'Nope': A big-screen letdown toys with ideas

   Director Jordan Peele’s third movie, Nope, should spark heated discussions among Peele’s legion of fans. Some will find the movie daring and provocative. Others may experience more consternation than they'd like. Still others will see the movie as a highly variable exploration of multiple ideas that proceeds without offering enough by way of thematic punch.

  I find myself in the latter group.

  It’s difficult to write about Nope without spoilers, so I’ll offer only a sketchy plot summary. 

   A rancher (Daniel Kaluuya) trains horses and works as a handler of those horses on movie sets. Kaluuya's OJ is joined on his failing ranch by his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer), a lively young woman whose personality contrasts with the cowboy stoicism OJ struggles to maintain.

   The major development: A UFO — often barely visible — hovers above OJ's ranch, causing fluctuations in power and wreaking more dangerous forms of havoc. 

    With visions of fame and fortune dancing in their heads, OJ and Emerald visit a local electronics store and arrange for a techie (Brandon Perea) to install cameras at their ranch. They want to capture this amazing alien arrival and enrich themselves in the bargain.

    They're looking for what they call "the Oprah shot," exposure on a validating scale.

     The alien visitor isn’t looking to make friends. Like a vacuum, the ship (it looks like a flying white pancake) sucks up objects, livestock, and people, most of them from a nearby attraction, a ranch-like theme park run by Ricky "Jupe" Park (Steven Yeun). As a kid, the grandiose Park was part of a sitcom built around a chimpanzee named Gordy. More on that sitcom within the movie later.

  Peele, whose movies always invite a plunge beneath the surface, seems to have many things on his mind: a look at the way artificial effects are squeezing the life out of movies, a mildly parodic take on classic sic-fi, a sustained serving of dread, and a variety of other possibilities that audiences can uncover for themselves.

   For me, the problem  with Nope isn’t that it’s weird. It may not be weird enough. Peele puts a toe in Lynchian waters but doesn’t dive headlong into the pool. 

   Instead, Nope becomes a movie of hints and suggestions. Early on, Peele deals with the way Blacks played a pivotal but unacknowledged role in creating the movies. 

    Edweard Muybridge, a 19th Century English photographer,  is credited with having made the first moving picture, a man on a galloping horse. Nope tells us the rider was Black, one of OJ and Emerald's ancestors. 

   Now, the specialty business built by OJ's father (a briefly seen Keith David) is being supplanted by computer-generated horses that never bolt. 

   Perhaps we're meant to conclude that movies aren't evolving; they're betraying their origins.

   That idea -- the uncontainable often brutal nature of life -- echoes through a vividly presented episode from Park's sitcom day, an episode that’s dropped into the movie like a footnote.

   I wouldn’t call Nope an actors’ movie.  Kaluuya keeps things closes to the vest; Palmer juices the proceedings with verve; and Perea makes a credible techie who’s gradually pushed beyond his skill set.

   Michael Wincott shows up late in the movie as an assertive  cinematographer whom OJ — it stands for Otis Jr. — invites to film the UFO. OJ hopes that professional footage, as opposed to the original idea of using surveillance cameras, will enable him to save the ranch and taste some glory.

   There’s nothing wrong with a film that wants to play around with different ideas and tropes. But unlike Peele’s other two movies (Get Out and Us), Nope too often seems stuck in a creepy groove as Peele dishes out grinding sounds from the alien ship and numerous visual jokes, at least one of them qualifying as zany and inspired. Consider it a whopping goof on every spectacular sci-fi ending.

   Looking back on it, I wondered whether Nope wasn't its best when it was being playful, light on its feet and even silly.

    Given the expectations for Nope, I’d call the movie a letdown. Nope made me long for the moment when the film would find itself, and I, in turn, would find it. 

   For me, though, the movie's pleasures -- and there were some -- arrived only in piecemeal fashion. 

When the FBI invaded the Black Panthers

 

    If you approach Judas and the Black Messiah hoping to find a biopic about Fred Hampton -- a leader of the Chicago Black Panthers in the late 1960s — you'll be disappointed. In a way, director Shaka King gives us a biopic but not of the usual kind. 

    Judas and the Black Messiah stands as a portrait of a tense American period, one that encapsulates a particular '60s brand of activism, betrayal, idealism, organizing, and perhaps even delusion. It may be helpful to think of the movie as a biopic of a moment that once burned vividly in the nation’s consciousness.

    A charismatic speaker and determined organizer, Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) was gunned down in a police raid in 1969. Invading Chicago police fired 90 shots; the Panthers who were gathered in Hampton's apartment fired none.

      The FBI had used an informer -- played here by LaKeith Stanfield — to infiltrate the Panthers and ultimately to help facilitate the raid that resulted in Hampton's death. Hampton was 21 when he died

     King builds his story around three characters. Kaluuya's Hampton, Stanfield's William O'Neal, and FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons). At the risk of overstatement, I'd call that great casting. 

     All three are terrific. Kaluuya creates a fiery thoughtful Hampton. Stanfield does an exceptional job of portraying the conflicts faced by a man who came to care about Hampton and the cause and at the same time became the Judas of the title.  Plemons plays the kind of man who shields his ambitions behind a flat, down-to-earth manner.

     Once he established himself with the Panthers, O'Neal became the Panthers' chief of security, a position that gave him the access he needed to gather information on the Panthers.

      At first blush, it may be a bit much to think of Hampton as a black messiah, but the movie's religious connotations don't come from Hampton. They stem from then FBI director Herbert Hoover. 

     Hoover (Martin Sheen) thought the Black Panthers posed the greatest threat to the kind of American ideals he advocated. All that was needed to start a full-scale revolution was a black messiah. For Hoover, Hampton fit the bill.

      For those who don't remember, during the '60s, protestors of various stripes routinely branded the police as "pigs." There was no shortage of antipathy toward uniformed officers.  Still, it seems especially absurd now to hear Plemons' Mitchell equate the Panthers with the Klan.

      King makes it clear that the Panthers didn't stint on revolutionary rhetoric. They regarded themselves as revolutionaries in a Maoist mold. But King also shows that the Panthers organized schools, provided free breakfasts for kids, and tried to establish community health-care institutions.  And Hampton tried to cross racial and ethnic lines to form a Rainbow Coalition of activism.

     The movie also makes room for a tender but never overdone romance between Hampton and Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback), a young Panther who was committed to the cause.

    King and cinematographer Sean Bobbitt present the story in taut, leaping segments that evoke the fever-dream atmosphere of a moment in which the country was awakening to ideas of Black Power.

    As such, Judas and the Black Messiah stands as a memorable, powerful movie that leaves you wondering how Hampton might have evolved had he not been killed.

A road movie with a political theme

Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya create a memorable duo in Queen & Slim, a movie about a black couple that takes flight after the accidental shooting of a racist cop.

Jodie Turner-Smith brings tons of presence to the screen in Queen & Slim, a drama about a black man and woman who take to the road after they're involved in the accidental killing of a racist cop. Tall and lean, Turner-Smith isn't always behind the wheel but she drives the movie.

As the other half of the fleeing couple, Daniel Kaluuya, familiar from Get Out, has the less showy role. He plays a young man who finds himself mired in a situation that rapidly spins out of control. After the police shooting, Kaluuya's character naively tells Turner-Smith's character that he's not a criminal. You are now, she replies.

Maybe Kaluuya’s character needs to rethink his personalized license plate: It reads, "Trust God."

The two meet on the blind date that opens the movie, which unspools in ways that may remind you of other movies -- from Bonnie & Clyde to Thelma and Louise. But director Melina Matsoukas, working from a screenplay by Lena Waithe, isn't following the customary map. Queen & Slim is a road movie set against a backdrop of racially motivated injustice.

An episodic approach includes a stop in New Orleans where the couple seeks refuge with Turner-Smith's character's uncle (Bokeem Woodbine), a man who lives with several women. Bokeem's character has an improbable backstory that later comes to light.

A white Florida couple (Flea and Chloe Sevigny) adds a late-picture stop. They want to help the couple escape to Cuba where they hope to find safety.

Matsoukas, who directed Beyonce's Formation video, grounds the movie in black community support for the movie's two main characters. They inspire protests proclaiming the sanctity of black lives.

A major miscue involves the way Matsoukas juxtaposes a sex scene between the two protagonists and protests against police brutality.

There may be more going on here than one movie can handle, a story of mismatched love (she’s a no-nonsense attorney; he’s an ordinary guy), a traditional road movie, a cry of social protest and a movie with a taste for anecdotal side trips.

The points in Waithe's screenplay can be made bluntly, a defensible choice considering the subject matter but the movie piles a lot on its plate as it moves toward a finale that you'll probably anticipate before it arrives.

Queen & Slim doesn't always work. I'll say this, though: When shots are fired in Queen & Slim, they carry a violent, harrowing shock. That's more than you can say for lots of movies. This time, the violence is felt.

Too embattled to wallow in grief

Viola Davis leads a strong cast in Widows, a caper movie with plenty of cynical undertow.

In Widows, director Steve McQueen flirts with high-concept formula but never allows it to overwhelm the movie's gritty undertow.

Written by McQueen (Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years A Slave) and Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl), Widows wraps pungent characterizations around a caper-film spine. If the plot strains at times, a fine cast and McQueen's scaldingly cynical view of life in Chicago keep the proceedings percolating.

Viola Davis stars as Veronica Rawlings, a woman whose criminal husband (Liam Neeson) dies in the film's barreling, violent prologue. Neeson's Harry and four colleagues are the in the midst of a robbery when they're killed.

Harry leaves Veronica with a pile of trouble. A local gangster (Brian Tyree Henry) claims that Harry owed him $2 million. He's holding Veronica responsible for the debt.

Henry's Jamal Manning also wants to shift to a new kind of crime. He's running for alderman because he believes it's time that he had the opportunity to dip his crust of bread into the municipal gravy that the Irish too long have sopped up. Manning's brother (Daniel Kaluuya) serves as his happily brutal enforcer.

In a related plot thread, Colin Farrell plays Jack Mulligan, the incumbent who's running against Manning. Mulligan is the son of a corrupt former Chicago alderman (Robert Duvall) with a sour disposition and a strong commitment to holding political turf his family has dominated for years.

So how is Veronica going to pay off Harry's debt? As it turns out, Harry left Veronica plans for a major heist that could yield as much as $5 million. Because all of Harry's henchmen were killed in the movie's explosive opening, it falls to Veronica to gather the surviving widows into an impromptu gang, pull off the heist, settle Harry's debt and divide the remaining spoils.

Everyone in Veronica's crew suffers from need. Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) signs on because she's lost her store to rapacious creditors. Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) is one step away from becoming a full-time escort, saved only by the largess of a wealthy financier (Lukas Haas) who makes her his mistress. Amanda (Carrie Coon) has been left with an infant.

Jacki Weaver shows up as Alice's unapologetically sleazy mother, and Cynthia Erivo adds last-minute energy as a woman recruited to drive the getaway car.

A women's perspective gives the movie's crime and political theater a considerable boost. Think of Widows as feminism without speeches, a genre piece featuring female characters with real agency.

It's hardly surprising that Davis proves impressively steely as a woman who misses her husband's tender embraces but proves tough enough to lead her cronies through dangerous terrain. Displaying iron-willed resolve, Veronica takes charge of her gang of widows, no easy task with this group of independent-minded women.

Widows has enough on its mind to keep from becoming one more helping of multiplex fodder. McQueen wisely lets Davis lead the way as a widow who shouldn't be messed with -- even in a world in which felons and politicians often are indistinguishable.*

*I want to reiterate that I welcome comments, particularly those that expand our knowledge about particular films or films in general. But -- and this is the point of this footnote -- I don't publish anonymous comments. Over the years, I've found that many readers have worthwhile things to say and should in no way be reluctant to take credit for their comments. So, sign your name and chime in.

Those 'nice' folks are plenty scary

Jordan Peele makes his directorial debut with Get Out, a horror movie with a sharp and entertaining satirical edge about racism..

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) have reached the point in their relationship when it's time for him to meet her parents. Meeting prospective in-laws can be nerve-wracking under any circumstances, but Chris and Rose bring an added dimension to the situation: They're an interracial couple.

Before you start thinking I'm about to tell you about a retooled version of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, you should be aware that the new movie, Get Out, was directed by Jordan Peele, half of the highly inventive comedy team of Key & Peele.

But don't be mislead by Peele's work on Comedy Central, either. Get Out isn't a comedy, at least not in any conventional sense. It's a horror movie enlivened by a wicked satirical bent and it has something to say about the pressures imposed on black people, often by condescending whites.

When Chris and Rose meet the parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford), they're greeted by instant acceptance, even though Rose hasn't bothered to tell them that Chris is black. Earlier, Rose had assured a wary Chris that everything would be OK because her dad would have "voted for Barack Obama three times if he could have."

From the start, things seem a bit off-kilter, Whitford's character tires way too hard to show his comfort in the situation, even confessing to some embarrassment about the fact that the family employs two Africa-Americans (Betty Gabriel and Marcus Henderson) to help around the house, one working outside and the other taking care of the kitchen.

This strange pair seems to have arrived from another world, one in which everyone is polite but in a slightly off-kilter way. They're wax-works versions of people, and they seem disassociated from anything that looks either spontaneous or real.

So far, I haven't mentioned anything about the movie's horror aspects, but it's probably best that you discover them in a theater. Be aware, though, not much happens in Get Out that Peele can't shake a bit of thematic resonance out of it.

A high point arises when family friends show up for a party, a collection of white folks who manage to convey a variety of deep-rooted prejudices without breaking stride. And, of course, they seem a bit odd as well, almost parodies of white people.

The only black guest at the party (Lakeith Stanfield) is as strange as the others; he's dressed like a refugee from a country club and accompanies an older white woman.

Much of the movie hinges on Kaluuya's ability to convey Chris's reaction to all the alienating weirdness that he encounters. Kaluuya's performance never sacrifices Chris's dignity or humanity. As a photographer, Chris becomes the movie's eyes. We're seeing the white world from his perspective. It's not a pretty sight.

Signs of looming trouble emerge when Rose's bother (Caleb Landry Jones) shows up, and immediately makes it clear that he's gone over some sort of hostile edge.

To further complicate matters, Keener's character is a psychiatrist who knows how to hypnotize people. Scenes in which Chris falls under a hypnotic spell and free falls through space are rendered in an abstract way that Peele manages to pull off.

Lil Rel Howery hovers around the story's edge, providing the most obvious comic relief. He's Chris's best friend, a TSA agent who -- from the outset -- urges Chris to be suspicious about what he's getting himself into. He's a comic figure, but also the voice of common sense -- and perhaps even conscience.

Because Get Out has no interest in concealing its horror-movie pedigree, Peele can't resist a bit of end-of-picture gore, but there's a satisfying revenge aspect to all the carnage.

Get Out marks Peele's directorial debut; he has accomplished something brave, sinister and stark. Amid the jolts and creep-outs, he has made a perceptive movie about the intermingling of racism and ordinary life.

I suppose you have to have some taste for horror fully to enjoy Get Out, but Peele has served up the season's sharpest hunk of weird fun; by the end, Get Out has turned into a bloody (I mean that literally) good time.