Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

Oh also, I think this was said already but maybe not explicitly: the alien started avoiding both horses and after it ate the fake one, so the actual plot hole is the idea that it would chase after OJ on the back of a horse.

This didn’t bother me but it’s the bit where the movie’s internal logic didn’t mesh; everything else did if you were engaged with what the movie was doing.

OJ put two giant eyes on the back of his hood, so I figured that's what the monster was fixating on.

I kept wondering if said eyes were...always there? Like is that some sort of protective thing movie workers have on hoodies to like signal others in case of night shoots or whatever, which made me wonder if he forgot they were on there? Or did I miss a scene where he attached them?

Jeans Guy 2022

It has been a long time since I’ve been haunted by a movie like this

It lingers.

finally got around to this yesterday and loved. i'm kinda shocked at how simple it seemed to be, considering all the talk i've heard about it being hits confusion puzzle box? i went in expecting to be v confused but in the end i feel like everything fit together pretty neatly by the end. maybe if i'd seen it at home i would have missed more due to small screen + distractions, seeing it in the cinema i was pretty rapt the entire time soaking up all the details. i thought Us was a disaster so this was a nice surprise.

*"being this confusing puzzle box", jfc phone

Michael Wincott was playing the role Lance Henrikson would have played 20+ years ago, wasn’t he

I rewatched King Kong last week. Obvious of most obvious low-hanging fruit: Remember how Kong freaked out when the press photographers started photographing him with flash-powder cameras?

Yeah I thought this was his most straightforward movie to date

the coin that kills Otis Sr., was that refuse from the monster or is it meant to be ambiguous, too? Either way, a coin from the sky wouldn't fall fast enough to do that kind of damage, it would have to be fired like a bullet, but that's the kind of ambiguity that truly doesn't matter.

― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Thursday, August 4, 2022 3:41 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

I do remember noticing the Jefferson side of the nickel--whatever anyone here thinks of Thomas Jefferson he's a seriously problematic figures in some parts these days.

It’s pretty obvious (to me anyway) that the creature is forcefully ejecting non-digestible material, so any escape velocity issues are not on the table

I’ve never seen Jaws but this felt very similar in spirit to what I know about that story

See "Jaws"!!!!!!!!!!!

xp I believe it’s meant to be from the monster—IIRC, earlier in the scene there is a news snippet on the radio that a group of hikers in the area have gone missing, i.e., eaten.

that quote was from Josh, for anyone not keeping a spreadsheet

Dan come to Seattle in two weeks and see the imaxified Jaws with me

xps Yeah the King Kong parallel is so obvious that I completely missed it until my second watch of Nope. It's definitely a watershed moment for any history of cinema and "spectacle": where once we had Frankenstein's monster, misunderstood and vilified due to its lack of publicity, henceforth we will have celebrity monsters driven over the edge by intrusive media attention.

You know what "Jaws"-adjacent movie I kept thinking of both times I saw this? "Lake Placid."

this fuckin ruled

Yep thought so too. Simple concept but so cleverly written. And shot beautifully. Probably as good as Get Out, maybe better

This is on Prime Early Access, if you wanna have friends over and kick in.

$20

I just rewatched Grizzly Man last night and it made me think of this movie.

this fuckin ruled

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, August 28, 2022 4:08 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i should probably check out his other movies huh

I watched it again the other day specifically to make sure I caught it one more time on a good big screen while I had the chance. Really is fantastic.

i’m surprised nobody’s mentioned herzog in this thread? or tarantino? the former for the themes, the latter for peele’s deep affection for certain types of movies and retelling them in a way that reconfigures their iconic moments in a way that includes people you don’t normally see there. that said he’s doing his own thing - i don’t want to sound reductive - but those two antecedents really jumped out at me. antlers horst even felt deliberately herzogian with his obsessive/meditative steenbeck activity, scrubbing back and forth over scenes of natural violence

Well, Tipsy mentioned Grizzly Man a couple of days ago ...

ahh!!

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?

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

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

really want to see this again. i don’t usually feel that way about movies!

apparently Antlers is inspired by Peele's own DP? But I definitely agree with the shades of Herzog.

Imagine how cool it would have been if we didn’t get a good look at the ...thing the whole time UNTIL we saw the Oprah shot slide into the tray?

Saw this last week and bloody loved it. Instinctively, probably my favourite of the three so far? I definitely thought of Herzog - thematically sure, but the Wincott character definitely had a reek of Herzog. And I could totally hear the Herzog voice narrating the weird animal snuff movies Wincott was watching in his lair.

The thing that's stayed with me more than anything is the Gordy stuff. It almost feels like a separate film. The violence is so shocking, so brutal as to be off-stage (literally obscene).

Something gnaws at me in Peele's representation of the family. It's always broken or dysfunctional, but there's an uncanny element to it. This is obvious with the family in Get Out, but the sitcom family are necessarily one step removed from this and the violence feels almost retributive, or a punishment for something - beyond the obvious 'meddling with nature' narrative - and different from the violence meted out by the creature. I need to think it through.

It was supposed to be a sitcom from 1998 but felt more like 1988

Yeah, definitely. _Small Wonder_ vibes.

haha yes!

Omg Vicki

Ned, you nailed it. I couldn’t quite define what I was reminded of.

It seems unlikely that a show like that was exist in ‘98 but even in the last 1990s there was still a fair about of network dreck - it’s just that the dreck was more short-lived by that point.

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.