KCxWUH: Jordan Peele Trilogy

I'm so confused. Now we're going now we're cooking with grease, as they look now work, Now we're cooked with grease, and I we're cooking with grease. I prefer to cook with grease. I only cook with grease. My god, oh my god.

Do you know what I find bizarre? That Jordan Peele can't make a movie without fucking imagery in it, and he can't make a movie without symboling about George Jordan? What are you do him? Make straightforward movies? You're putting this m visual medium to the task.

I know, right. God, Well, ladies and gentlemen, On this episode of the Culture Cast X, wake up heavy because Mark Begley's here, Ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna be talking about, as we tend to do, three movies, and if you notice the name of this episode, you know what we're gonna be talking about, because he's only done three movies. We're gonna be talking about the first three films from one mister Jordan Peel, one half of Key and Peel. Though I guess anymore, that's not a thing that anybody cares about. But we're gonna be talking about Get out us and nope, and I'm joined by my good friend.

As I have mentioned my good friend in yours all the way from the Wake Up Heavy podcast, mister Mark Begley, Hello, Chris, it's so lovely to be here today. Would you have voted for Obama for a third term? Best president of my lifetime? God, that would be Ronald Reagan? Trickle Those economics are still trickling down as we speak, trickling down the crack of my ass.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the quote of the night. But yeah, we're gonna be talking about Jordan Peel's three films, get Out, Nope and us. Not in that order though, So let's get right to it with get Out. You got your two rush? Do you have your gut?

Do you have your cozy clothes? Got it? What do they know him? Black? Should they?

You might want you, mom and dad. My black boyfriend will be coming up this weekend. I just don't want you to be shocked. But he's a black man. I never seen you like this before.

Family, taking road to come back. Get your damn pants up to your damn stomach. So you guys coming up from the city. Yeah, we're just heading up for the weekend. Can I see your license?

Please? He wasn't driving. I didn't ask who was driving. I asked to see his ID. Call me dean and hungry, my man, So how long has this been going on?

This thing? Yeah? We hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents and they died. I couldn't bear it. Let them go.

Do you smoke in front of my daughter? I'm gonna quit. She could take care of that for him. How hypnosis? I'm good.

Actually, you're ready for this. I'm back and to be so look, I go do it. My research. Apparently a whole bunch of brother's been missing, and it's suburb but it's cool, right, you're not scared of this man. I could see no brother Ron here.

Chris was just telling me how you felt much more comfortable with my being here. Yo, sorry man, Yo, Bros. We gotta go, Bros. Just get a key. I don't know where they are.

Ros, sink into the wait wait wait, it's a terrible thing, terrible things Amaze. There's too many white people are getting nervous. No, No is a terrible things. Alaze. Get Out came out in twenty seventeen.

It is which like feels like a lifetime ago. I actually, yeah, he's been out for five years. The reason that seems so weird to me is when I think of two thousan sixteen and the previous guys, the beginning of his term. That seems like nothing good happened during that time. But it's just weird to me that that actually happened.

Yeah, a couple of years after twenty sixteen. Yeah. But the film stars Daniel Klluya, Alison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, and Katherine Keener. It's written by Jordan Peel, It's produced by your friend in mind. He could do no wrong at the time, Not so much anymore, one, mister Jason Bloom.

And the film is all about Daniel Colluia playing Chris Washington, a black photographer who goes on a weekend outing to his white girlfriend's home in rural upstate New York. Yeah, and he finds out that things aren't as they see. We'll be talking spoilers, but before we talk about the movie, go watch this, Go watch all three movies. I think, go watch all three. Definitely we're gonna be talking spoilers.

On all three though, just fair warning here, So Mark, tell me a little bit about why we're talking about all three movies, but more specifically why Get Out as well well all three because Nope became available on bod late last month, the early YEP early this month, and so we we My wife was like, oh, we need to watch that, and I'm like, well, it's not out yet. It's it's still in the theaters, it's not out on VOD said as soon as it is, we'll watch it. And when it popped up or like, okay, Friday night were when it popped up on Rio D week week, we watched it, and I'm like, okay, well we might as well watch the other ones, because before when my wife and I had watched Get Out on Us, my daughter was still too young, still kind of a scaredy cat when it came to horror movies, but she watched Nope with us obviously, and then I'm like, well, let's watch the other ones, and we did each success succeeding weekend.

We watched kind of went in reverse order. We watched Nope and then Us and then get Out, and I thought we might as well talk about them. And it's three movies, which is kind of our our thing. That seems we're just going through movies super fast. We'll have nothing to talk about here pretty quick.

What are we going to do? Beckley? There's all kinds of trilogies out there, they sure are. But and I guess before we kind of get into get out, this three set of films I would consider to be very tonally the same. Yeah, yeah, exploring similar topics, similar themes, and they're rankly they could exist all the same universe for all that's true.

Yeah, they're all high concept. Their boy, the third one puts concept in high to task in a way that I was not expecting. But yes, all three of them are very high concept, and I think, can't we just say this here? I think Jordan Peel kind of seeming to be a high concept kind of guy, but I think I think any one of us at this point, yourself, For myself, I appreciate that about him because if I were making something, the things that I've worked on and approached and started on scriptwise have been high concept because I think anymore like that's the final frontier of filmmaking is really just like making whatever and not being bound by genre. Sensibilities, which I think, at least with the one of the movies we're going to talk about, it seems to be everybody's big stumbling block with it.

Well, I think for him, it's that looking for an original idea, or not necessarily looking for one, but having an original idea that necessitates that high concept, because high concept things can be problematic. I think when I think of high concept, I always go back to Lost and how when that played out over all those seasons and then for a lot of people, and I include myself on this failed at the end. It's sometimes that high concept can get you locked into things that you can't really work out of successfully and become a stumbling block. And I would say to a certain degree in a couple of these films, that sort of bears out where once you start thinking about it, if you start tugging at a thread, your sweater is gonna just totally unspool at your feet.

It's best not to do that, especially while you're sitting, you know, in the middle of watching the movie. But they can lead to that where you're going, well, how does that work? How would that work? How would just you know? They're interesting concepts, they're covered I think for the most part with the exposition in the films, but if you start really digging deep, it's like, well, that doesn't make any sense.

But again, that's kind of like a Twilight Zone episode, which I sort of feel like you were getting at with, you know, the high concept thing with him bringing back the Twilight Zone. High concept entertainment almost at its core, one might say, and yeah, boy, you know side tangent, Oh my god, that Twilight Zone is atrocious. Do not watch it. It's not great, it's it's it's so topical that the longstanding value of it will be none zero, Like you're making an episode about twenty sixteen's president and all that. Like, I don't want to revisit that.

I don't need to see entertainment about that. I lived it, and I don't think people in the future are going to return to the Jordan Peel Twilight Zone. They'll return to the original one. I'm sorry, And I would say, almost universally throughout the reboots of all the Twilight Zones, the original show did it better. There are a couple good episodes from each of the previous or further iterations of the show, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the nineteen eighty five show has a lot worth watching, because it doesn't.

And the two thousand and one with Forrest Whittaker, which I've seen all of, has a couple good episodes, but it's not worth watching in its entirety. And Jordan Peels one is just a mess, a mess. It's really not great. That's what I heard. And it was on a came out on Paramount Plus right, and which we didn't have at the time.

We have it now so I could watch it, But I had heard about the disappointment from most people on it and just never took the chance. I totally forgot about the two thousand's one, to be honest. I watched most of the eighty five one when I was because I was like sixteen, right, and that's horror adjacent, so that was sort of my thing. I remembered enjoying them to a certain degree back then, but haven't returned to it. But to your point, I mean, we have this director, Jordan Peel, film writer, director, really who you know?

This movie becomes his calling card, and this movie guarantees him first looks with Universal, This guarantees him the job with Twilight Zone, so we just it's worth mentioning that this is the movie that puts him on the map. This movie is nominated for an Oscar. This movie is nominated for Best Performance by Daniel Kaluya. This movie is taken seriously by the filmmaking cognisante as it were, which is good because this is his best movie. It's interesting to me because I was aware of him because of Key and Peel.

But I've never watched a single episode of that show, which is too bad, because it's really funny. I every I've seen a lot of the skits just randomly, you know, the Grimlies to the Hingle mingleby. Have you seen the football one? The football one's pretty famous as well, the Hingle Mkringleberry one. Damn, a lot of really good ones.

Everything I've seen has made me laugh pretty hard. I just sketch. Comedy for some reason has not interested me for a lot of years. But it's interesting to me to think was that show that successful that he was given? Not carte blanche.

Let's say, I'm sure get Out didn't cost a whole lot, but it's like here, yeah, you have this interesting, kind of strange maybe a little high falutint idea for a horror movie, go ahead and make it. I mean he wrote the previous film was that thing with Key Keegan Michael Key Key about a cat? Yeah? Yet, and I'm like, talk about movies that I forgot? Was that that successful?

Then? No, that's so what happened happened. What happened was Sean McKittrick meant met with um Sean McKittrick met with Jordan Peele. Sean McKittrick has produced a fair amount of movies. Uh, Donnie Darko, Black Clansman, Hell Baby, World's Greatest Dad, Southland Tales.

So he's produced. He's a prolific producer. Strange movie Sarah, Yeah, yeah, well, I mean again get Out. It's a kind of a weird movie too, right, Yeah, yeah, But Keegan Michael Key introduced Sean McKittrick to Jordan Peel, and Jordan Peele pitched him the idea of get Out, and he was like, I'm going to pay you to write this movie. And you know what, if I had been sitting across from Jordan Peele and he had pitched this movie to me, I would have figured out ways to make money or given him money to do it too, because as kind of wrote as this movie may seem now in twenty twenty two, it was mine blow in twenty seventeen and it was like, really, I don't A topical is not the word it was and it still is.

But there's more two with that, Nat. It speaks to an experience that a large percentage of people in this country have that a large percentage of people in this country do not, and we'll never have and have a hard time understanding. And I'm not saying that this movie is the cure all for that, but this movie does a lot to give you, as an audience member, an idea of what that could feel like, should you feel it well. And it also it covers two experiences because you can and I can relate to her family in many ways. The microaggressions, you know, the stuff that the dad does, the progressive dad with the my man and you know, like she explains to him when they're up in the bedroom, like I don't know what my dad is doing with that my man thing.

He's probably never said that before in his life, and now it's just coming out of his mouth, you know, right and left right. So that stuff is interesting as a white person to go like, oh, yeah, I recognize that. I've had friends or family members act like that. I understand that as well, and you know, feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable about it as you should, and then you can sort of get We can never fully understand the experience of the Chris character, like you know, you and me can't fully understand that, but you get you see how he reacts to it throughout it pretty much just like try us to let it roll off his back, and so you can you can see that too, you know, if you have friends that are people of color and how oh this situation might have made them feel awkward?

Why didn't they say anything, or you know, stuff like that. It's just that dynamic. It's it's so it's not underplayed, but it's just running through the film. Nothing is like in your face about it, but it's all very insidious throughout, and I really appreciate, appreciate that it's that low key, you know, like I said, microaggressions of course, macroaggressions at the end. But at the end of the movie, Look, the movie goes off the rails because it's a movie and it has to right and it's a horror movie, and it's a high concept movie.

There is a movie in here where there is no like Little Ray Howard, he says it black sex slaves. There is a movie without that where it's just guess who's coming to dinner? And that's all it is, And that is what that movie is right in a lot of ways. But that's I mean, that's what I love about this movie is it goes guess who's coming to dinner, But let's make it a fucking nightmare. Like, let's make it a literal nightmare for everybody involved.

And you know, it's that taking of the dial and turning it just a little bit. And that's that is what I think is going to be, at least in the first movie we talk about in the last one, maybe not so much the second one, but the first and last one definitely a dial shifting, a saying this is what you're used to, this is what I'm going to show you instead, And it's giving you, like you said, a base of which you are comfortable with, but then putting you out of your element almost immediately, but still within the same confines of what you're expecting. Because this movie is the Stepford Wives in a lot of ways, right, in a lot of ways or yeah, and that's I was going to use another Ira Leven example with Rosemary's Baby, where and this is true to The Stepford Wives, where the protagonist thinks one thing is going on and it is that sex slave the little you know, little Rel Howard is saying that comedically.

But the idea is that these white people in upstate New York are kidnapping black people to make them into slaves. That's what you're getting from the from the start of the movie. And once he finally meets the Andrea Hayworth at the party, at the white people party, then he starts thinking that as well, like, oh, yeah, that's what they're doing. That's why they have a maide a black maid, that's why they have a black grounds keeper. And so as an audience member, if you hadn't already pretty much had its spoil like I had before you saw it, that's what you're expecting, is the hypnosis and all of that is leading up to him being turned into somebody else's slave for lack of a better term.

I mean, that's what he thinks is going on, slave of the mind, slave and just you know, like like they talk about Bradley, Whitford says, you know, I know how it looks, you know, a white family with black servants. So I think his expectation is, Oh, they're going to turn me into somebody's husband or somebody's groundskeeper or something like that. And I'm and I'm I'm going to be hypnotized so that I don't try to run away. So I have a question. I have a question for you that my wife kind of posited to me, and I was wondering this myself, and I kind of had an answer.

Do you actually think that when there's not someone at the house, that they're trying to kidnap and force into slavery? I don't think that they're groundskeepers and maids? What sense that people aren't there? Because my wife was like, why would they be like that when nobody's there, and I was like, I don't think that they are. My internal logic was like, they're just walking around because again, for all intents and purposes, that's the grandfather and the grandmother.

Which I want to point something out. This is a perfect movie for me in a lot of ways. Aside from three lines of dialogue, two lines of dialogue and one one action by a character Alison William saying Grandma, Alison William saying go get him Grandpa. And then the character who is the groundskeeper slash grandfather, she sees him get flashed, she still hands him the gun even though she knows is what happens, and she lets herself get shot. Outside of those three instances, which happen in about the span of five minutes at the end of the movie, this is a perfect movie because everything that is done to give away the story before they give it away whole cloth is done masterfully.

Is not even a strong enough word. Watching this movie. Every time you watch it, you will get something different from it. You will see something different or see something that Jordan Peele put there intentionally for you to pick up on. He and Alex Garland man are just killing it with utilizing the film language, the literary aspects of the film language in an interesting way, using themes, using iconography, using double plays with words and innuendos, and double speak with lines of dialogue.

Nobody else is doing it as good as Jordan Peele and Alex Garland are right now, at least in more mainstream contemporary filmmaking that's palatable for a large your audience. I mean the whole thing with the there's black mold in the basement, or we kept a piece of Grandma in here, like if you know what he means, and he means it, it's amazing. But the first time you watch it, it's like you don't think anything of it. I just picked up today on the grandma line. I'm like, oh, good, you keep a piece of her in here?

Like and then yeah, And I never and I feel stupid for not realizing this. Never caught onto the connection between Grandpa and the creepy running thing he does at night, And I'm like, well, shit, does he just explains, Yeah, this whole backstory is that he was an amazing racer and got beat out by Jesse Owens. He almost got over it. I love that line. Almost got over it.

It's such an amazing life. He almost got over it. So now he might beat Jesse Owens. Yeah, because he's in a superior black body. Yeah.

And another another thing that I picked up on I think it was probably the second or third time I watched it is when they get pulled over. Alison Williams doesn't want him to hand his idea over, not for the altruistic reasons, you think, but primarily because then there's a paper trail of him having been pulled over. Yeah, And it's just like all of these little tiny things that once you've watched this is really one of these movies you have to watch twice, at least three or four times, probably even more so just to pick up on. Yeah, the amount of care that Jordan Peele puts into the writing of the script is really like impressive, Like, there are very few directors who do that anymore. There are very few writers who that make it into the movie.

Frankly, I mean it made it into the movie because Jordan Peele directed it right right, Well, That's what I was thinking when I was watching Nope for the second time, was like, none of this stuff is getting explained to me expositionally, and I appreciate that. Was the same thing that I appreciated about Men. You know, you brought up Alex Garland and it was like, oh, yeah, there's this, there's that, there's this, Okay, And it did take a second viewing. And I'm sure so I've watched Us and get Out three times now two pretty well, I've probably watched get Out more than that. I should say, but two pretty recently with twice in the last month.

I've watched all three of these twice in the last month, and you definitely get get something each successive time. But back to your question about the grandparents. I think I remember asking myself that after the first time I watched it, like, bol why would yeah, like why would they be the servants? They weren't. Yeah, No, they just they hang out, they're at home as the grandparents, and then they have to act like servants when they're bringing somebody home to I think it's a counterpoint to that scene.

And again, there are a couple I mean again I say three things that make this not a perfect movie, but like still like three things, it's pretty much still a perfect movie. There are some scenes in this movie that I feel like we're added in for the benefit of the audience and not for the benefit of the narrative, Like when Daniel Coloya goes upstairs and you see him going up the stairs during the party and then everybody stops and looks up and is quiet, Like I didn't need that scene. I knew that's what was happening, you know what I mean, Like that's my assumption, Like there are some things in this movie that feel like they were added because of studio notes, because they're like, we want you to make sure that the audience understands, like the Grandpa and the grandma line, though I hope those weren't in the original script because those feel so ham fisted, Like I think you've given me enough for me to understand that's right.

What hat like if you don't get that by that point in the movie, Like, it's your fault, not the movie's fault, because the movie is not being the movie is being subtle about it, but it's ramping up. It's going away from subtlety, and it's ramping up, and I just don't like get him grandpa, Like I literally cringe every time she says it because it's just so over the head. It's like I get, yeah, yeah, I get it. I get I think I think probably a lot of people would not get it. It probably would have taken me a couple times to understand that it was grandma and Grandpa, not just I mean, it makes sense that it's in because they're at their house, but like the other guy, the Andrea Hayworth character who gets turned into somebody's husband, or the husband gets turned into him or however you want to look at it.

It's like they're not just doing it for their own family members, they're doing it for other people. Surprise, there weren't a couple more. They're all party. They're probably again that's I'm with you. But I feel like that would have been too much.

It would while it would have been hard to less believable, right, explain why, you know, why are all these old white people with all these young African American characters Like look, I think that I think you would agree that the party scene is obviously like a huge part of this movie, and it's like twenty minutes of the movie. It feels like it goes on forever. The part already seen because you have everybody showing up, and then you have everybody meeting him, and then you have Daniel Kluya and Stephen roots great scene. God, Stephen root Man just like in this movie for two scenes pretty much steals it though. And then you have the auction thing and then he goes back and it's it's a long scene, but man, it's just full of so much going on, like, oh, I'm gonna introduce you to these other people, and then this Asian guy is going to ask you this question, and then you've already been harassed by these people and your phone keeps getting unplugged.

Yeah, it's yeah, it's there's a lot. This movie's a lot. There's a lot going on. It's asking a lot of you as an audience. I think also, it's it's asking you to kind of, like you said, get on board with the high concept nature of it, because there are things that would easily make sense, like for them to just like the cops wouldn't react that way.

I have a hard time with that in the movie, the way the cops react to Lil Ray Howary when he comes to the police, it's like unbelievably bullshit, Like, here's a picture of this guy. This guy disappeared, right, That's that drives me crazy. Yeah, it should have just been look up, Andre Hayworth. Is this not the same guy that's on my fucking phone? Right?

So he's there. You have a missing person case. Somebody's reported this man as missing and it's all over the internet months six. I have a picture of him. So he's here in this town.

You need to investigate. That's all he needed to do. That scene is very frustrating to me. It feels like it's from another movie, like a movie that's not as well written as this one. Right, it feels like Jim Carrey movie or something.

Yeah, you know they're not going to believe him. It would have just been I mean, that's sort of a different movie though, getting the cops involved and you kind of have to write around. But they don't believe him because of what he says. That's the problem. It's not because of what's happening.

They don't believe him because he goes they're sex slaves right, right, right, Which is part of the frustrating thing is just get to the point. There's a man that's missing. I have a picture of him from this party, so take care of it. He needs to end up on his own. So that's how we get there.

Well, with this iteration of the movie, that's what happens. I might be one of those people who thinks that the alternate ending for this movie should have been the real ending, the alternate ending of the cops do show up and he does go to jail. Like, I appreciate that. The audience is well, I mean, what if you go and do any research about this movie you'll find out that the alternate ending was the actual original ending for the movie. But the audience likes Daniel Coluias so much because he's a fucking charismatic actor that, surprise, surprise, they didn't want to see him die at the end or go to jail or be put in And you know what, I'm sorry, but this is going to sound really terrible, but I'm sick and tired of the Western audience's opinion on shit like that, because it's just everything doesn't need to be all happy, happy, fucking sunflowers and rainbows, especially the horror genre.

Of all the genres, this is the one where you can get away with it and no one's going to bat an eye. It might have just been a little too heavy for that time period, be heavy for any time period. If this movie had come out today, it would still be heavy, right. But I'm very happy that every time that door opens and it says airport, and I know it's fair, that's fair. Whatever his name is in the movie, whatever Rod, And because yeah, I don't want that cop from earlier in the movie showing up there, Oh no, I want it to be two different cops, two completely different cops.

Then it doesn't even matter, like if you're the cop and you come upon him strangling her, like no matter what he says. You know. But here's the thing, you know what. The problem with that is that ending would be unbelievable in and of itself because the house is going to burn down, but they're still going to be proof of all this bad shit going on. So you're telling me that he lives in such an unjust world that they couldn't figure out what was going on for themselves because guess what, that guy's still missing, Andre Hayworth is still missing.

Right, Well, hopefully they get that sorted out. But see, that's the thing because in the ending where he's in prison, it makes it seem like the cops were hyper and nepped and never went and looked into it. Yeah, so well, I like the I like the you know what, Actually, the ending that might have worked the best was the third proposed ending that they never shot, which was Chris becoming a sex slave and like low Ray Howry going into a gated community, going into a house and seeing him and saying, hey, Chris, and you know, I don't know who you're looking for. That might have actually been the most horrory ending. Yeah, and that's probably the end realistically, that's kind of the ending the movie probably deserves in a way to pay homage to the films, right, that's to pay homage to the movie that Jordan Peel admitted is the inspiration for this movie, which is The Stafford Wives.

I think that's the ending the movie kind of deserves. I still really like that he gets out of there with Rod. I can't I understand. I mean, I like the ending the way it is now because it is positive. Like, don't get me wrong, I still like seeing a character not get completely demolished by the forces of evil, and there is something to the point of let's stop showing black trauma.

I mean, I agree, I'm not you know, I again can't even comprehend the daily yeah, you know, feeling that that generates. But just from watching movies where that is a topic, it's it's it's rough, man, It's like hard to watch that constantly. So I'm happy that he gets out of there. But see again, I always assumed that it would have, you know, regardless of what the proposed alternate endings are. When I see that those flashing lights and hear the siren I assume it's the cop from the beginning, and he's fucked because he already dealt with this guy.

So, you know, whether it was other cops or the cops that little Rall's talking to or whatever. In my head, it's going back to that's the Chekhov's cop. That's the same dude that we saw earlier. He already had an incident with this guy. He's not gonna yeah, he's not gonna fuck around this time.

He's gonna get that idea and so much more so. Well, and again, I mean, and I'm with you, you know, as much as I always say, you know, I would. I think I probably said it when we did the original episode on the show. When the movie came out, like, I wish that they had gone with the alternate ending. I agree, Yeah, it's probably best to not keep piling on.

But it's a horror movie, right, It's a horror movie being directed by someone who understands horror movies. And you know as well as I do, what genre has happy endings? Not horror. Horror genre is not the even when see that's the thing, he gets a happy ending, full stop, there's no this is a weird horror movie, because in a lot of horror movies, there's the little coda, there's a little stinger, there's something in us, there's a stinger, for fuck's sake. I mean that movie is almost predicated on the stinger existing.

And Nope, not so much. But this movie, like it doesn't have that, which is in and of itself kind of surprising because you would expect, you know, how about the how about the fourth alternate ending here, let's go one further. Chris, Chris finds, you know, Lowerell Howard refinds, Chris takes him back, but he the surgery had had happened. He just doesn't realize it. See those two, That ending and finding him as a sex slave work for me as horror movie endings.

Right, it's not, it's not. It's it's the twist. It's the Stepford Wives thing. It's the ocean or the invasion of the body snatchers thing where shit dons Donald Souther end is one of them. Fuck best tried its best as you could, but you couldn't stop it.

It's a downer, but it's that horror movie downer. It's not real life downer. I don't want to see the real life down, you can't escape the forces of evil. In the two alternate endings we're talking about. The real life evil is the cops putting him in jail.

Yeah, but again, like at the same time, that's this whole movie is the intersection of real life horror end you know, horror movie horror, which is why that ending would like kind of make sense because his real life has to be affected by the you know, the fictitious horror. I know. It's the hard ending to swallow, and in a lot of ways, it's the ending that like nobody wants for this movie. But you can watch that alternate ending and it hits like a fucking mac truck because you see him and he's just like, what what can I do? There's nothing that I can do.

And I appreciate the hopelessness of that ending, because yes, it does strike on chords of real life things that all of us have been seeing. But it's kind of the ending the movie deserved. It's not the movies. It's not the ending that people wanted though, which I appreciate, and that's part of the viewership experience in watching. Hey, if I had been in that test audience, I would have said Nope.

Yeah, see that probably would have too. It's because we have the positive ending that we can talk about the alternate ending. And you know what, I wonder if Jordan Peel when he was told, Hey, we need to change the ending to give Chris kind of the the out. I wonder if Jordan Peele wasn't like, oh, thank God, like thank you for giving me that, you know, because again, I you know, I can't help. But wonder if he kind of fell in love with the character of Chris or if he just saw him as a means to an end to tell a story, because in a lot of ways, like we learn a lot about Chris as a character, but he's also kind of a cipher in a way.

Yeah, we know things because they're pulled out of him, not because he's offering them up willingly, which again is very much a very on point thing for for what this movie's going for. So I love he's a sure he doesn't show the whole, nor should he want to be, you know, given the climate of art, given the climate of everything, then all and the things that people are asking him to share right ridiculous. And really I think that the main villain of the movie really is Katherine Keener more than like anybody else, she feels the most dastardly of all of them. Oh. Absolutely.

When you get to the end, when he's confronting her in her office, it becomes very clear that in his mind, oh no, this is this is the mastermind. Yeah, it might be his family, the husband's broadly Whitford's characters family, you know, Dad, and doing this procedure. Behold the coagula, Ladies and gentlemen. This is a visual this is not a visual medium. But Mark Begley's reaction to the order of the coagula was perfect.

I don't like that word coagul. Yeah. Yeah, but the look in her face and the look in his face, it's like, I'm surprised his killing. It doesn't even seem like he kills her, really slashes her across the face and she drops. It seems like he would have taken more time with her, because she's the one that got into his fucking head, right, And that's the thing, that's the thing that he didn't want, that's the thing he was warned about, and he let it happen.

And because of her, this other stuff can happen. They can go through with this procedure. Almost the only reason it can happen is because she is able to tenderize the mind, as it were, to make it more willing to accept someone else's brain. So their brain is being put into kind of your brain stem, part of their brain. Yeah.

Yeah, that's when it starts to like it, yeah, do this. It becomes a little heiggledy piggledy, It becomes a little high concept. It becomes a little kind of dorky. I'm gonna take part of your brain now and put that brain in and that just it works. It's like, sure, okay, may it works?

Yeah, like fine, you know what. By the end of the movie, I'm on board with it. I think that they hang less of a lantern on it than they do in stuff like Us and definitely a nope, but for sure in US. Right, And so it's let it gets in the way of the narrative less. I think in this movie, it's like, Okay, it's like two minutes and then you get the little video with Richard Hurd and you know, the family and whatnot, and then you have Stephen Root come in and it's like, you know, we can talk and I can kind of talk to you about what's going on.

But I'm glad, Yeah, I'm process. I'm glad. That's all. That's all it was, because it leaves it up up in the air more for me to ask questions, and I don't need those answers, and the movie doesn't need to give me the answers. I'm like, how specifically does this work?

And what exactly are you doing? It's like, I don't give a shit, and the movie doesn't need to tell me. No. The more you get into it, the more of those threads start to un more you get into it, the stupider it gets. Is really just the meanest way to think about the means too much.

Don't think too hard, otherwise you might, like you know, fall over backwards from holding your breath trying to figure out what frame of mind they put themselves in to say we'll take the brain and we'll cut it open. It's like, whatever, whatever, fine, I believe you. There's one guy walking around who that clearly happened to already, so it must work. Three people, Like three people, yeah, at least, yeah, that we see three people that we see, but there's gotta be like five or six more at least plus that they mentioned kind of off hand that the sun is also going and doing it so well. I mean, there were a lot of pictures in her little box, but she didn't.

But Alison Williams wasn't the one who got Lakeith Stanfield. He was, which, you know, just a right point. And I appreciate the whole suit of armor thing. There were some I did you remember watching the preview for this movie, and there was some stuff that did not make it into the final film. There's like a skull of like a deer or something that he sees at one point, and then it feels like the whole armor thing was meant to be more of a thing.

It's been so long. It's on the poster, at least the whole suit of armor things on the poster, which is in one scene of this movie. Yeah, yeah, it looks cool. Yeah, and you want to reminded me of it reminded me of Hobo with a shotgun. Yeah.

Remember there's isn't there like a character in that movie that's like just like a suit of armor? I think. So it's been a while since I watched that. It's a good one. How good is Alison Williams though?

Right? Yeah? Yeah, That's the real twist of the movie for me was that she was in on it. I mean, I don't know how she wouldn't be, but I mean, you know, Jordan Peele talks about why he cast her because she is you know, she was from Girls and she played Peter Pan. It works.

It got me. I genuinely was surprised the first time I watched this movie that she was in on it, because, like you could believe, realistically, she wouldn't be because she doesn't live at home like the brother does. Yeah, not until she holds those keys up. I mean, honestly, you don't. You don't get an indication from her performance while they're interacting with each other, while she's interacting with her family, you do not get the sense that she knows something is up at the house.

You don't. You don't get and it's I don't think it's a matter of you know, maybe she didn't know that her character was in on it, you know, like maybe maybe she didn't get the last part of the script until the end of the shoot, where as a human person, she had that in the back of her head the whole time. I don't think that's it. I just think it's a solid, solid performance of play this as if you're on his side the whole time and don't have any idea that your family is doing this fucked up shit. Yeah, And what I think the other smart thing on Jordan Peel's part is putting the moment where he finds the pictures right before the twists, because again, if it had been oh, during the party scene, he finds the pictures and he's like, oh my god, I'm gonna grill her about it.

Because he doesn't even grill her about it. He finds him, he looks at him, he goes oh, puts him back, and then she's right there, let's leave. And it's that scene. I mean, it's I forget. You know.

The thing I forget about this movie is how quick this movie goes after the party. It's like, there's the party, it's the evening of the party when everything happens, right, there is no more time. Yeah, you just get a little bit of that always surprises me too, like, wait, we still have a pretty good chunk of movie left. But I know that this happens after the auction. Yeah, once all those people leave, shit's gone down.

There's no there's nothing in between there there's no waiting, there's nothing else to wait for. There's not another awkward family dinner or right, you know. Oh man, it's so satisfying when he finally squashes Caleb Landry Jones's head, because that motherfucker man in this Oh my god, he is the king of playing creeps. I love Caleb Landry Jones though he's great, right, oh yeah, he's great, But man, when he plays a creep, it's like him in in Twin Peaks the Return fuck and in this movie. Like both then they both came out around the same time trying to think he's he's in something else, and I was thinking the same thing, like, oh, like this, he's just like a he was an anti viral, That's what it was.

He is good at playing weird people because he's a weird looking dude, Like he is a weird way and he talks weird. Yeah yeah, oh his oh my god. Whatever that delivery he's doing is he reminds me a lot of Evan Peters, Like it's just that, like you're kind of a unique looking individual and you know what to be a character actor, that's a good thing. Or actually, you know what else? Who he reminds me of um, Jamie Campbell Bowers.

Who is that name? Vecna from Strange? Oh yeah, Well when he talks in this movie, you know who, he reminds me of Jane Gumm and Silence of the Lamps. Oh yeah, something about that weird like back in your throat voice and it's like, are you a hair lip or what's the deal? He's just weird.

Yeah, he is weird. They're all racist, that's what it is. But they're not racist, I guess probably by the road admission, they're not racist. It's the thing though, with him, at least because his character comes back where when I'm watching a movie, especially with my kid, I'm like, man, you got to you gotta fucking take him out. Kill him for a good man.

Make sure that first time. If Halloween has not taught you anything, it has to teach you, you kill them. You don't drop the knife until you're one percent sure that they're dead. If Broken Lizards Club Dread has taught us anything, you have to kill them eight times over and then tie them to a fucking post in the middle of the water with your boat. Yeah, or cut their head off.

I mean I thought that once that movie once Club Dread and all these other horror parodies made that joke, I would have thought that they would have stopped doing it, like really right, like you would have You would have thought because that was the thing with Austin Powers and James Bond, Right, Austin Powers changed the way that James Bond as a character operated because they took the ever loving piss out of him with Austin Powers. I would have thought by now the horror genre would have had the piss taken out of that enough by the fake out ending and not like the Stinger ending, but the fake out of the killer being dead. It's so lazy. Even in this movie, it feels lazy because Daniel Kelloe's character is so smart.

Otherwise, he figures out how to save himself. At the end, nobody saves him. He saves himself. Yeah, and he lets his ass sit on the ground like just bleeding, Like fucking come on, you were I in that situation, smashing that guy's head until there's nothing left right the first time? Yeah, Like oh we don't, we don't need a second go around with this chump, No fuck no, Yeah.

The climax of this movie is intense. I forgot how intense the end of this movie is because he's just fucking killing everybody just and you know what, it's like righteous killings too. Oh yeah, Katherine Keener fucking gets it. Bradley Whitford really fucking gets it with the deer, which were that scene just replaced deer with African Americans. And that's the way I read that scene, because I think that's the way you're supposed to read that scene.

That's what I took from it. It was like, it's awful. It's awful. He's terrible, They're all terrible. Like that's a good start.

Whenever I see one on the side of the road, I say, that's a good start. And I'm like, I think he's talking about black people here. And then he gets killed with the deer at the end of the movie, which in my mind just solidifies that's what Peel was going for. Yeah, and he finally you know, he's he's been sort of passive the whole time, like he doesn't I think his intentions speaking of the deer is to go and put it, put it out of its misery, but he can't do that, so he ponders on it later that night and probably feels bad and it sort of alates to his mom where he didn't do anything, so now he's finally doing something and the deer you know, plays into that as well. But yeah, well, when you start taking especially her family, when you start taking what they say and removing it from the context of the scene that it's in a lot of it's really fucking gross.

Yeah, I mean again, like, that's why I love this movie so much. As I've seen this movie seven or eight times now and rewatching it for this it doesn't feel like a slog. My wife, My wife we sat down to watch it, like we started the movie was I was like, I want to watch it because I haven't seen it in a while. And we started and she's like, how could you forget any of this movie? And it was like, I haven't.

I remember all the beat of this movie to a t as I'm sure you do. Like that. This movie is a classic. Now in my mind, it's a genuine contemporary classic. I would watch this.

I would put this movie up a Silence of the Lambs. It's that good, it's that well made, it's that well thought out in a lot of ways. Yeah, and that's part of why I want. You brought this up as a as a possible topic beside the three movie thing, but when we watch Nope, I was like, well, shit, I really like his other two movies three for three to vary in degrees as far as I'm concerned, and all rewatchable and like you've mentioned where you can peel back the layers each time a little more, and those are fun. And if the pacings right, which I think it is probably out of these three movies, the pacing is the best in this.

I mean it's also considerably shorter than the other two. But yeah, it moves at a clip to where you're going, Oh, we're here already. Oh we're to the after auction part now, And this is basically the climax of the film. Jesus doesn't seem like I've been watching it for that long, right, And yeah, so I agree. I mean, it's it is.

I'm surprised I haven't watched it as as much as I have. I'm surprised it's probably been four or five times now that I think about it too recently. But it was one of those movies where I'm like, Okay, I need to go back and watch this because I think I missed a bunch of stuff, Like I missed those things about the grandma and grandpa being there but being servants, and you know stuff like that, where, yeah, are they servants when no one else is around? No, I don't think, I hope not. That's weird.

Also, something I want to talk about the fucking music in this movie is genuinely look the reoccurring theme of the run rabbit run thing, and they've kind of incorporated it into the actual score with the Swahili you know, listen to your ancestors, which is what they keep saying over and over and over again, which could be interpreted as like fucking run if you're feeling it, run man. Yeah. Like everything about this movie, aside from those literal three fucking things, feels like Jordan Peel somehow in his first directorial day you made just a classic horror movie in the vein of almost specifically, I think you would agree seventies horror. This is him in like a seventies horror playground. He's not really going on eighties or nineties tropes at all.

Maybe with the addition of the brutality, because again, like the amount of gore and violence in this movie maybe a little bit more than you might be used to in the seventies, But it depends on what horror movies of the seventies you're talking about. Really, something like The Stepford Wives is not a gory but this is the Stepford Wives operating more contemporarily, so well, more contemporary space, I guess. And so you know, we're going to talk about us, and we'll talk about Nope and what worlds of horror that they're kind of in. But this is Jordan Peel's owed to Rosemary's Baby, Stepford Wives, Paranoia, horror movies of the seventies. Yes, yeah, told by an African American director, right, who has a unique voice that he brought to this project in a way that you know it's Jordan Peels.

It is nobody else's project. True. I agree, you want to talk about us, Let's talk about us. That's a classic right here. Listen, I've got fun on it.

Mean, it's about drugs, It's not about drugs. It's a dope song. Don't do drugs, Get rid of the wrong keep. I can't believe how big the game got a boat. He's kidding, right, He's not kidding.

Hey, I think it's vodka clock. Oh yeah, where's Jason? What were you are? Didn't know if you were lost with me? I don't keep you safe.

M there's a family I drive away. It's probably the neighbors, which I'll scare a family. How can I help you? Zorah, put your shoes on. If you want to get crazy, we can get crazy.

What are you people? They look exactly like us, they think like us. They know where we are. We need to move and keep moving. They won't start until they kill us and we kill them bigful.

So the film was once again written and directed by Jordan Peel, produced by pretty much everybody who produced it the first time, because duh, why wouldn't wouldn't you If the previous movie was a four and a half million dollars film, it made almost two hundred and fifty million dollars, you're damn well sure I'd be fucking producing this movie. And this movie stars Lupetea Niango, Winston Duke, Elizabeth Moss, Tim high Decker, and uh Shahati Right, Joseph and Evan alex At children actors that aren't annoying and obnoxious somehow, and the film is well, what is the movie about. It's about Lupida Niango, who plays Adelaide, a woman who has a secret that she doesn't know about, and that secret begins to rear its ugly head, but in the way of the tethered making their way to the above ground land that is the United States.

I don't know how to describe this movie. Yeah, a family deals with intruders at their lakehouse. Perfect, But to describe it as that is to it's like calling get out Chris goes to dinner with his white girlfriend's family. Hey, I mean, is it a home invasion movie? I mean, that's that's where you're getting at, right, right, that's the sandbox that it's playing in.

To put it, to put it mildly, that's my one. I wouldn't even really call it a complaint. I'm always surprised. I am surprised that the family shows up in the driveway as soon as they do, because I know that it's only about thirty two thirty three minutes into the film, and we have a good hour and a half more or close to that. I think.

I think these movies get longer as they go on. Yeah, this one's almost two hours, and then nope, is like two hours plus. Yeah, and so I'm thinking, wait, wait, why this happened so fast? What transpires after this? You know?

Of course, and then we have numerous scenes after that, but that always kind of like, oh shit, we're getting right to it, which I appreciate. And again, since I'm such a tight ass, I always see these movies well after they're released in theaters, and this was pre pandemic, so this was a theater experience for most people. And I wait for movies to show up on streaming whatever get them a little faster these days, but that generally means like the twist has been spoiled and or not even necessarily the twist. But I knew going into this that was not a home invasion movie, right, which I'm happy about, because home invasion movies are. I watch a lot of them, but there's something inherent in them that drives me bonkers.

Like summer camp movies. For me, it's like they got to hit certain notes every time, and it's like, I don't, Yeah, I don't need that. Even the best ones like Straw Dogs or Your Next or the Original Black Christmas, like, they still have to hit the beats, and honestly, the beats came from those movies, at least something like Black Christmas. So and that's why your Next works for me, because they actively worked against those tropes. And so I'm not frustrated when I just watched a movie everybody had been talking about Shutter Exclusive called Speak No Evil, and it's sort of the reverse.

It's not a home invasion movie. It's more of a people out of their element, but it's in a home and it's with people that you know are off putting, and they attempt to leave multiple times and they don't. And that makes me fucking crazy because I would never stay in a situation out of politeness where I feel uncomfortable, right, and I'm so the whole time, I'm just going just fucking leave. Who cares what these people think? Maybe would you say to them get out?

I would say, get out, you're coming with us? Nope. But so that avoids this in this case, we're not like, why aren't you getting out? Why aren't you leaving? Why do you care what these people think?

That? That ain't that ain't the situation here. The whole invasion part of us is like twenty minutes there's again, I think, and it's not the point right. Well, I think for me, of the three Peel films, this is the weakest one, and I think it's because the high conceptness of the movie betrays the movie. Because also the twist in this movie is so lame.

I'm sorry, it's it's you know what the twist is going to be. They tell you in the first ten minutes of the movie, this is what's happening. If you, okay, dear listener, you watch movies right screen, Filmmakers make movies intentionally. They show you things intentionally. If he's showing you a character at the beginning, possibly swapping blazes with another character, there's intent behind it, and the intent was to so discontent in your mind.

And it makes sense when she is into the character she claims to be. At the end of the movie. They also show like a bunch of these flashbacks where it should be rather obvious what's going on that again, I feel like I feel like this movie is like what happened what would have happened to get Out if the studio notes and get Out had really gotten in the way of the movie. Because this movie feels like it has to bonk you over the head with what's going on all the time to the point where they explain what's going on at the end of the movie, and in explaining it, they essentially explain nothing. They're like, well, this is what's happening this one time was like, but what, who cares?

Why? For what fucking purpose? Like this seems like a lot of this seems uncharacteristically stupid, even for high concept. I think, yeah, the concept gets in the way of this one a little bit more. I totally agree with that, and I remember that was a common complaint, where more so in this one.

If you start tugging at threads, it's going to unravel because it's so vast. The conspiracy in this is so vast it becomes ridiculous. And even this character, the main antagonists, her ability to conduct and construct this whole thing is ridiculous. Now again, like I said, having these kinds of movies with twists and things sort of spoiled ahead of time, Like I knew what the deal was with The Tethered before I watched it, so but like how I do not for just watching the movie. Well see that's the thing though, So knowing that it's like I miss those not so subtle knocks on the head where oh yeah, okay, I get it.

This means that, this means that to spoil it, and which we already said we're going to do that. The Lupida Nuango character, the mom in the film, is not the girl from the beginning of the movie. She's the replacement. She's the tethered But if you already kind of know that, like I did, then I missed the obvious clues because I already knew what was happening, so I wasn't like trying to figure anything out. So when I watch it, when I watched it earlier this month with my family, I paid more attention to how did they lay all this out?

How did they let the audience known? It's and and you write it is a little obvious, but you don't. It's funny though, that they don't even do it until the very very like the end of the film. It's the second to last scene of the movie, the little girl doing what she did, the tethered girl, taking her down into the bunker, handcuffing her and then going back up. And at that point I think again, it's like, hey, you need to show this because people are not going to get it.

It felt obvious, but that was just yeah. I mean it's if they showed everything else, they shouldn't have to show that. That's like the Grandpa Grandma scene of this movie, Get them Grandpa, It's like, oh, didn't you get it? She is the she is the tethered. Are we the batties?

Like yes, yes, yes, you actively fucking are this time. But it's it's interesting though, if you watch it without any of that. And hey, I missed twists all the time. I missed the twists in the fucking sixth cent And I didn't watch that until it was out on video. And this was pre internet, you know.

I mean, it wasn't pre internet, but it was pre me online twenty four seven. Right. I didn't know there was a twist to that movie. It seems so blatantly vious when you watch it in hindsight, but I tend to watch movies sort of naively, and like you say, they're putting things in there specifically, There isn't the director is doing this in doing these things intentionally if they're a good director. If they're a good director, mind, I just miss it a lot of times, right, you know what I mean?

So I was surprised by the twist in the sixth sense. I wasn't surprised by this one because I already knew, but it made me not pay attention as much. And would you have got it if you had known it ahead of time? I don't think I would have gotten Yeah, I don't know. Feel so hard to say.

It feels like they do so much to make it obvious that, Like in Get Okay, one of the biggest successes of Get Out that we were just talking about is what Alison Williams character having that level of doubt to her intent up until she doesn't. But it's that moment that it flips that you're like, oh shit, like this is a great twist. It's landed well, it's handled well. There's not really any even clues given to her, like you can go back and rewatch it. Uh.

But she wasn't eating milk with cereal until the until the twist was found out, you know what I mean. She wasn't being creepy, which is like the like you know, Jordan Beale was like, you know, what's funny think about somebody eating cereal but with the milk on its own like that that had to be where that came from. But it works in this movie, they try to have that same moment in the car with the Sun and Adelaide. I guess more athlete the Red but Adelaide, and it's like it doesn't work as well. You're just like me, like what does that mean?

You mean at the end when yeah, but like what does that mean for them? Like what does that mean for him? What is he gonna do? Nothing? What can he do nothing?

So it means that's the only Mommy's known, right, So it means nothing, Like, you know, it's I like, I have friends who never knew their biological parents and they call their stepdad dad, and when they refer to him as dad, they have to go but he's actually, you know, he's not my biological dad. He's my stepdad, but I call him that. It's that saying it's like this changes nothing, Like this doesn't like this twist kind of doesn't matter to anyone but the audience, right, because what what what she was? What Adelaide is doing throughout the entire movie she believes to be just frankly, it is just because the character of Red, we don't know anything about her other than yeah, she was the original child, but now she's crazy, right, and it isn't like we're presented with a history for Adelaide where you know, like she slips, like she knows in the back of her mind that she's not really right their daughter.

There's no instance of Winston and her saying, you know, remember when you did this ship in college? What the fuck was that all about? Right? Right? That it implies it she's anything but a normal person, which in my mind means what does it matter if she is the woman from it?

Like, it doesn't fucking matter. Well, that's why I I said, that's the only Mommy's known. What difference does it mean? Right? He has seen her now kind of go a little animalistic with the grunting and the stuff when she when she kills Read because he's hiding in that in that locker, But yeah, what is he what is he going to do?

And what is she now going to revert back to that tethered state? No, no clues are given to that being a thing because she's been untethered for like twenty three years. So it's that, I think, for me, is the biggest problem with this movie. The twist is just idiotic. It's you see it coming from a mile away.

It has nothing to do, Like, it doesn't change the story. It's like in Get Out, when you realize, oh, the grandmother and the grandfather are you know these like slaves, you know, body slaves with a mind host. That changes the way you dupret the dialogue in the movie. This changes a couple of things. You know, the I got five on it scene where she's snapping, she's snapping out of the offbeat but claiming it's on beat.

So what means when nothing does nothing for anyone other than like, oh, that might be a clue she's not who she claims, So what I can't tell that she's offbeat? Though I had to have that, like I had to read about that I had. That scene makes sense to me because I'm like, oh, she's offbeat. But if I watch it really carefully, now I get it. But I'm like, I did not catch on to that.

That's what I'm saying. I didn't catch that on my own watching this movie, even knowing the twist. Yeah it didn't. That didn't because it's a little bit of a stretch in this movie, is my point. Like, it's a bit of a stretch here.

It didn't forecast the ending to me, Like even though I knew the ending, it didn't. I didn't see that and go, oh, that's obvious. You know. Again, it's just me missing this stuff, but it I think what the thing that does sort of throw it off for me is her paranoia is so like on the surface when they get even from when they get there and when he says he wants to go to the beach, and it's like, oh, I understand, you know, she had a traumatic experience there. She doesn't want to go back.

I get it, I get it. But and then then you're thinking, we'll know. Is it because she doesn't want to do she worry about switching back? I mean, you should have given us more of who she is as a character throughout the movie. Like, I really feel like they should have given us as much about her as they gave of Daniel Coluia in the last movie.

Right, Well, that's the thing that they do. I don't think that they do. I think because it's split across four characters as opposed to one. Look, Winston Duke is amazing in this movie. I think everybody in this movie is really good.

Frankly, Winston Duke, LaPete and yeah, Elizabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker are not given much to do, but they play their roles perfectly, exactly what is needed of them for this movie, and they're they're perfect for those characters, those asshole yuppie dickheads, white entitled shit heads that hate each other. Is just great. Yeah, and Jordan Peele made this movie in response to people claiming that get Out wasn't a horror movie. So this is a full on horror movie, per his words. Oh sure, I don't know what, like, you know what the problem is?

I would consider get Out a horror movie. I don't know what to consider this movie because it is scary, but it has the horror conventions, but in a lot of ways, it's kind of a thriller. It's a lot creepier though, And the example I can use for that is this is the one that creeped my daughter out, Like, this is the one she had a problem with after we watched it, sure, which I can see a lot of it had to do with how they looked, the tethered family with their kind of high foreheads and no brows, and especially the daughter with her creepy grin on her face the whole time. Yeah. Yeah, Lepine and Niago, though, like Jordan Peele knows how to cast his leads, because this is a just an amazing performance by Lupete and Nianga.

Like playing performances, well, everybody's performances, right, but hers is just if Daniel Khaluya put get Out on his back, which he did in a lot of ways. But that movie has great sporting characters. This movie is Lupete and nis movie entirely. There are some great performances that aren't hers, but Jordan Peel is asking a lot of her in this movie, more so than he asks almost anybody else in any of these other movies. Definitely in the next movie, but he's asking more than he asked Daniel Kaluya and get Out because two roles and one of them is look.

I will say what you will about the twist. The character of Red is proper horrifying and very very creepy. The voice and like the whole delivery is strange, and the fact that she's the only one that can talk is part of the twist and everything, but it's it is of the three movies, this is the performance. You watch this movie movie for her performance. As far as I'm concerned, that's my kind of my feelings on this movie are it's okay, this is my wife's favorite of the three, and I can understand why, but I think for me, like we've said, like just it kind of crumbles under the weight of the of the concept, which yeah, but you know, the concepts not even really explained.

What are the tethered really? And then the end of the movie is like, oh, look hands across America and I will I was just like all right, like I get, I sure, I guess, so all right, this is what I get. And it's still forming because I think again, like it has other films, it requires multiple viewings. But I was really confused the first time I watched it about the concept and the tethered, and I believe it was, you know, an experiment, governmental experiment, and so everybody has a clone basically that they keep underground to it goes back to like government control, like know, fluoride in the water, the document skim Trails. Yeah, all that fucking bullshit Urban legis all that shit that people believe that they're control.

Hold on, I got to get something on my phone here. I don't know um that our you know, the government is using to control us. So it's it's this high concept thing where there's actually a second you. It does everything you do mindlessly, and we can control them, and then they're kind of in the sunken place all the time. Are say.

The thing that I didn't quite get until the second viewing was because I'm like, well, they fucking marry they're doppelgangers too, how does that work? But she goes, you know, that's part of her whole explanation about the differences in their lives, like, you met a charming prince. I just get this dude, because he looks like you're charming prince. You had these wonderful kids, you know, I guess because we're genetically the same, we produced the same kind of kids. So blah blah blah.

You know, going back to rabbits, why they eat rabbits raw, I don't know if that has a racial component. I don't know what it is. Run. I mean, yeah, back to that, but also raw, I mean just raw rabbits. But the yeah, you know the thing where they show at the end with the girl her Adelaide's younger doppelganger walking through and it's basically just tunnels.

It's just like a long hallway, but it's supposed to replicate the Santa Cruz Beach boardwalk. And you see all the people that she noticed early on in the film, a couple sharing food, the homeless person with the Jeremiah eleven eleven placard, the people playing Whack a mole or doing you know, on the roller coaster, and then you see their doppelgangers underneath mimicking those movements. It's like it's almost too much. I agree, it stops making sense there because it's like that, like what they're just like bumping into the walls. Then yeah, time in a room, you know, it doesn't it's this weird underground complex.

It's somehow supposed to replicate, you know, the varied and vast world that we live in. Every changing world, yeah, every changing world. Right, it's yeah, this is that like you were talking about tugging at the sweater, Like this is the first time in these three movies where it's just like this concept is dumb. It doesn't like you, it's dumb because you took it there. You didn't have to go there with it where it's like and they're always replicating what you're doing underground, like that's stupid.

That's actually really dumb and sense And how do you explain that a way? Like, well, how do they get from one place to another? Do they just stay in that location until you gum back because they don't live in Santa Cruz, right, and so's they've come back to their vacation home or do they do they have golf carts that they travel you know? So yeah, when you when you start asking all these questions, that falls apart. But the problem is it's like the minimal amount of effort to do so here if I have to jump over five or six hurdles, that's one thing with this.

It's like that's the first question I ask, Like how do they get to and from places? And that let's like surface level. So they explained like the whole how do you get married and how do you have the kids? Thing, But you don't want to explain like how are people traveling great distances distances where I've lived now or yeah exactly, like I haven't lived where I live now my entire life, So how did that? It's stupid, it is.

I don't want to be dismissive, but like you've got to ask yourself, like like you logic completely. It's the logistics of it I don't I don't consider it dumb. I'm always intrigued by doppelgangers. Um, I love doubling in movies and stuff, So I'm there with the doppel gangerspect me too. I think it could have been done differently.

Why does everybody have to have a doppelganger again? Why the white entitled family, they're on vacation too, but yet their doppelganger family is also there. Again, how did they get there? How do they know where they are? I mean, I guess that's just part of the tether.

But yeah, it the logistics of it do not work out no matter how you slice it. But it is an intriguing premise, and I think you just have to go okay, fine, So their doppelgangers are back. Why, Well, because the main one read wants her life back. She wants the life that she should have had. And that's an intriguing concept to me as well.

That would have been metaple in my life. That's a movie worth make, And maybe the doppelganger situation could have been constructed a different way to where that. I guess it doesn't work if it's simplified where it's just her doppelganger after them, but it would have led to a much simpler concept. I think that the scope of this movie is way too large as well, because it's like it's like, oh, it's everybody's tethered are coming up killing them and then forming the hands across America. Thing like I don't know if I don't know if my tethered came to my front door, if I wouldn't greet my tether with a gun and blow them away, you know what I mean, like any more than you would like would you would you like?

What? Like? You know what I mean? Like it's I don't know. I think the scope of this movie gets so wonky that it's like what worked about get Out was the scope was very small.

Like it's upstate New York. It's one guy. Yeah, it's one guy, one end. It's like a handful of this happening to people. This is like no, this is a government conspiracy.

And it's like okay, like cross the US if it had just been her or like a handful or just like Santa Cruz or something cool, but you made like you made the like the scope of this movie also causes the film to just start sinking into the swamp. It just starts. It's just it's mucked up by just kind of unnecessary amounts of nonsense, because you know what, if it's just Santa Cruz, you don't have to explain where they're traveling. It's like you, that's a completely unnecessary plot point that nobody would ask about unless it was fucking cinemasins not my show, my show on your show normally don't delve into stupid ass shit like that, but like, that's a cinemasin's levels question, like how do they get to and from?

But because you made it the United States of America, now I have to ask that question. Well yeah, and it could just be us extrapolating like well, yeah, maybe they are just hibernating Santa Cruz until they come back. Yeah. But what I find interesting about it is because my daughter Will was like, well, why are they or it might have been my wife, why are the one glove? And I'm like, I think that's some Michael Jackson reference.

Yes, why the sandals? And then you see at the end that that's what she was wearing when she was taken. She's got the thriller shirt on. Um, you know, so I think it's it's at all. I like that idea is that she basically runs the place now because she's a normal person that gets stuck down there.

She has the ability to talk, so of course, and then when they see her dance, they're all enthralled with her. So she becomes the leader of the whole underground place, I guess, right, But that she keeps those totems from her childhood, the Michael Jackson's shirt, the sandals, this becomes their uniform, the scissors. I don't think I quite caught onto until just watching it the other day, like, oh, well, that's because they cut out all those you know, they were making the hands across America thing all the time. Probably that was their project, And how do you untether yourself from someone right and cut? Yeah, and so because she had that shirt on underneath the Thrillers shirt, the hands across So that's why they're doing that.

It's not because of you know, it's it's creepier or whatever. It's just these are the things that these are the last things that she had, right or she basically got kidnapped and put down here. So that's her whole connection to the outside world are the clothes she was wearing and the few ideas bringing the few memories that she holds. I think it's a little too subtle, do you know what I mean? Well, see, but then it's like, well, how much do you because when they start spelling it out, that's when it starts to I know, I feel like I just I don't.

Well, I think for me, this movie started unravel when the scope got too big, you know. I think that for me, I really think the scope of this movie probably is more of the problem than anything else. And I think that a lot of the problems stem from the scope of the movie. This should have been a smaller story like get Out was. You didn't have to ramp it up to America.

Writ largely, it's just it feels a little kind of why why you're telling me that this is the only time this happened is the only place? I guess, just it feels a little higgledy piggledy because again, like we talked about the Order of the Kagula in the last movie, right, it was like one scene and they that's it, Like that's it, and they just just keep going. In us It's like they keep coming back to it over and over again. It's like, at some point you have made the snowball so big that it's just rolling down the hill on its own. You can't control it.

And it feels like the balancing act of high concept is figuring out how big to make the snowball and stopping before it gets on its own path and us, for me at least, got a little ahead of itself, and trying to contain the concept into a manageable thing that they could really expound upon without making it kind of goofy and kind of too big for its own movie. Really, there's like two or three movies worth of stuff in this movie. If it had been just her doppelganger family and kept it, you could still have the whole scene at Tim Heidecker and Elizabeth Moss's house. It just could have been not their doppelgangers, but her family still dealing with them because that's where they're going to try to go for safety, right, so they get there first, or get there whatever.

Have the entrance to the tunnel be in the family's house. The home invasion part of the movie is, you know, it's pretty good in this movie, but then you could have it going into the tunnels from the house, and you could again, like you could give it the reason that they're at the house have meaning too, because yeah, like you mentioned that they get they go like, they go all over the place in this movie too. They're at tim Iidecker's house, they're at their house, they're at the boardwalk, they're in the underground tunnels, gets Stall. That's a lot. Even in Nope, they don't go this many places, you know.

Yeah, Like again, high concept really works when you know where to put the limitters and how to constrain yourself so that high concept doesn't become far flung concept. And that's like this movie for me is really like you just you went you pushed it a little too far. You just pushed it maybe two or three inches too far and kind of just kicked yourself in the ass in the process. Yeah, it is definitely of the three, the one that unravels the easiest start. Yeah, thinking about it, but with the best performance like Lupita Nuyango is just so good that I kind of overlook how kind of dorky some of the stuff in this movie is.

I still really I wouldn't call this one my favorite, but I still really like it as more of a fun creepy horror movie, because I do. There are some genuine, genuinely creepy moments sure, even beyond the home invasion part of the film, just their their mannerisms and like the when and you know, talk about callbacks. They talk about the daughter being a good runner and all that, so she gets her moment to run and that whole thing with the neighbor or I don't know, not necessarily a neighbor person down the street wherever she ends up, and the doppelganger of her is on top of his car and he's like, Hey, what the fuck are you doing on my car? And I just those those separate scenes with each of their doppelgangers that we sort of feather out on so that it's not just Red and Adelaide.

I enjoy all of that stuff. I enjoy the attack at Heideker and Mosses house. Again it's it's it's choreographed. Interestingly, I don't love the whole thing with their uh I was gonna say, Alexa, but their Ophelia, their voice command system and yeah, yeah yeah, fuck the police and all that. It's fun.

It's a fun one to watch without thank you too much, but it sort of forces you to think too much and that it wants you to Like that's the problem. If I start thinking about this too much, though, mister Peel, it's not gonna make sense. And I kind of feel like the people that were complaining about the genre of get Out, which like I've never had a problem with the genre confusion of get Out, I've never had a problem with that. I have a problem with this movie with that because like it's a horror movie, but like you could tell this story with no horror beats whatsoever, like that this story doesn't necessitate it. It does because Jordan Peele wrote it, but this story could have been told without it the same way, like in a lot of ways.

Like that's I don't know. I want people who hate have problem with genres to kind of get over it, you know what I mean. I'm kind of past this whole, like it's going to be horror. If it's horror, it can't do this. You can't do that, like just well fucking movies or movies.

Make the movie you want to make, and if people don't like it, people aren't gonna like it because it wasn't a horror movie. And if those people don't like it because it wasn't a horror movie, frankly, those people can fuck themselves because if you are only making horror movies the way horror movies are supposed to be made, that is literally not art. That is the antithesis of art, and that is the antithesis of what I would consider to be creative filmmaking, because if everything is expected to be the same, why are we making new movies? Then I think people get stuck on the it didn't scare me, so therefore it wasn't a horror movie, and that that to me is just there are a lot of horror movies that I watched that don't scare me.

Adults ask you, are adults really asking for movies to scare them anymore? Like, yeah, so that's but it wasn't even scary. Well it's like, that's not That is not the definition of a horror movie, right, So first of all, you need to understand that, right, it didn't scare me? Go good. I would hope get Out is get Out scary?

Not really. There's a couple, you know, one that fucking dude is running at him. That's creepy. I don't care who you are. Having some guy just like full bore running at you inspires creepiness in people from dark to light too, because he's in the shadow initially, and then he's right, it's great, that's a there's a reason that scene is in the trailer.

Okay like that, Yeah, because it's spooky, but it's spooky for a different reason. We find out, you know, he's we're living his youth. But yeah, so that that whole. If someone says something didn't scare them, that doesn't make it not a horror movie. In my mind, this one could scare you though.

Guests scary, this is this is like surface level scary. Yeah, this is surface level scary. And that's why this is the one that creeps my daughter out because I totally get it taking place at night. They look, they act weird. You don't know what's going on if you haven't had the twist ruined for you, and it's unnerving and unsettling.

And doppelgangers in general is an unsettling idea if you really sit and think about if I came face to face with someone that looked exactly like me, it wouldn't be like, hey, not if they were acting and dressed the way that the people in this even if they just came, like you said, if they came to your door with no ill will, it would unnerve you. It would it would hit something in your brain that says, this ain't fucking right. I'm looking at myself, but I'm here right, And that idea is distressing, I think to people, because you inherently believe that if you ran into someone that looks exactly like you, that they mean you horror. I don't know what it's. I mean, that's the whole thing with doubles, though almost exclusively in movies, even if they aren't horror movie.

If you see your double, it's unnerving because you believe that they're out to take over your life. Right Otherwise, all the people with twins here just like you, fucking non twin having motherfucker hey twins. You that's probably how you feel about your twin. Be honest, you know twin will turn on you at the drop of a half. I mean that's what we're told in media, that's for sure.

Look, I'm with you. I think the idea of doppelgangers is interesting. I think it's a topic worth mining, and I think that there are more doppelganger movies to be made that maybe take what Jordan Peele did and do it even better. Because Yeah, for me, I think Us of the Three is clearly the horrorst the horroriest horror movie of the three. Yeah, And in a lot of ways, that's probably why I don't like it as much as I like the other two, because it kind of falls into the traps of the horroriest horror movies that I know.

You could tell me that this movie strip some of it out strip some of the more stylistic Jordan Peel stuff out, and you could probably get away with telling that this was an m Night Shamalan movie. The high stuff is pretty high concept too, and this is like, this is weak high concept. This is weak t high concept. Yeah, at least by the time I got to Nope, I was going to bring him up. I watched the Red Letter Media thing on Nope and they brought it up, and it's always something that's kind of ohock around in my head.

I had not watched any Red Letter Media stuff because I'm worried because I know that we we hear it culturecast slash week up, heavy slash weirding way media are fans of theirs, and they've paved the way for us as much as any other content creators have. And I always stay away from their stuff until I've talked about it myself because they're never off point with their genuine criticisms. They're kind of snarky. Shit is different, but they're like genuine from the hip criticisms tend to be more or less accurate. Yeah, well, I will bring it up again when we get to note because I have a bone to pick with a certain there's a different director I'm going to be bringing up away to talk about Nope baby and his name also and starts with an S M.

Night Shamalan is a good example of that high concept thing where some of the time, when you start to pull a thread, it's going to unravel. But it's where you were talking about original ideas with Jordan Peel when we're talking about get Out, and that's I think where this goes where I have to you know, I don't want to rehash stuff, so what's in And that's where you maybe get a little too out there with things. I mean, you could compare this to Invasion to the body Snatchers. That's a high concept idea, particularly the seventy eight or this yeah, seventies version, where this mass conspiracy unfolds in front of people's eyes and they don't realize it until it's too late, and you have people carting around seat pods, you know, all over San Francisco and the rest of the world, blah blah blah, and it could start to unravel when you tug tug tug at it.

I think this might have worked better with them just completely unexplained. Yet we don't get that idea of the swap. And I think that's the important thing here, is the swap between Adelaide and Red, even outside of the doppelganger concept and the families of doppelgangers and how it's that I was cheated out of my life. You're living the life I should have led, and this life down here was horrible. So that has to have some you know, racial it's about privilege, right, I mean right, yeah.

And you know they're a well off family. It's nice to see that in a movie, and maybe not as well off as the Heideker family, so you can make that comparison too. Why is his you know, why is his boat? Why is his beach? Nicer than the Crawdaddy their house.

You know, they've got the Ophelia thing running their whole house and a backup generator. They don't have any of that at their cabin. That's obviously been handed down through the years to her her family's cabin, so you know, so there's there's all of that in there too, which I think if you make this a simple like I don't know why we have doppelgangers, then we can't explore that aspect of it. Yeah, I mean, you're, you're, You're one hundred percent on point. I mean it's Look, the message of get Out felt a little bit more nuanced than the message of US Did.

I think that's probably the best way of putting it. I think get Out is just a more refined idea. It's more distilled and concentrated down into a basic idea that I think just works at its core. I think US gets close closer than someone else might making this movie, but I think it's still kind of falls into some traps and maybe leans a little bit too much on some stuff that betray the film. I think it leans on these scenes of Adelaide and Red kind of having everything explained out in the open it leans on that, it leans on these like flashbacks a little too much for its own good, and ultimately once we get to the end of the film, it's like, but here's the twist.

It's like, but yeah, you like, we know, like you made it obvious, like it makes it pretty. I'm not trying to be like mister smart movie guy. I'm just pointing out what the movie does to make it obvious, Like it shows so many flashbacks and it keeps talking about these like things that by the end of it, the twist should be the twist should make sense. Maybe not be obvious, but it should make sense. Twist does make sense.

It feels also rather obvious, but it doesn't feel like it has any impact on anything because of the way the scope of the story is too big for her twist to really matter. In the scope of it. You know, there should have been another you're telling me all these untethered are only going to listen to her, Like you're telling me this didn't happen anywhere else. Like if you expand the scope that big, those are the questions that have to be starting to rear their ugly head. If the scope's not that big, like it wasn't get out you can kind of get away with it well, and they show, you know, the camera pulls up at the end and you see the helicopters and the fires.

So this is But what does that mean for their family then, because the kid really is the only one aware that, like, oh, this is the swap happened, and what does that mean for us? And does it matter? Because, like we already said, she's been living her life as as adelaide this whole time and seems to have adjusted. She might still be a little bit animalistic, but it only came out when they were threatened, which she was literally being threatened with death by someone else. Like again, like that's I think that's my issue with this movie again, Like the concept just betrays the concept, betrays the narrative because the concept is too big for the narrative to matter outside of your happening to tell us this story, but then her story has implications to the greater narrative.

That kind of is just like soell what so, Yeah, Yeah, it's too it's too big, it's too big a story and it doesn't get nailed down properly. Yeah, but I still I still think it's fun. I like this one, maybe not as much as Get Out. But I've said this before on other things, and I'll say it with this. You know, a bad movie by Jordan Peel is still better than most directors bad movies.

You know, it's still like better movie than most directors, like a lot of directors good movies are even Yeah, and it's it's fun to watch. There's a lot more humor in it. There's it's just a bigger it's a bigger you know, it's a second movie. It's you go big and and a lot of times that's that saying sequels, that's the downfall of a sequel. You get too too big.

Yeah, you've got a bigger budget. Now you can expand more. You can go with this this really high concept and and go in on run with it. Right. Well, speaking of high concepts and running with it, let's talk about Jordan Peel's most recent film, Nope.

Did you know that the very first assembly of photographs to create a motion picture was a two second clip of the black man on a horse? And that man is my great great grandfather. There's another great grandfather. But that's why Back of the Haywood Ranch as the only black old horse trainers in Hollywood. We like to say, since the moment pictures could move.

Yeah, skin it again. What's a bad miracle? You got a world for that? Yeah see ye see yeah yeah not not no, yeah yeah. So the film is written, directed, and produced by Jordan Peelee, this time with no one other than Ian Cooper, and it stars Daniel Kloia, Kiki Palmer, Stephen jun Brandon Perea's in there.

Just it's a bigger cast than we're used to, but a smaller cast in a lot of ways, frankly, because it's more or less about four actors. And the film is about Daniel Kaloya and Keki Palmer as brother and sister who run their father's horse farm, horse Hollywood horse Farm, where they take horses to use in movies. And they are the original horse riding family of Hollywood and wouldn't you know it, in their little horse farm out in the middle of Agua Dulce, which I think a bunch of characters in this movie have a really hard time pronouncing, which is funny to me. An alien shows up. I how did you feel about Close Encounters of the nope kind?

Or should we just call it Jaws? Maybe? Because ladies and gentlemen. If Jordan people was trying to make a Steven Spielberg movie, he succeeded about as good as anybody else ever has other than Steven Spielberg. Frankly, I the first time we watched this, there was something about the pacing.

Something threw me off man, because I was like I think I tweeted after I watched it. I was like, man, this movie flummixed me. I am like flummixed right now. I didn't not like it. And again, even though it was a shorter period of time between like theatrical release and VOD and when I was able to watch, it didn't really have everything spoiled for me.

Although I had seen the thing, well it's called a thing. I mean, we're going to spoil it, but i'll call it the thing. Right now it's seen images of it. I'm like, what the fuck is that? It looks like a sand dollar?

And so I was just kind of going off that. I'm like, Okay, something's up there. Obviously, you know, all the trailers and all the previews and stuff hinted at an alien experience here of some sort, which I was down with. I'm like, oh, that's cool. Getting away from the horror part and maybe going more into the sci fi realm.

I'm cool with that, But there, I don't know. There was something about the pacing or the plot. Something threw me off, and I don't know. I don't know. I still don't really understand what it was.

But when I asked my daughter after we had watched all three what her favorite was, she went back to Nope, and I was like, that's interesting. I don't know. I don't know if I can say right now which one I like the most, But I don't think it's this one. I think for me it is I like to get out a lot, but I like this movie a lot. I liked it too.

It's just something and I it's Spielberg by way of Peel like it's it's a Spielberg movie, like you know Super eight, right, that right? That movie compared to this is like that's like a that's a like the lowest level. Like I'm sorry, JJ Abrams, but you will live in Steven Spielberg shadow your entire life. That's what simile, right, What for what you have tried to do and not nailing it. This is not a fac simile.

This is at times a takedown of Steven Spielberg's movies because of one of the main aspects of this movie is literally making fun of looking up at the monsters. Is one of the things that they mentioned in this movie, like eight times you don't do And in every Spielberg movie they're looking and Spielberg is capturing that moment. I mean Close Encounters of the third kind, Baby Richard Dreyfuss, that scene of right, I mean, he's looking at the aliens in that scene. It's a Spielberg movie, but at the same time, it's like poking fun at what you expect from those kinds of movies. And then it's thoroughly injected with about as much Jordan peelness as humanly possible.

I would consider everything to do with the monkey and Jordy's Home is Jordan is what makes us a Jordan Peel movie, and that story and how it kind of it infects the main story and kind of puts the main story in kind of an interesting light. And hey, hoit von Hoytema. Anytime that anytime they're behind the camera doing cinematography, you know what you're gonna get. And this movie is fucking beautiful on top of everything else. I would pay to see this movie in imax.

I'm dead serious. Yeah it is. I think it's the best looking of the films. Oh my far God. Yeah, sure, yeah.

That Spielberg thing is interesting. I hadn't even thought about that, and it's going to be interesting to go and watch it again with that in mind. That and also the nostalgia that Spielberg is always playing with, that is a big part of this. I guess I have nostalgia for the Scorpion King. Do you know what I mean?

Like, I genuinely do. I remember when I saw that movie. I was at the right age. Jordan Peel is around my age, so he's batting in a nostalgia camp for me. And so when he was talking about Scorpion King and then he has a Scorpion King hoodie on at the end of the movie, it was like, Okay, I see what you're doing here, and like the Jesus Lizards stuff and like just what they look like.

It's it's much more informed towards a nostalgia thing. I mean, this is a nostalgia trip as well in a lot of ways, and part of it is about nostalgia and not so much, but kind of nostalgia. What are the downfalls and the problems with nostalgia taking it to task, because this is the bone I have to pick with the Red Letter Media review is and it deals with the Jordy or Gordy part of the story where Stephen Yuan's character was this child actor on a sitcom that ran for a couple of seasons and then there was a horrible disaster on set because they were using a live chimp. That's why you can't use like chimps anymore. But they were talking about the that scene where the chimp goes berserk and reek's havoc on the set, and I don't know that it kills anybody, but it what it definitely kills people.

It kills it doesn't it kill that girl. I don't know about the guy. See they don't show the guy, and I don't know that he mentions that. But the girl, you know that was on the show, his first crush is in there later on when they're calling the creature down from the sky. She's at that Lasso show, so she doesn't get killed.

But the point that they were trying to make on Red Letter Media is that he survived because he didn't look Gordy in the eye, and so I saw that red letter media thing between my two viewings in the movie and didn't fully remember that scene. I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, and they were relating it back to you know, this is what the other characters do, don't look it in the eye, blah blah blah. But that's not actually what happens in that scene. He's not focused on the shoe that's just sticking up inexplicably the bad miracle. Yeah, he does look Gordy in the eye.

Gordy just gets his brains blown out before he goes apeeshit again, they do the whole fist bump thing. They're looking at each other, right, which is why he interprets it as like I've tamed the beat. That's his downfall. That's what that relates to. It doesn't relate to the other characters because they would have no idea that Jupe didn't look Gordy in the eye.

It is his downfall that we contain this gigantic creature that's been coming here and feeding on horses that we've been buying and feeding to it. No, he thinks that he survived this, you know, because whatever he's he's got some power or something. You know, he survived because by that time somebody had finally gotten there with the gun and blew the fucking monkey's brains out. As they would say, Nope, right, I mean that's that's I mean, that's what I love about this movie is every time it's like, you know, you think you know where this is going, you think you know how this is gonna ends, like Nope, nope. Like and Steve Yuan's character in this movie is a stroke of brilliance.

He's in the movie like five minutes, is what it feels like. But it's it's like the it's the counterpoint story that a movie like this one needs because otherwise it is just a big dumb alien movie with the alien and in the sky at their barn. But you you inject it with this Steve yun story where it's about it could be about nostalgia, or it could be about you know, man's hubris overtaming the wild animal, or it could even be about you know, watching because you know, then they introduced this whole SNL thing about you know, making light of tragedy and tragedy exploitation, and it could be about that too and looking tragedy in the face or ignoring it, or why do we you know we were talking about before we started recording the Dahmer TV show and like why are people watching a show about Jeffrey Dahmer in twenty twenty two drilling a hole in the head of people and putting acid in like because people want to watch that.

They want to watch that kind of entertainment and stare it in the face. And Jordan Beale in this movie takes a pretty heavy stance of saying not a good idea, right, But even he takes to task the main characters of the movie because Daniel Khaluya or Kekey Palmer at least you know that was our great great great grandfather. They don't know if that's true, that's what they're saying, but like that that's what they're claiming right there, but they but nobody ever gives them any credence to that in the movie. So in and of itself, it's you know, because they keep mentioning, we need to get the Oprah shot, and it's like, well does it matter, because you know, the Oprah shot matters for Oprah, But like you have all this footage of the alien now anyways, but you needed the Oprah shot because nobody would believe you otherwise.

So the movie could you could go in a lot of different directions. The fact that the Red letter media guys kind of missed it is surprising. It's one of those things where when they said that, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. He was staring at the shoe, but that's not what's going on that scene. It's one of those things watching the monkey like he's watching it.

Yeah, he's watching it, and the monkey comes up and the point of view is from the jup character and the monkey's looking right at him. Now there's a little you know, the tablecloth is in the way, so it's obscuring their view. But then they go on to fist bump, which is I guess how he thinks he has power for the monkey because they were fishing, right, So that was like so when I watched the second time, it's like, oh no, that's not what's happening here. But it does still inform the later film. I think it informs it in a more interesting way.

Like you said, he thinks he can do this, so that's his downfall, along with everybody in the audience unbeknownst to them though, because the people who are there. Then the other question is what are you commenting on when you have him bringing all these people out here who don't know what they're in for because he hasn't even told them, and then a dangerous situation, Yeah, ungodly dangerous situation if they knew what they were right, because again, like what does that say about our society? And exploitation of tragedy and horrifying events like showing the brutality without showing it. Also because this is a rather like goreless movie. It is goreless, Like I there's one scene that you could claim is like gory, but not like, well, that's the other thing.

It's about as glory as Boltergeist is. I had heard that the eight that the chimp scene was gnarly, and I'm like, they showed nothing. Now, if you're disturbed by the implication of what the Dennis Reynolds, the implication of what's going on, and then I understand, you know, if you know about the real woman who got attacked by the real chimp in real life, which is what that whole thing is inspired by the woman who had her fucking hands ripped off by a chimp. That's awful, Like if you just know that that's what they're playing off of, but they don't show it, so I was confused. There's like the swinging door.

They used the swinging door trick even, which was like masterfully used because you have the scene where it's like you're seeing it happened, but the doors swinging open and closed. Yeah, I didn't. When I've I read that, two people were like, it's so brutal and gross. It's like, I mean, it's, yeah, what's happening is disturbing, but they're not showing it. That don't show what chimp biting someone's face off, which is clearly what happened.

Like literally, that's the implication, is that the chimp bit her face off right, right, And you barely see that later on in the film when her veil goes up a little bit, but right she's about to be eaten by an alien's he's living off of his own, you know, veiled childhood stardom nostalgia, which got derailed by this. He was big for a while. Now he's out in Inland, California, in the middle of nowhere with this basically Carnival and probably feels a little bitter about that. But here's here's the chance to have something big again. And because I'm me, I can look this thing in the eye along with everybody else.

Yeah, it's interesting. We talked about where you can watch this again and again. The one thing I had heard about the film the reviews, not so much like just chitter chatter on Twitter, but in reviews that idea of all the La outskirt ideas in this, like not only are they outside of La their their ranch, but just how it's a city that eats you up and spits you out where that's basically where they're sitting as far as as their job goes. They're out of Vasquez Rocks, right, I mean Aguadas Vasquez Rocks. That's as big of a spot to film outdoor in hall in La as anywhere else, right, right, And it's it's not it's not a coincidence that they're in the one of the biggest outdoor filming spots in Hollywood.

I mean, it makes sense for a horse ranch to be out there close enough to LA but but I mean as far as just like not only literal outskirts, but they're all connected some way, very loosely to Hollywood, where it's tenuous. Like even the Angel character says his girlfriend left him because she got a show on this. You know, everybody's out there to become famous. Well, and that's why Keiki Palmer and Daniel Keloi are doing what they're doing, right, But I mean they've they're slowly dropping away because of technology. So people aren't going to need real horses.

They just drag in that horse, the thing that's going to stand in for the horse, and cgi it in later. Because why would you deal with the horse that's going to kick this crew member when you can just create one, right, So it's that it's that nostalgia, but it's like, what are you nostalgic for? Because in reality, LA is this awful, awful place that eats people up and spits them out. That's so everybody knows it. The big takeaway for all of their different stories, even the Antler's Holst, the Michael Wincott character, who is supposed to be this great cinematographer, well, what the fuck is he doing shooting a commercial?

I'm assuming that's what that shoot was for. I thought, Okay, So I thought that the Antler's host character was supposed to be Werner Herzog. Did you not get that vibe from him? Like that's what it hadn't thought about that, But that makes sense because like the end of the movie starts being kind of like this musing about like the creation of film itself and like what goes into that and who gets credit and how do people influence that, because yeah, we talked about Daniel Cluya and Kekey Palmer played the children of Keith David, who's in the movie for He Was Gone So Fast gets killed by a falling nickel because the alien when he eats people or they eat people, spit out there bits the things that it can digest, kind of like corn for human beings.

So one of those things is a nickel, and a nickel you know, not like in the Simpsons when Lenny gets the penny in his head, if you were to have a nickel at high velocity travel into your skull, it would fucking kill you. And there's this whole question again like is their great grandfather actually Alistair Heywood or are they just saying that because and you never get the sense of that, but you do get the sense that they're trying to recapture whatever it is they perceive to be as they're what they're guaranteed by their ancestor. And I like that idea of they bring in this Werner Herzog esque character who's like, we don't deserve that, so he just walks into the alien. But it's again like they're trying to they themselves are caught in the rat race, because no one in their right mind would stay out there trying to capture footage of the alien.

I mean, Daniel Kluya goes, this is where I have to be. I don't have a choice right now. Brandon Perea and Kiki Palmer at one point of like, I'm going to stay back in the city and he's like, I don't have a choice, yeah, and it but it's it's really funny because it informs this idea that we rarely think about with horror movies, where it's like why would people go out there? It's like sometimes it's like what the other choice do you have? It's your job, like you have to.

And it's interesting because again, like you see him going on to set with the horse, and you know, he's very demure and he's kind of you know, my name's Ojay, you know, just trying to be very matter of fact about it. And there his sister comes in and she's being self promotional but not promoting the business. And again it's this it's this interesting interplay of like the people who are just doing their jobs and the people who are out for themselves. And it's interesting because by the end of the movie they align obviously, But you get to see the Steve Uan version of it, you get to see the the Werner Herzog Antler's Holst version of it. You get to see even the Brandon Paraya version of it of like, what does it look like in our society to go out for oneself and then figure out what is actually waiting for you At the end of the journey.

For Antler's host, it's finding out that apparently we don't deserve miracles, right, Yeah. And I got the impression with him that he was dying because he's seeing tacking pills a couple of times, and I figured he's going to go get the money shot and it doesn't really matter because he's done for anyway. That's fair, not that it makes a hole. It's just one of those things again where it's nothing is explicitly said about his health in any way. It's just he's popping pills.

And that's I think shorthand in movies for someone that has terminal cancer or something of the sort. So I always took his leaving with the little miniature camera hand crank camera to go ahead and get them this shot, the impossible ship actually of him being sucked up into this thing. So that you know how that relates as far as what Hollywood is or what it does to people, I don't know, but I noticed that the second time, Like he didn't have to do that, he didn't have to go wandering off, But a lot of times that's used as motivation for people to sacrifice themselves, at least in movies, like I'm already done for anyway, so it doesn't matter. I like that he seemingly just goes and I again, like you said, it could be because already knows he's dead, or it could be because he like that's the only way to capture the impossible shot is to put yourself in that position, which is which is stupid because any sane person would say, nope, I mean that's again, that's my feeling of a shot movie yeah, we already the shot.

Nope, Like I don't need to do anymore. Nope. Like I That's why I love about this movie is it does say to you, like, who in their right mind, like with Richard Drivers character in Close Encounters, Like who in the right mind would drive all the way to Devil's Tower to do all that? Nope, I'm not but one one person was or Roy Scheider in Jaws going out onto the boat and you know, chasing after the shot. Nope, nobody would do that.

But yet you find the people in this movie that do. Michael Wincott also bringing weird kind of quint energy as well, which I appreciate. I appreciate it. Look, I liked this movie a lot. I was really surprised by how much I liked this movie because it does scratch the itch of Spielberg in a more contemporary way.

Contemporary for someone my age, you know, right, I mean that's my point. I don't want that. That's that's the stuff in Spielberg movies that drives me crazy is like the family shit, but it's family in a very romanticized one might even say, childlike way, belief like oh and in the end everything will be okay, it's not necessarily and not for everybody either, because not everybody is okay. At the end of this movie. Keith David's gone, Steve Ewan's gone, Antler's host is gone.

Yeah, a whole group of people that effectively did nothing are gone, that did not sign up for this are gone. But in a lot of ways, the question becomes by being there, did they sign up for it? And that's you know again, like that's where the movie plays with your expectations. Those people were there by their own choice. They didn't know what they were getting into, but when faced with an actual alien, they sure didn't run, or some of them tried to.

There's a shot of Steve Ewen looking up at the alien Jean jacket, Jane jacket, and uh, it's right before he gets eaten, and you see like the shadows of people flying up into it. It's such a such a great detail that I feel like, you know, other directors definitely would not have taken into account. My daughter pointed that out when we watched it for the second time the other day. She's like, oh, you can see their shadows and the other thing that we again, the show don't tell though this is sort of a tell early on when they first when he first sees it or glimpses of it. But here's it.

You know, over the over the radio or maybe on the TV, they're talking about missing hikers and and you hear their screams inside of the creature. And I don't think it didn't even make that. I don't even think I heard that news report the first time we watched it about missing hikers. It's just like, oh, this thing makes a weird noise when it's when it's flying around. No, those are the fucking hikers being digested and screaming inside of it.

When then the stuff comes out kills his dad And oh my god, those those scenes inside of it how like but you know what, how weird and like in us they would have explained it. In this movie, it just happens. I was so happy to see the inside of the alien and just not explained. Don't explain anything. We don't have some scholar alien scholar coming in.

We literally have Brandon Perea going which this is the one scene I felt was kind of They kind of course corrected toward the end of it. But anyone who actually believes any of this stuff, like myself know that the government releasing shit is shit. It's literal trash. There's no point in believing it because it's coming from the government, and they kind of like, they kind of don't get to that in the movie, which I felt like Jordan Peel of all people should be more dialed in, because the people in the community, like Brandon Perea would not say, oh, that stuff's real. They'd be like, this is bullshit, Like whatever it looks like, the government is not going to know what it looks like if they're claiming.

But I really appreciate that in this movie the alien is a cloud. Well, and that's not, like you said, we don't have an exposition scene in this to say where it came from, what it is, why it's anything. That to me, is much more interesting than an off handed conversation that you can start pulling apart if you think about it too much, like what the fuck is this thing? I don't know it's alien and it at the end of the movie that is much more apparent, like what in the hell is this thing? What is it made out?

What's you know? It's just it's close to those ideas of like if you were to ever encounter something like that, you wouldn't have any way of being able to describe it. You would look at it and go, what the fuck is this? And then you you would try to rationalize it out in a way that makes sense. You know, Look, the thing, the thing that I've seen and the thing that I've been reading, and kind of my whole wondering is the alien at the end of the movie looks very oddly like the interpretation of Angel is the actual angel interpretation in the Bible?

Yeah? Yeah, And like I wonder, like what, I don't think that means anything, but like you know, UFOs, ancient aliens, that whole connection, Like, I don't I don't know what the alien in this movie is or if it's even an alien again, like it's it's clearly a there is something there, it's a being. But I also wonder, like, are the aliens that we're seeing Is it just like a camouflage, like the alien saucer part. Is it just a camouflage, because in this movie it's leading me to believe that it's just a camouflage. The alien saucer part is a camouflage for something else.

And that's an interesting idea that I have not seen really explored anywhere else. But it's clear that like it unfurls itself into something else, but it uses the saucer shape to kind of travel around. But that's like a it looks more like tarps. Like when it's moving next to him and he's on the horse, you can see like the wind like rustling through it. So it's it's it's folded.

It's like folded into that shape, that circular sand dollars shape. Right, you can see the ripples and stuff. Yeah, is it an alien? I mean doesn't matter. Is it an alien or is it just a being that survived in hiding in areas like this on our planet?

You know, is it is it eating people benevolently or is it eating to just survive? I mean again it's not it's not made clear. And we're in are we encroaching on its land? I mean people have obviously lived in that area for hundreds and hundreds of years. But that idea to me is more fascinating where people in their hubrists take over areas and get mad about not even animals, but just like flora that encroach.

It's like you're the visitor here, right, I've lived here for millennia. You're trying to control my habitat, not the other way around. The hubris of man. Dude. Yeah, that idea always fascinates me about when you know, like when nature turns.

So this could be and when nature turns movie, if you want it, it could be an alien movie. It could be. I mean, it just opened this. The whole stuff with Gordy is when nature turns. I've lived in this canyon for hundreds of years and you just never noticed me.

I usually fly over here to eat, but you know, there were a long time ago there were a lot more wild animals for me to eat. Now there aren't because of you fuckers. Now I got to eat you and your horses and this, and you know, but this is I don't go to Hollywood to eat people because this is my land. And if it went to Hollywood to eat people, it would get noticed. Right.

It's clear that it also understands how to not be noticed and alas it's if a humor. Yeah. Well, and what I love about the creature is while nothing is explained, enough is explained that I kind of can formulate my own ideas. Are they necessarily right? No?

Maybe everything that you just said is wrong. But you know what, nothing has explained enough for me to have a definitive answer either way. So we can just expound upon it however we please. Right, Yeah, we can again with men, Yeah, we can come up with our own ideas. I think it's a creature that's earthbound, that's lived here for millennia, and the only reason it's being noticed now is because it's running out of food and so it has to do what it has to do, and it's eating people because you're the fucking thing that's going in there now.

And without technology would people have noticed it anyways? Right? You know, there used to be more foxes I could eat. There used to be more whatever live in that area. Now they're gone because you people are chasing them out or killing them because it's on your property.

I mean, that's a tale as old as man trying to tame the wilderness. That's what men are supposed to do, as team no, live with the wilderness. That's how you survive. And what's funny is clearly for the longest time they were you know again, Daniel Kloya's family has lived out in the wilderness for you know, generations. What they claim out there doing the horse thing so again, and yet they had never been bothered by it, unless it wasn't there, or maybe it was, who knows.

Again, my whole thinking is, if you want to go the whole technology route, people didn't notice it before because when they looked up at the clouds, they just looked up and then looked down. People weren't staring at the clouds and filming it. But all the characters that are filming the clouds are the ones who are noticing that the clouds never moved. Daniel Kaloya even says it himself. I've stared at the sky for six months and I have seen nothing right.

And now I notice that that cloud's not moving. But all the other characters, like the paparazzo character, like Brandon Perea's character, they notice it immediately. They go that cloud's not moving, But Daniel Kaluja doesn't notice it for six months, possibly even longer, and without technology you wouldn't have Again, it's the technology to try to tame animals also puts you in a bad spot, Like with Gordy's home. No one in their right mind would put a chimp in a room with a bunch of people yeah, but yet they did you know, Nope, again, not for a sitcom at least, right, And that's what I and that's what I absolutely loved about this movie is it goes whether or not Jordan Peel intended to and I would air on the side of given the last two movies we've seen of his what they're like.

This is all intentional, all of it. Maybe some of it's my interpretation with my history and the things that I've seen coming into it. But we're still in the same ballpark. We may not be hitting at the same section, but we're still called kind of in the same ballpark of ideas. I mean, it's high concept again, it's it's yeah, I think it's a little lower concept than everything else we've seen.

Almost it's not over. It's more it is Tom dives into more of the m Night Shamalan area where of like signs or the happening where nature or I'm because that's nature and one and aliens in the other. So maybe not high concept, but still this is the best of those three. If you put it up against those two, this movie is the best of most. But it's you're right, it's tackling at least this in the happening or tackling very similar ideas of what happens when nature pushes back.

And I would agree with you if this creature was from Earth, because they have this whole UAP's UFOs thing, which yeah, fine, okay, we can go into that. I mean, we're not going to, but they do. Yeah, But like them going into that, in my mind, is like more credence to your point. It's like that, you know, they're getting into those ideas and like, what does that mean? And I think it's more like they're maybe missing the point.

I think it's more interesting if it is just unidentified but not extraterrestrial, which is why they say the whole unidentified thing, because that's what they are, but they are identified. It's a whole thing. But I I like that too, because again, like you said, if it's a terrestrial from creation, that's more interesting than it's just like an alien who shows up. I think for me, it's more interesting to think of it that way as having been here for who knows how long. And I think it's I think it speaks to the Gordy's Home Noss of the movie of what that little side tangent is informing us of and I think that that it being a wild animal, be treating it like an animal less a UFO, you know, I think is what they're going for.

I mean, it's almost like a cobra, right, or like a snake, you know, it rears its head up and it's got the it's I mean again, like that's in my mind, like you, they're presenting it as a UFO until they're not, and then it's an animal and they refer to it as such. I mean, at some point it's a UFO, and then Daniel Coloea says, now this is Jeane Jacket, and it's because it's a horse that my father could never tame, right, And and also from the beginning like don't look it in the eye with the horse, not Gorty, but with the horse when he's there on that set, like, don't look him in the eye. And then that's when they put that I'm not sure what that thing is. I think I think that finally spooks the horse, like a little mirror thing.

Yeah, I guess a light gauge or something. But she then constructs doesn't end up using I don't think does he use the one that he's trying to make at Home. No, but he puts I like how at the end of the movie when he's riding on the horse he puts the little reflectors on the back of his footie. Ye, oh my god. Again, attention to detail with Jordan Peel is always going to be there.

I like that you have the scene where the creature comes over the house and it's just regurging. Yeah, blood and keys and coins and wheelchairs and all kinds of stuff like cha, yeah, her wheelchair, right. The poor the poor woman, the poor woman who survived one animal attack only to be eaten by another. I made a goofy connection in my head when I watched it the second time with Keith David and the thing. But it doesn't really relate to the thing because this isn't discovered or it's sort of rebooted in the prequel about it not being able to digest inorganic material.

Right, So I was like, oh, is that a nod to those two films? And what I wonder. What I wonder is because you mentioned it being like a constant animal. If it had been eating animals, nobody would have ever seen it, right, because there is no inorganic matter. Yeah, it wouldn't have been spitting, it wouldn't have had to spin anything out.

Yeah. I also like how the name of the place that Jupiter opened his Jupiter's Claim, which is again kind of a wink wink, nod nod. I man, Jordan Peel when he's when he's firing on all cylinders, he's really firing on all cylinders. Yeah. And I even like that this movie's broken up into chapters.

It gives it more of kind of like a like a fairytale quality, but kind of a kind of a fairytale esque quality even where a fable maybe. Yeah. I like it when when movies do that, I think some people get bothered by it, like, oh, we'll pay attention to this now, But usually when a movie does that, for whatever reason, I enjoy it. So it's like gott nope, We've got Gordy, got Jean Jacket. I think there was one other chapter, Lucky and Clover and good.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pay attention to those things. Yeah, that's I like that. And it's a literary rule as well, So right back to the literary stuff. I mean, look, Jordan Peel, Alex Garland, their ability to really inject every scene with something of value or or a dialogue, be or a line that can be interpreted one way or another.

That is not easy to do obviously, and it's even harder to do well. And Alex Garland and Jordan Peele, I think both have the innate ability to do it well regardless of the genre. Quote, because again, if you have a problem with the genre of the last two Jordan Peele movies, it's going to be even worse here. How could you watch this movie and not go, what the hell did I just watch if you were expecting it to just be a quote horror movie unquote Well, and so much of it takes place during bright daylight, which I love, by the way, And back to the Alex Garland thing. Also, trusting your audience, I think is a big part of it, where let me figure those things out for myself, and I'm probably not going to get them all the first time.

And I know I didn't on any of these movies pick up those little hints and things, But that show Don't Tell really goes a long way for me, Like I don't need to be bashed over the head with an explanation as to what Jean Jacket is. I'm having more fun deciding for myself what I think it is, and there's nothing in the movie. I don't think that can prove my hypothesis wrong. I'm not saying it's the right one, but it's like a David Lynch film. He's confident enough in what he did that the movie speaks for itself, and your interpretation is just fine, go with it, interpret it however you want.

I'm not going to interject myself here and tell you you're wrong or you're right. It doesn't matter. I had an idea in my head, I put it on film. That's it. That's all we're going to say about it.

And when directors are able to do that and not get too much interference from the studio, then we're going to have probably a good time. Does this feel like the least studio interfered movie, because it kind of does, well if you think about, like I had totally forgotten about all those alternate endings Forget Out. It's been so long since that movie came out, and I don't know if any of that extra exposition in US was because of that, or if it's just it was such a kind of a massive idea that it had to be explained. But yeah, there's like very little explained in this movie, like to the point where I think that's maybe what my issue was. At the end of why I felt sort of like not even confused, just like I thought something different was going to come out of this and that didn't like bother me or like I said, already didn't make me not like the movie.

It's just my expectation was I don't know what it was. But have nothing explained was definitely a part of that, but a good part, because I hate it when movies over explain themselves with the scientists. There's no scientists character this telling them what they think it is. I'm with you, I mean, you know, just sitting and thinking about what my expectations were going into the movie. I didn't even know what the movie is going to be about other than like it's probably an alien but even like, again, is it is it?

I don't know, Like the Jordan Peel has a very innate talent at setting a movie up one way and executing it another. Get Out is a very good example. US is not as good of an example. This is a great example because by the end of the movie, it's leaning on Spielberg tropes and you know, the raw, raw moments of the audience standing on their feet and cheering for some of the things that happened in this movie, like Daniel Coloya's kind of moment with Jean Jacket or Kikey Palmer's moment with Jean Jacket. Those are all like big, boisterous Spielbergie in moments of character kind of accomplishment and success in achieving those goals that the characters are working towards the entire movie, and that feels so Spielberg.

You have these scenes of Gene Jacket in the distance exploding in Daniel Perea, and it's just it's all evoking a grander kind of storytelling that Jordan Peel hasn't really played with until this movie. And I don't know if I want him to make another one of these kinds of movies personally, because I don't know what else you need to say, but this is really a summer blockbuster in the vein of Jaws and Close Encounters and movies like that. Spielberg movies really, but also the kinds of movies that he's inspired others filmmakers to make. But a big spectacle that you know, has a little bit of stakes to it, but ultimately you know the characters are going to get out, okay, and that movie, this movie traffics in that one.

Almost all the characters that you're invested in survived, to the point where Brandon Perea's character was written back in to survive. He was originally supposed to die. And that you know what that smacks me of. Remember Richard Dreyfuss and Jaws. I mean, same thing.

His character in the book doesn't survive right, right, and yet in the movie he does because Richard Dryfuss was so charismatic and charming as the role. And again it's just like those weird kind of similarities. They don't stop it. Just the way the movie was made, what you see on screen. You could show this to someone and be like, who made this and they might say Spielberg.

They might. I hadn't even thought about that, but it makes sense. But that's why I like it, because it's at times of Spielberg movie, but it doesn't have the saccharin bullshit, because the dad dies and the characters are honest with one another and they don't have a good relationship. I'm not even sure by the end of the movie they have a good relationship, right, yes, and that's made very clear. And I, you know, I'm not even sure by the end of the movie that they do succeed.

They succeed personally in their own mind, but you do get the sense at the end of the movie that you know, the reporters saw what happened, and like the world will know, and so does it really matter that they got the Oprah shot? It's not made clear in the Spielberg movies, it's like very obvious what the outcome is, Like Richard Dreyfus goes, but the aliens, Roy Scheider kills the shark. You know, Jaws too changes things. But this movie even says at the end, like did they achieve what they were trying to? Yes?

But does it matter at what costs? Yeah? Nope, Nope. That was another thing from the Red Letter Media review. And I hadn't even heard this, and I the term sounds familiar, but that whole idea of the nope, even though it's said repeatedly through the movie it could be an acronym for not of Planet Earth.

I was like, oh, yeah, it feels like that feels like something a much less talented director would do. It could be but I don't think I'd like that explanation. I just like it as the explanation of, like, these characters are doing things they know they shouldn't do that no sane person would really do well. And it also relates directly back to the nostalgia or the kind of lost childhood, because that's it seems to me again, this is me making an assumption that that was the catchphrase for the show he was on. The mom says it at one point and it gets a big laugh, and it sort of seems like that's something that they always said on that show, like why can't your dad, who can do this, figure out how to do this?

Nope, you know, and then the audience laughs, and it's like they probably said that all the time on that show during its two season run before tragedy struck. So is that, you know, are we going back to that that looking back, they all have something in their past that is not necessarily there anymore that they're grasping onto still or is it? Yeah, not a Planet Earth phraseology for alien shit. You know, I don't think it's an alien no, I would be Well, let me put it this way. They don't treat it like an alien.

By the end of the movie, it's treated. I mean, it's just it's it's and they don't Once they figure out it's not a UFO, then it becomes a whole other and it becomes Jaws. It really becomes like a Jaws esque movie of like trying to have to Yeah, yeah, they're trying to get footage of it. In Jaws, they're trying to kick here it out. They figure it out on their own, these two you know, adults but still young people who have never experienced anything like this.

The guy from Fries, they by watching it figure out its habits, Like he says, it's an animal, it has rules. So they figure out you know, the electric the electrical stuff. So that's how they can kind of track it now, and which I thought was used rather well. I mean that's again a kind of a trope, but I think it's used sparingly but well in this movie speaking, it's Close Encounters of the third kind. Right, it's a trope, but they utilize it.

They don't just go, oh, well shit, you know, so yeah, start using stuff that doesn't require a battery or electricity. They fucking use that in the X Files. I mean, that's a thing like loss of time and loss of power are two big indicators of close encounters. Really, yeah, that's I mean close encounters. Like you said, one of our earliest movies to use all of those tropes together, kind of take all those things from eyewitness accounts and things like that of what happens, Oh my car died.

Oh you know the power went out in my house. Well what do you do when that's the case. Then you utilize tools that don't require power, so a hand cranked camera or the hand cranked Imax camera, which is just like the nuttiest shit, like just insanity. But that scene where he goes, this is the camera and Kiky Palmer and Daniel Coloyer like going ape shit, It's like, yeah, like this is the guy you want here, Like this is the crazy asshole with the hand cranked Imax camera you want here? Oh mamma.

They smack each other's hands. It just makes me hurt. I've had to have hurt. They're really into it though, they're really into it. I like that they have the little wiggly arm inflatable arm men to figure out where he is in the sky.

So smart. It's well thought out, which is why US is such kind of a bummer because like there's the same director, same writer, like he like you feel like us is just right there because like he nails it with Nope. He nails nope about as well as he nails get out. I really feel like And you see all those things. You see the horse that she steals, and I see I The first time I watched it, I thought that was their horse.

I'm like, what's the big deal, because you know they're bright by each other and they deal in horses, So I thought it was their horse announcing where their ranch was, and so take that that leads them to a discovery. He doesn't like you know, flags or string or whatever. That that messed him up. And then they see, of course all the balloon guys, so well we can utilize those that'll be we can see those from a great distance, so we'll use that to let us know how close it's getting. Yeah, it's it is.

It's smart. It's using all those callbacks and things that I don't need to be. I don't need it spelled out for me show at once. I figure those things are going to come back. I see how they were brought back.

I appreciate their use in this, it makes sense, and they utilize all the car batteries from the people who got sucked away. They don't need those cars anymore. Yeah, so that's how we'll hook these guys up. We'll hook them up to car batteries and then when they go out, well, no it's near blah blah blah. It's very well thought out.

It's very smart screen screenwriting. I don't know how else to describe what Jordan Peel does other than just thoughtful screenwriting. Yeah, and to have your characters, you're passing on that smartness to your characters where they have been mindful of what's happened opening they're not the idiots scrambling around like what do we do? What do we do? Okay, it does this, the power goes out.

Um, these things happen when it attacks. You know that the eye contact thing is sort of ax Mackina in a way. It's a little higgledy piggledy. That's the why. Why would a creature this enormous care whether something this tiny is looking up at it?

Ask the t Rex that in Jurassic Park, man, I mean that's what it felt like. That was like another Spielberg thing where it's like calling out Spielberg almost because that's that's I don't even remember if that's in the book Jurassic Park. It might not be. I don't remember, but everybody remembers it from the movie. And that's not a real t Rex thing either.

Their eyes were not based on movement. I mean, that's been answered. I would say, how would we know anyway? Sure, but I mean but I like that. It's like, like you said, like that's kind of it's goofy.

It feels almost intentionally goofy in this movie that this like giant thing is just yeah, don't make cares if you look at it. But it works again because it's an animal, because it's governed by rules. And that's why in Jurassic Park it works there too, because again, we as humans believe that animals are governed by a set of rules, believe instinct as rules, things that their brain basically tells them to do. It can't not do it. A dog can't not chase a cat if it sees it.

So we believe whether or not that's reality is something else. But in a film context, it works just fine. Yeah, I was glad to see what this movie ended up being because what I expected it to be was something else entirely, and I think that's also a big success because with get Out, it is kind of what I was expecting and Us wasn't. But this really wasn't. And it's not like it's old because there was some third act twist.

There's not really a twist in this movie, which also helps because it shows that Jordan Peel can make a good film that doesn't need a twist. I mean, unless you consider the fact that it's not a ship, that it's the creature. A twist doesn't change anything though, no it and I think I was really happy that it wasn't a ship and we didn't have creatures to be disappointed by that this was the creature and that unfurling at the end was like, what the fuck is that? I mean, you know, there are some sea creatures that kind of balloon out like that, so that may have been part of the inspiration, but it's it's not, I mean, other than the thing shooting out the mouth, I guess orifice like constantly shooting out like streamers, that the forms itself take are very much nature based.

So again that just goes sort of more to my book, very organic, Yeah that this is a an earthbound creature, but yeah, it's it does a good enough job to where I'm going, What did they base this one? That that thing shooting out when it got really upset, Like, what the fuck? What do you base that on? See creatures? I guess yeah, jellyfish, neo Genesis evangelin apparently is what Jordan Peel said, which is an anime.

I like when a director goes, I want you to see something you've never seen before, which is hard to do in this day and age. It sure is. And we talked about we talked about Offline before Ritual, The Ritual, the Netflix horror movie that has really good creature design. Yeah, so does this move? This movie's creature design is amazing because they take something, they take your expectation of an alien and it's again, you don't understand that it's not an alien until you see it turn and start moving like this next to Jordan Peel, and then you get kind of a sense of what this is and this is not an alien as we are being led to believe, and from then on, like it's just it shows us something that you will not see in any other horror movie, especially one especially alien horror movie, sci fi horror.

This is a sci fi movie, right, I mean again, it's Spose Encounters adjacent. This is about as scary as a Steven Spielberg horror movie, which I guess is what Poltergeist. I mean, really, the only scary part is the goof on them when Jupe's kids come over to scare them. Yeah, which also another great subversive scene because it's scary, Like, it's a pretty scary scene and then you realize what's going on and it's not scary, but it's not. Well my wife, trust me, she screamed and jumped.

Yeah, it's pretty scary. One kind of comes up off the floor and you don't notice it at first, and then it starts moving. That's and peeking around the corner. He says, Nope, Yeah, that's that's scary stuff. Man.

Like that for me was again like it was reminiscent of Fire in the Sky Travis Walt and then that story and like the aliens and like in fucking Communion where in the aliens peeking around the corner. I mean, Whitley Strieber talks about it. I mean, that's what it reminded me of. But that's not what this is is, Yeah, but that is what that scene is. Evocate.

Oh yeah, that's what they're calling back to. Even you could even say the presentation of et in the cornfield is scary that way when you don't know that it's a benevolent creature, right that you're only getting glimpses and peeks around corners. And like I said in the past, when you see something like that, if you see somebody you thought was a shadow slowly rise up, nine out of ten times, you're gonna shit your pants or somebody slowly poking their head around a corn not even an alien or a creature, just somebody poking their head around a corner slowly like that. Fuck it, dude, Nope, you'd either freeze in your tracks or you know, get high tailed out of there. Nope, noble Nope.

Well that's what I mean. That's what I mean. That's genuine phrase. Nope the fuck out of here, Like that's I'm gonna nope the funk out of here. Like I've heard that, I've said that, and again that's what that scene.

That's what I was thinking. It was like I'm gonna, yeah, I'm betting here and you know what. That scene with Daniel Coloia in the barn is genuinely one of the scariest scenes I've seen in a very long time, because I was pretty I was pretty not scared, but again, like the way it's presented is pretty terrifying because that's the story that you hear from people who have had this happen to them. It's just these shapes that all of a sudden start materializing and moving towards them, and then all of a sudden years around and they're taking you to their ship. Travis Walton, Fire in the Sky, Whitley Strieber Communion, and that's what I thought that's going on.

Yeah, I was like, oh this is oh no, okay, it's not right, But for a second you thought it was. And that's and it was tess of this movie, and it was done very effectively. It was it was creepy. We were all creeped out by that scene when we watched it. Yeah.

No, I like we've said, I liked this movie a hell of a lot. I'm looking forward to my second and third, and fourth and fifth watches of it, and I'm again I think you would probably agree. I'm looking forward to the next film that Jordan Peele comes out with. Yeah, absolutely, whatever it is. Hey, I'm on board with what him Knight Shamalan does next.

So I'm definitely on board because although I would say that I was definitely on board with him Night after his first three films as well. So we'll see, but I'm still on board because I think he's brought it back around. So I'm definitely on board with what Jordan Peele does next. And again, Jordan Peel, it's clear to me that Jordan Peel doesn't need to use the twist to make his movie work. And that was my concern with get Out and US is not get Out so much but kind of but definitely US.

It's like the twist is you don't need it, like you don't need it, and look he doesn't. Yeah, and the twist. And to say that they all have twists, and if I said that earlier, it's really not true. It's sort of like the Rosemary's Baby thing where you think one thing is happening, or the protagonist thinks one thing is happening. She thinks they're out to sacrifice her baby, much more insidious than that.

And get Out you think, oh, they're making sex slaves. It's much more insidious than that. But us is it really a twist? I mean, I guess so the twist of the swapping of the characters, and in this there is no twist, so it's not It's not like and there isn't necessarily a twist in a Reim night Shamalan movie or either. No, but that was kind of what he was known for, to the point where Robot Chicken made that joke about him that women signed his signs.

A twist, yeah, actually aliens. But but the aliens are afraid of water. That's the twist. That's the twist. I don't know.

I don't know. Look, I haven't seen that movie. And I've seen that movie one time, and there's only one thing I remember about that movie. That's scene with Joaquin Phoenix watching the TV. That stuff is great.

Everything else, yeah, everything else not so much. I like it. We've watched it as a family and enjoyed it. I've taken my daughter down the m night Shamalan path. This is your fault because the next time we watch something, it will be night Shamlan movies because guess what, I've never seen the sixth sense.

That's correct, never seen a man. It is a damn good movie. I've never seen it. I would love to watch it. And as the first three, I'm nighter.

Wood does Signs six Cents, Signs and Unbreakable, and I think Unbreakable. I always think that Signs was a second movie, but I believe Unbreakable was his second movie. That was the Bruce Willis two for and then and then Signs, all three of which I liked, and and then it kind of goes a little heywire after a lot. Like The Village, I didn't. That's the one that I will never watch again.

I like in the Village, which does have a twist. M Lady in that Water one is just wacko, but like I enjoy the happening again. My daughter and I watched it. There are some wacky acting and some dialogue. No, it's it's it's interesting.

The opening of that movie is fucking great. I'll tell you that right now. Is that where other people are just like throwing themselves off of buildings that see. Yeah, just all all of the different stuff that's going on is done really well. It's very chamalanistic.

I'm not I'm not a shamalan hater. I haven't seen the movies that he made his bones with. I have not seen Unbreakable, I have not seen the Sixth Sense. I have seen Signs, and I saw what the fuck Split? I mean?

Which is I mean, that's a master class by James McAvoy. I love that Split's good. It's good. Sequel to that is not so good. But I do think it's funny to mention Shamalan and Jordan Peel because like it, there are weird similarities.

And I hope that Peel's career doesn't mirror Shamalan's past his third movie, and I don't think it will. I think that Jordan Peel, well, I mean, look, here's the thing. Shamalan did all kinds of weird stuff. He went and made a big budget movie with that Avatar movie, and now he's back to his roots with like pseudo horror and horror adjacent and just straight up or and I think it's, like you've mentioned, it's suiting his sensibilities better. And look, I genuinely wonder will every will anyone ever directed Jordan Peele script as well as he write and as well as he directs his own stuff, Because that's the other question, right, do you think someone could direct this movie as well as he did.

I don't, like, I don't know if anyone would want to. I don't know if Jordan Peele even wants to write for someone else. If I were him, I wouldn't want to. If if you're giving me the opportunity to direct and write my movies, dude, fuck that, I'm gonna do it right because this is what you get. Like a studio director is not going to make Nope the way Jordan Peele did.

Yeah, it might come to that point where, Assie, he's not like Tarantino though, where I've got all these scripts but I can't make them all. So all the you know, Tony Scott's gonna make one or whatever, blah blah blah. It's the best Tarantino movie that he's ever made. But um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know.

I know, well, I've seen Keanu, which is a movie that he wrote but didn't direct, So who knows what that movie could have been if he had directed it. I don't know if it would have had more Jordan Peel sensibilities and less the usual kind of stuff. Because that's the thing about Nope and us and get Out. That I think cannot be overstated enough is how important Jordan Peel is to all of this. His eye, what he loves, what he cares about, the things that have influenced him as a filmmaker.

If you're writing and directing your movies and the studio is on board with you, giving you first look opportunities, you're going to make some wild shit, and you know what, make that shit until the wheels fall off, because like with Shamalan, at some point they might. And with that Twilight Zone show, my opinion of Jordan Peele changed a little bit because it felt like he attached his name to it but didn't do anything to actually help with the show. Because, to bring this conversation full circle, he on that show is the worst thing that he's ever done, because he's involved with the show that doesn't suit even his sensibilities. I want to know what Alizon show would look like if Jordan Peele was the Rod Serling of the show and not just the Rod Serling of the narration, because that's essentially what it seemed like he was involved with.

But I mean, you look at Nope, you look at us, you look at get Out. You understand why people want to work with Jordan Peele Because you know what, if I was an actor in Jordan Peele phoned me up and said, you want to be in my movie, I would say yes in a heartbeat, because he's making interesting and exciting movies, just like Alex Garland is agreed. So final thoughts on Nope, US and get Out, mister Bagley, I like all of them. I don't know that I've nailed down a favorite, not that there is any reason to do that, but I like, you know, I asked my daughter which one of the three she liked most. It's Nope.

Which I think, which one do you think has the longest staying power? Well, that might be get Out, just because of the way it touches on not just it's not just a horror movie. I can say that, you know, it touches on some societal things right that I a fraid will still be relevant as the years go on. It's not fortunate any less relevant now than it was five years ago, that's for sure. Yeah, I don't I think Nope might be one that ends up getting kind of re upped by generations.

Like not that it didn't do well or anything. Right now, I don't know how it did compared to the other ones, but again it's a different time because those were both pre pandemic movies. But if it just if it didn't make as big an impact just because of the times that we're living in, and if people that maybe didn't see it when it came out, we'll see it when it's streaming somewhere or when the blue ray comes out and blah blah blah and through the years and see kind of get into that less as more sensibility of that compared to at least us where oh I can figure this all out or I can make the stuff up for myself. But I want to fill in the blanks with I agree about Nope entirely. I think that Nope, you know, all the other movies aside.

I think Nope is the one that will be reappraised and its audience will be found. I think there's still more things to mind about the bad Miracle and the you know, the shoe, the shoe standing up. I mean, there's still a lot of stuff that can be mined there, that can be gone over and see how does that connect to the rest of the movie. And is the Jane Jacket a bad miracle in and of itself because of what it brings to them but also takes away from them, And what is a bad miracle? And I like that question.

That seems like the question at the center of this movie, just like at the center of get Out is a question of not even as a race, but humans treating one another's a certain way, and whether or not our way of life now is doing more harm than good, especially some of us who think when we're trying to do good, white middle class liberals is essentially who go about really takes to task, because again, the villains and get Out are not redneck, they're not Nazis, they're not all writers. They're white middle class liberals. Just like in Nope, it's not an alien. It's probably a creature or nature is stand in for nature, just like in Us, it's about us and who we are and Americans. And Jordan Peel does things with themes in his films that I think are transformative and that will resonate long term.

I think Nope is going to be the hardest one for a lot of people to get into because I think Nope has not multiple layers of stuff, but I think Nope is just I think to your point, I think it came out at the wrong time. I think that it came out in a pandemic economy and a pandemic film economy, where it will be reappraised down the road by more people. And I think that the Spielberg stuff will be more appraised further down the road. I think when people watch it more times. I think, like anything else, this movie takes people off guard the first time they watch it, because a lot of genre matt melding films tend to I mean, I notice it when I watch movies that are totally inconsistent, which is another way of saying genre confusion.

I've felt that way with us. I liked it more the second time I watched it. Nope, I may like it more the second time I watch it or the third time. But I think, to your point, Jordan Peel is a filmmaker that just there's no other There's no one else like him, really, and I think that's maybe the biggest benefit of them all, is that he's going to be making his movies and we get to watch them. Yeah, that's his.

Like I said earlier, I'm kind of befuddled as to why. I mean, Obviously some executive liked his pitch for get Out, so that's why. And maybe it's just that simple, but I just remember when that came out, going, Okay, I'm glad it's a horror movie, and that he's a horror fan. That's always nice to hear that it matters all that much. But it was like, from Key and Peel and I guess to Keano to this, it just seemed like a strange leap, and to have you know, be the writer and director of it just it was like, yeah, cool, because now we have these three movies, and you know, if he doesn't, if he never made another film tomorrow, these are three pretty good films to hang your hat on.

I don't think that's going to be the case should something, you know, unless something horrific and unexpected happens. I'm sure Jordan Peele will be making films for a very long time, because I'm sure he has a lot to say about other genres and other ideas that we can't even fathom. Because if you had asked me when I saw get Out if his third movie would be a Alien Burden Close Encounters of the third kind style film, I would have told you you're out of your mind. If you had told me that US was going to be about doppelgangers, I probably would have said, Okay, that makes sense because still kind of on the same social lines. But Nope tackles social issues in a different way, and in some people's minds, it may not even tackle social issues at all, which maybe is the best success of the movie entirely is that it doesn't force people to confront things that they don't want to confront.

But if there are people that do want to, there's enough there for you to you kind of sync your teeth into so so until we come to you talking about god knows what other movies Begley, Where can people find you? What's going on at the wikip heavy podcast. You can find me on the Weirdingway media website, which I now belong to. You can find me at wickapheavy dot com and on spreaker dot com, slash wickup heavy, I'm pretty sure, or wherever you listen to podcasts, although probably not iTunes right now if you have an AD blocker on your computer for whatever reason. This is an Apple podcast, not iTunes, but it's everywhere, shows everywhere, set up everywhere, all that's worked out great.

So where we listen to podcasts, find wickip Heavy. Yeah, like Mark mentioned, we are now a media network. We are a podcast network. It is called Weirdingway Media and you can find us at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's where all the shows are, these podcast shows right now, just podcast but you can find all those shows over there at Weirdingweightmedia dot com.

My Show, Mark Show, Mike White Show, Susan Lambert, Adam's Show, The Projection Booth, eight TV Ladies, Wake Up Heavy. All those are the shows, their actual names, not just the people who make them. But hey, don't forget that there are people who make content, they don't make themselves. As for me, you can find me at cstash dot com, cstac hiw dot com. That's my link tree for all the shows that I personally work on.

As for this show, culturecast dot com, Patreon dot com, slash culturecast. Those are all the places you can go for this show. Until next time, Mark, as always, it's fun. It's a long podcast. Whenever we get together.

My Lord three three movies, long time, three movies, three hours and uh too long and yeah, well we'll catch you on the next episode