"Nope" is in very wide release, including at my neighborhood local, and it has been reviewed favorably by A.0. Scott and Anthony Lane, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's a crazy mishmash of a sorta sci-fi thriller + some other stuff (think Westerns via "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood") and, as is the way with such films, it makes progressively less sense as the end approaches and the screenwriter/director, Jordan Peele, has to find a way to wrap it all up, but even then it's enjoyable. There are unspecified aliens involved (who have their moods -- they -- or perhaps It -- can be petulant) but it does remain earthbound.
In contrast to the much-ballyhooed "Dune", for example, "Nope" is visually very engaging, and it actually has lots of wit and a sense of humor. The characters are a bit flat -- written in soapoperatic mode, which means that they more the sum of their individual, instantly-identifiable tics than well-rounded humans, but most of he actors actually transcend this at many points, if not throughout. Daniel Kaluuya, a British newcomer (at least to me), in particular, is remarkable. Particularly remarkable is how unremarkably he is (and asserts himself as) the lead, as a Black man who, in complete unselfconsciousness (and with help, I would guess, from a world-class dialect coach), makes no concessions to whiteness. To see a wide-distribtuion commercial film whose lead is Black, with a White sidekick/subordinate, should not be so startling (and refreshing), but there it is, and should be noted. And I certainly hope we'll be seeing lots more of Kaluuya going forward.
What hooked me particularly was how so much of the film, in mood and approach (and even, in places, in its sound world), is reminiscent of the great Apichatpong Weerasethakul-- I would refuse to believe that Peele had not seen "Memoria" before making this one. It's Apichatpong for general distribution, so those long, nearly-silent takes are foreshortened, and it has a very effective score, which you'd never find in an Apichatpong film, and the allusive metaphysics are, uh, simplified. But so much of "Nope" is so strikingly evocative of his work that this cannot be a coincidence.
In contrast to the much-ballyhooed "Dune", for example, "Nope" is visually very engaging, and it actually has lots of wit and a sense of humor. The characters are a bit flat -- written in soapoperatic mode, which means that they more the sum of their individual, instantly-identifiable tics than well-rounded humans, but most of he actors actually transcend this at many points, if not throughout. Daniel Kaluuya, a British newcomer (at least to me), in particular, is remarkable. Particularly remarkable is how unremarkably he is (and asserts himself as) the lead, as a Black man who, in complete unselfconsciousness (and with help, I would guess, from a world-class dialect coach), makes no concessions to whiteness. To see a wide-distribtuion commercial film whose lead is Black, with a White sidekick/subordinate, should not be so startling (and refreshing), but there it is, and should be noted. And I certainly hope we'll be seeing lots more of Kaluuya going forward.
What hooked me particularly was how so much of the film, in mood and approach (and even, in places, in its sound world), is reminiscent of the great Apichatpong Weerasethakul-- I would refuse to believe that Peele had not seen "Memoria" before making this one. It's Apichatpong for general distribution, so those long, nearly-silent takes are foreshortened, and it has a very effective score, which you'd never find in an Apichatpong film, and the allusive metaphysics are, uh, simplified. But so much of "Nope" is so strikingly evocative of his work that this cannot be a coincidence.