - I think people must have pointed out that The Jesus Lizard shirt but I appreciated their separate colour motifs in the end sequence too. I really liked OJ for just being a quiet horse guy who cares deeply about his animals - I knew he wouldn’t abandon them - and I thought a really key bit of detail is how well Lucky is trained. Lucky reacts to the mirrorball negatively, but that’s an animal’s instinct that you can’t really train out of them, however Lucky didn’t kick the trailer out when left there overnight and carried OJ through hell without spooking or throwing him off in a panic. The Haywood Hollywood Horses deliver!

Emerald is clearly written to be annoying little sister but I liked her she’s also no fool and has plenty of guts and willingness to push through. Also her line about her therapist was extremely funny. The part where she gets the speech wrong (“great”) cos she’d memorised from her dad was such a nice little detail.

The scene with the film crew is a foreshadowing of the Star Lasso Experience (and Gordy’s Home, too) where there is no attempt made to work with the different rules of engagement and an outright contempt for the advice given.

When they are in Jupe’s office, it was a nice bit of redirecting when OJ is asking to buy the horses back and Jupe is only too pleased to pick up Emerald’s line of inquiry instead. A little bit of plot that niggled at me was, you don’t see any of the horses or around at Jupiter’s Claim for obvious reasons but this shouldn’t make sense to OJ - he has sold ten horses, didn’t he wonder why they wanted more? It didn’t seem like a terribly big place, didn’t he notice that there weren’t any horses around?

I (now) know Jean Jacket’s final form was meant to be a reference to biblical angels, but I thought of the Logoi in Sunless Skies (presumably pulling from the same biblical reference) which are also fucking terrifying.

But I really need to watch it again as I’m sure I’ve missed lots.

Oh yeah

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ddd42ea1502d35d92be5345/1578053082572-4EK4CP1FBBB9QS6A293A/image-asset.jpeg

The siblings’ determination to document this thing is a fairly blunt reference to their ancestor’s depiction on film riding the horse - despite the fact being recorded, it remains unknown, and for them to be believed they need proof.

Still one of my top three of the year. Only one I've seen more than once in the theater too.

One of my regrets this year is that I didn’t see this in a theater for a second time.

Yeah I wished I’d caught this in the cinema, the sound is such a big part of this

Watched this a month or so ago and really enjoyed it. Not as much as Get Out or Us (what's with the Us hate here???), but I think that's mostly because I like horror stories way more than I like westerny alien stories. Apologies for not being that deep about it.

Absolutely loved the way it threw us straight into the Gordy's House narrative at the beginning before moving to the present-day, both a concrete way of introducing thematic motifs and adding surreality to create a disorienting experience. I was surprised to read upthread that there were criticisms of Daniel Kaluuya's performance - while I don't specifically know any 'horse guys' I do know 'understands animals but doesn't understand people' guys, and I thought it was pretty spot on, especially with the added weights of grief and responsibility.

I agree with you, I found a lot to enjoy in Us.

Re Gordy scenes: they were the most horrific in the film for me. I watched the main scene again after I finished the film and you can hear Gordy panting and sounding agitated as the family deliver their lines. Also the sitcom mother’s actress is wearing a necklace that looks like bared teeth, which probably doesn’t go great with a chimp.

Us is great

The Gordy cold open was particularly effective in the cinema

The first thing my bf said when the opening Gordy scene came up was "its Travis!"

Im certain the nod to Travis the chimp wasnt an accident - more so when they briefly showed the horror of Mary Jo's injuries when her veil lifted- her mouth/lips were missing, which is what Travis did to his victim. And that woman also used to wear a veil over a hat to hide her disfigurement.

(B did a podcast episode about Travis so it made sense he'd immediately see that)

Watched this last night, thought it was fantastic, clever and gripping. I wanted to watch with the subs on because I figured there'd be background sound/speech we'd miss otherwise but I was voted down and I WAS RIGHT (re him seeing Jupe's practice - I had no idea what that was til reading this thread).

It was a nice change to have a menacing alien movie where they showed the alien instead of being coy about it a la Predator/Cloverfield.

lol wtf

Somehow I totally missed this video of Jordan Peele pretending to be impressed by a terrible metaverse recreation of Nope. pic.twitter.com/JiL4RLaZW6

— Zack Zwiezen's Skeleton 💀 (@ZwiezenZ) October 17, 2022

I hope they paid him in more than stupid VR goggles.

It was a nice change to have a menacing alien movie where they showed the alien instead of being coy about it a la Predator/Cloverfield.

The smart move was just going for it in the last trailer and making everyone think "Oh, alien spacecraft" instead of what we got.

gyac otm. i really enjoyed this. and it was beautiful.

saw this finally, and was mercifully spoiler free going in

goddamn what a trip. scary & fascinating & disorienting & unsettling & funny & suspenseful

my favorite subgenre is movies -about- LA and/or moviemaking, and this is my new favorite just for sheer number of layers; horse ranch & animal trainers; child actors & animals performing for tv; mom & pop theme parks; theme park stunt shows; cameras & photography; down to the cinematographer has to go up the hill for the better shot in the good light at the expense of his safety, after already getting the shot

so much to chew on and think about but also so much that made me laugh

[tmz guy flips off his bike]
“no way he survived that”
[distant agonized scream]

also genuinely scary!

oh yeah and all the westerns iconography was faaaaantastic

also the thing that i can’t stop thinking about with the Gordy scene is the way the studio audience are all still dimly outlined in the background while the whole attack is taking place

i think that’s the subtle element that truly fucks Jupe up bc it blurs the line of performance where nothing is off the table, he has no boundary

I actually thought they were all dead! Like the chimp had killed everyone? But he hadnt I assume?

No, you can see audience members hiding behind seats.

Damn…I never caught that!

Yeah, the first time I saw it I couldn't figure out why the studio was empty. Then the second time I caught that people are there and cowering.

Good discussion on the latest ep of the Still Processing podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/podcasts/still-processing-jordan-peele-nope.html

Thanks for sharing that - they hit a lot of angles that I hadn’t even considered about this film, and now I wanna see it again even more:

i need to listen to that! thx jaymc

Now on Peacock and there's an hour-long making of as well, which I will get around to soon.

it’s being shown on 70mm in London soon

https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/000/HO00011874/nope

Said making-of was a good watch. Also, Indiewire has the script up:

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NOPE_Script_FINAL_2022.11.29.pdf

one thing that kinda confused me: keke palmer finally gets her oprah shot at the well, but she seems to forget about it, the plate just lying there in the collection tray as the police arrive?

the impression I got was that the news guys out of shot were talking about the footage they got of the thing exploding, rendering her photo worthless?

I enjoyed this a lot - probably more the first half which took on the character of kaluuya's laconic, aimless, mysterious, half checked-out performance - and y'know these nitpicks don't really bother me but the "don't look at it or you will spook it" thing works if the animal is otherwise content to leave you alone. if it's trying to eat you it's not such a good strategy.

i know awards are arbitrary & whatever but it’s depressing & frustrating that this didn’t get a ~single~ oscar nomination

like, not even cinematography? screenplay? editing for chrissakes!? fucking NADA?

Sound design alone should have gotten a nod. It was the only movie I saw twice in the theater last year and the second time was because I absolutely wanted to immerse myself in that more thoroughly.

Lots of horror got overlooked this year. "Nope," "Pearl," could even imagine someone throwing "Barbarian" a bone. I mean, this is a world where "Top Gun" and "Avatar" are awards players, so anything goes.

xxp Yeah, it's like what they say when you're hiking in bear country. If you encounter an angry brown bear or grizzly, you can try playing dead; it might get bored and wander off, and if you fight back the bear will likely respond with even more aggression. But if it's an angry black bear, *do not* play dead, because the bear will just kill you. And so says the national park service: "If any bear attacks you in your tent, or stalks you and then attacks, do NOT play dead - fight back! This kind of attack is very rare, but can be serious because it often means the bear is looking for food and sees you as prey."

these nitpicks don't really bother me but the "don't look at it or you will spook it" thing works if the animal is otherwise content to leave you alone. if it's trying to eat you it's not such a good strategy.

As far as Oscars go, Nope would seem to have been a strong contender given that it was both a critical and popular hit, not to mention the precedent of Get Out earning several Oscar noms including best pic and best director. I wasn’t surprised that Us didn't land with the Oscars since that had more straight-up horror elements and also had a more divisive reception. But Nope is *less* of a horror movie than either Us or Get Out, *and* it's about the movie industry!

exactly

yes but it’s about how the movie industry exploits crew members and commodifies trauma. the academy only likes it when hollywood is portrayed as an unequivocal good

ding ding ding ding

and how it’s racist

I don’t think the Academy likes it when you point out how they’re racist

(sorry, couldn’t resist)

loll

On a related note, MOMI has a really well-curated series of movies that got zero Oscar nominations despite being viable, in the mix, and certainly should've been up on merit:

https://movingimage.us/series/snubbed/

I stayed spoiler-free all this time... I'm in the midst of a run through recent big movies and Nope is so clearly ahead of most of what I've seen. No need to explain or dig any further, just a fucking, fun movie.

That's actually the second best thing about Nope, the best is that Agua Dulce, for once, gets to star as itself. Decades of filling in for some other places - or in the case of Vasquez Rocks, other planets as well.

the mirrorball is just a standard tool used by VFX studios - so when OJ has one he probably just copped it from antlers or w/e

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCfHQL4kLnw

https://beforesandafters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/hdri.jpg

playing in 70mm in new york right now. our screening yesterday was weird because the first reel wasn't delivered in time so the first 40 minutes were DCP and the rest was 70mm. pretty cool to do the A/B.

What were the differences?

the 70mm print had more dynamic range and was more contrasty than the DCP - so much so that it almost seemed 'washed out' for the first few min after the switch was made. but after you adjusted to it, it was great

Finally saw it. Pretty good.
I missed what caused flying saucer to become giant blooming iris/Lily diaphanous thing.

Good to finally see it. Good film.