Director Jordan Peele’s much anticipated third outing of big-budget, spectacle horror filmmaking, Nope, has a lot of big ideas swirling around inside it. The comedian-turned-horror-maestro explored the horrors of racism in his debut, Get Out, and the horrors suffered by an American underclass who exist in order to make life easier for everyone above it in Us. With Nope, Peele’s ideas never quite gel into a cohesive whole. The story is ambitious, the storytelling is thrilling, but Nope ultimately feels like a blockbuster-budgeted episode of The Twilight Zone.
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The newest iteration of the Candyman franchise does everything the original film wanted to do, but better. The 1992 slasher, which Bernard Rose directed and adapted from the Clive Barker short story, The Forbidden, only grazes the surface of the racial politics it claims to be interested in. The new Candyman explores race in a much more satisfying way. Director Nia DaCosta also uses a fresh and exciting approach to build and expand upon the mythology of the world.
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I was 15 in 1995 when the first Toy Story was released. That’s a bit older than the target audience for Pixar’s inaugural feature film, but I vividly remember seeing it and being dazzled by both the story and the groundbreaking animation. I’ll be 40 next year. I’ve been wowed by each successive Toy Story installment released over the last quarter century. Both the astonishing leap in digital animation technology and the touching stories involving old pals Sheriff Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the rest of the gang – Toy Story 2 and 3 consistently bring me to tears with every revisit – get better with each new film.
That’s definitely the case with the seemingly impossible jump in animation quality between Toy Story 3 and Toy Story 4. The plot, however, isn’t quite up to the level of the earlier films, especially Toy Story 3, probably the strongest of the series. While “cash grab” is too strong a phrase, this is the first entry in the franchise that feels like the artistic vision got a little fuzzy.
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Us is an example of the most thematically and intellectually satisfying kind of horror movie. There is a razor-sharp critique of our society running right underneath – and often on the surface of – what is otherwise an unsettling, scary film in its own right. Just like his previous effort, Get Out, writer/director Jordan Peele has something more on his mind with Us than scenes of blood-curdling horror, although he proves himself capable of delivering those as well.
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There is a long history in horror movies of incorporating social commentary into the thrills and chills of the plot. The genre has had a renaissance in the last four or five years, both in terms of quality and box-office success. Movies like Don’t Breathe and It Follows caught on with critics and audiences alike, a difficult feat. Comedian Jordan Peele – best known as one-half of the sketch comedy show Key & Peele – wrote and directed Get Out, a horror movie that takes racism as its central plot element. Get Out is a complex and thought-provoking picture, sure to start some awkward, important conversations. Peele has proven himself an immensely talented writer and director. He made a horror movie that is genuinely creepy, while also providing pointed observations on what being black in a white world is like.
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Because the creative minds behind Keanu previously worked on MadTV before getting their own series, Key and Peele, it seems lazy to say that the movie feels like a five-minute sketch extended for 95 more. If the tired and worn out premise fits, though…
In the grand tradition of movies like A Night at the Roxbury and Superstar, Keanu sustains genuinely funny material for sixty whole seconds at a time before reminding you that the movie’s concept wore out its welcome after about twenty minutes.
The plot is set in motion by a kitten who escapes a grizzly shootout between rival drug gangs and finds his way to the doorstep of loser Rell Williams. Rell (Jordan Peele) is suffering a recent break-up with his girlfriend. She left because he’s basically a slob who is going nowhere in life. When Rell’s cousin Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) learns of the devastating break-up, he rushes over for consolation, but finds Rell is already taking solace in caring for the kitten, whom he’s named Keanu.
In an early example of one of the bits that genuinely made me laugh, Rell’s obsession with Keanu leads him to make the kitten the centerpiece of a series of photographs that he plans on making into a calendar. Each picture is a scene from a different movie (e.g., The Shining, Beetlejuice) with Keanu as the star. It’s as adorable and hilarious as you might imagine. I thought the pop culture influenced comedy would be something I could latch onto, but moments like these are too few and far between to sustain laughter throughout the picture.
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