Film Review - Nope (15)

What do you call a bad miracle, huh? Is there a name for that?

Modern cinema needs Jordan Peele. If it didn't do so pre-pandemic, it certainly requires his unique movie-making sensibilities right now. In a Hollywood more wedded than ever to sequels, reboots, and adaptations of well-established intellectual properties, thank God there's someone within its system writing and directing mainstream work on their own terms. 

In a career that draws comparisons with the early work of M. Night Shyamalan, Peele has, with his three features to date, become an event filmmaker for this era. His brilliant and provocative debut, 2017's Get Out, viewed racist America through the prism of horror in a way that both chilled and enthralled. He followed up with Us, a macabre doppelganger nightmare, boasting striking visuals and a terrific double-performance from Lupito Nyong'o (even if for me it didn't hold together conceptually). And now he's given us Nope - a sidestep from horror into summer blockbuster territory, but with his idiosyncratic style fully intact. Result - a dark but exhilarating theme-park ride like no other you'll have ridden.

Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya play Emerald and OJ, sibling inheritors of the Haywood Ranch, 'the only black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood', as Emerald proudly states. But with a lucrative contract falling through and the business subsequently flagging, sister and brother seek financial salvation - looking to the sky rather than the plain. Strange phenomena are afflicting the ranch, and both Haywoods suspect they're experiencing a close encounter of that much debated third kind. What they need is proof - the kind that might provide them with an 'Oprah moment', propelling them and their business into fame and fortune. But attaining such evidence is problematic, especially if the extra-terrestrials in question turn out not to be the cuddly kind...

That's all I'm saying plotwise, with reluctance to reveal even that much. The more that Nope retains its enigma, the more entertaining you're likely to find it. Just be prepared for Peele to take a genre you feel you know and put several spins on it, none of which you'll see coming. If the film starts out paralleling one classic holiday mega-movie of old, you may be well be recalling a different one by the end, thoroughly taken aback by how you got there. 

With this third movie, certain traits are apparent that might be described as 'Peeleian'. This is an artist forging his cinematic destiny, taking familiar movie tropes and spinning them into fantastical creations all his own. You may be reminded of this movie or that director, but his films - however your rank them in quality - are all Jordan Peele. That's true in terms of narrative shape and visual style, along with the lack of compromise in how these stories play out, and the viewpoint from which they're told. 

It's not simply that the director is putting non-white characters front and centre in the kinds of film that traditionally had white protagonists, or that he's telling old tales from a new perspective. The stories themselves are almost reckless in terms of imagination and where this teller allows them to go. Nor is it a question of genre-splicing; Nope has the epic qualities of both science fiction and western with liberal splotches of horror along the way, but it's more than the sum of these familiar parts. The ideas that develop are ones you've never thought of before, and the visuals are ones you've never seen.

Think of Get Out, with Daniel Kaluuya dropping into the 'sunken place' as Catherine Keener torments him with a teacup and silver spoon. Or the mirror-image family of 'others' in Us, wearing their red boiler-suits and terrifying rictus expressions. There are a good half-dozen images from Nope so striking that they'll stay with me long after having watched the movie, none of which I'm going to flag up here (even if the telltale trailers do). Some are horrific in their implications, some are surreal, some are just plain awesome. But all demonstrate the freshness of Peele's vision and the reason why his work is rapidly acquiring the tag of 'must-see'.

As in his earlier films the acting talent helps. Palmer as Emerald is an irreverent whirl of energy, while Kaluuya's OJ is a stoic contrast, a taciturn cowboy whose dry delivery in moments of tension provides some of the funniest moments. There's great support too - Brandon Perea's tech salesman becomes a likeable central player, The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun is a local showman with big ambitions, and the gravel-voiced Michael Wincott is just great to listen to. Some of the dialogue is muddy - frustrating in early moments of plot exposition, thought that may be IMAX-related. I had a similar problem with Bullet Train the week prior - amazing ambient sound that you often felt in your bones, but reduced clarity in the actual characters' speech. Whatever the reason, it was a notable irritation in an otherwise great experience. But let's focus on the greatness.

Because in a week where news broke of the Cineworld theatre chain's imminent bankruptcy, great film experiences are what the industry needs. Movies that remind mainstream audiences, post-lockdown, why cinema is able to deliver something that home viewing, however advanced, never can. Nope is that kind of movie - visually crafted with verve and technical expertise at every point; telling an old story in a new way, one with sharp intelligence, visual wit, and an iconography all its own. Its current $118 million global box office is pretty solid, enough to reaffirm Jordan Peele's status as a modern auteur filmmaker, making original movies aimed at a big audience. He's to be applauded - and the best place to do that is in a cinema seat enjoying the latest fruits of his ambition. Go see Nope. In terms of both artistry and commerce, it's this kind of film that will keep the modern film industry alive. 

Gut Reaction: The most suspense-based clenching and flinching I'd done since A Quiet Place - Part 2, with added squinting at the screen to check if I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing.

Memorable Moment: Gordy goes bananas in the film's frankly mental subplot.

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. While retaining the elements of horror and satire that made his name, Peele broadens his scope, creating the most unusual and original big budget entertainment of the summer, one that deserves - along with films like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis - to be seen on the biggest screen available. Like, yesterday. 

Film Review - X (18)

 ...one goddamn f***ed up horror picture.

'Suitable for those aged 18 and over.' That's how X-certificate was defined by the British Board of Film Censors (later changed to Classification) back in the 1970s. What the term suggested to the public was a certain brand of grainy, sordid, sex-and-violence-steeped movie that showed exclusively in so-called grindhouse theatres. Belfast's Strand cinema became one such venue during that era; check the listings, my older brother assured me, and it won't be showing Close Encounters - well, not of the Third Kind at any rate. Ti West's X evokes the spirit of those grungy Seventies exploitation movies, but with a twist, the kind you might expect from a film bearing the A24 production company logo. The result is memorable, and likely to remain 2022's most dubiously enjoyable cinematic treat.

Rural Texas 1979, and a sheriff-who's-seen-it-all is musing with his deputies over how a remote farm might have been turned into the scene of a blood-soaked massacre. Jump back twenty-four hours to a group of game young filmmakers, venturing into the sticks in a beat-up transit van. Their intention, to shoot The Farmer's Daughters, a porn movie that will rival in success - so they hope - the infamous Debbie Does Dallas. When the elderly couple from whom they're renting the property discover the project's adult nature, however, their day takes a dark turn, with spectacularly bloody consequences.

Sex and sleaze, violence and gore, with a setting and outcome more than slightly reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But to describe X as such and no more undersells it in a big way. Ti West does more than pay homage to Tobe Hooper's 1974 filmic slaughterhouse. Much as the hapless young director of The Farmer's Daughters aspires (not unlike Burt Reynolds' character in Boogie Nights) to shoot cheap porn with artistic value, so West devotes cinematic craft to every aspect of his deliberately tawdry subject matter. In doing so he shapes it into something more than purely tawdry.

A24's art-horror is regularly derided by more traditional gore-lovers as pretentious, particularly when the term 'elevated horror' is used to categorise it. X might be best described, however, as the point where shlock and arthouse horror meet. It may follow the 'horny youngsters get slaughtered' template, but it does so with a striking degree of technical care. In terms of framing and lighting its cinematography frequently stuns. The details of its set design are forensic. The sound design is eerie, mixing in neatly curated rock tracks of the era. And the shot transitions mirror the quirks of Seventies B-movies, while serving the filmmaker's own very contemporary intentions. Because even West's screenplay displays a wit and thoughtful subtext that exceeds the demands of a conventional slasher flick. 

X doesn't overplay its hand in this regard, but it does dare to be about something more than unlucky youths getting butchered as a kind of punishment for being wrong place/wrong time or for expressing their sexuality. The motives behind the murders run to a deeper, more existential place than you might expect. This grimy movie, in other words, has actual themes - ones it bothers to take seriously. 

It also has characters sufficiently three-dimensional to summon your empathy, rather than the traditional rack of obnoxious fresh meat you don't much mind seeing sliced and diced. However you're disposed to regard their lifestyles and choices, they're a fun bunch to hang out with, clothes off or on, and it's a real shame to see any of their lives cut short. The girls alone are sassy, daring, and aspirational by turns, and the actors playing them are capable of way better than cheap stereotypes. Pitch Perfect's Brittany Snow owns her scenes with style, Jenna Ortega endears while showing why she's already a modern scream queen (not least due to Scream 2022), and Mia Goth, who's excelled in everything from edgy independent dramas to Jane Austen's Emma., takes a dungaree-clad stroll further down the road to stardom.  

The boys don't let the side down either. A tip of the stetson is due to Grey's Anatomy's Martin Henderson, channelling pure Matthew McConaughey as the group's older, self-appointed producer. Actor-rapper Kid Cudi is every inch the laid-back retro porn stud, and Owen Campbell goes on a particularly interesting journey as the would-be avant garde director. Neither are the group's ageing nemeses reduced to stock villain status. Their story is part of what makes this slasher unique, the wife of in particular deserving close scrutiny.

The point I'm labouring is this - X may be a film with a down-and-dirty B-movie premise, but West's able cast and dedicated crew have treated it with A-grade respect, working from a script that meets and subverts expectations in equal measures. The writer-director, who's made a career out of imaginatively reconstituting horror conventions, has a clear affection for this murkiest of sub-genres, but wants to do more than just pastiche it. The outcome... all the grindhouse vibes and guilty X-certificate thrills you'd expect, plus humour, personality, a grubbily beautiful aesthetic, and a good sprinkling of provocative ideas. Now that's a movie with more than one kind of X factor.

Gut Reaction: All the responses you'd expect to this kind of nasty fare, but a bunch of others too, all some weird kind of positive.

Memorable Moment: Unlikely bed buds...!!! 

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. X is a lot of what you expect, and a lot of what you don't, and the finished product is an instant genre classic. Call it elevated or post or meta - however you choose to label it, this is a damn fine horror film.

Film Review - Bullet Train (15)

 We are right  - on - schedule.

'Bullet Train'. When most cinema-goers aren't acquainted with a new film's source material, the title is key - both in drawing attention and setting expectations. So, Bullet Train... Depend on it taking place on a high-velocity overland transport vehicle. The story will likely be fast-moving also. And the other meaning of 'bullet' will probably feature a lot. All of which is further suggested by the poster, which includes - among other intriguing passengers - a harassed-looking Brad Pitt. This doesn't ensure that the film will be a global hit, but it does up the movie's chances of departing the station with serious opening weekend impetus. And if it does, it should only pick up speed - because this film is fun. Not big grown-up fun, but fun nonetheless, of a kind that delivers on the title's promise.

Pitt plays a spiritually drained hitman nicknamed Ladybug, who returns to the profession post-convalescence for what should be a simple and non-murderous job - namely to retrieve a suitcase full of money from the fast train running between Tokyo and Kyoto. It should be be a one-stop assignment, literally. But for related reasons multiple other assassins are taking the same train journey, and Ladybug - who just wants to keep everything zen - finds his day growing ever longer, and more violent. 

The movie's origin is a novel by thriller writer Kotara Isako, translated into English as Bullet Train and subsequently adapted for the screen by Zak Olkewicz (whose other writing credit is for one of Netflix's Fear Street slasher trilogy). Whatever else has survived from Isako's novel, its darkly comic tone is intact, an element enhanced by director David Leitch. Check Leitch's CV for clues to the tone. Bullet Train has the brutal close-quarters combat of Atomic Blonde and the John Wick franchise, combined with the relentless comedic editing and irreverent narrative style of Deadpool 2 - all projects on which the director has worked. His new film is bruising and breathless, and if a particular piece of humour doesn't work, there'll be another just down the track that totally will.

The storyteller who springs early to mind, however, is Guy Ritchie, what with the movie's roster of colourful killers introduced via on-screen text and whiplash-inducing cutaways. This does create a sense of 'seen this before', but that feeling is ultimately dispelled by the film's own style - a glossy comic-book aesthetic and unapologetically silly humour, combined with that crunching violence. It succeeds in being convincingly bloody and cartoonish (if you find that thought repellant, I get it), the mayhem escalating on a background of Hello Kitty-style kitsch. There are regular dialogue-based breathers, I should add, if that all sounds too exhausting. However rapid the pace of the action, the movie does - like the train itself - have regular stops. 

Also applying brakes to the runaway daftness are a clutch of impressive performances. Not least of these is Pitt, who's always good value when making fun of himself like here. His hitman-in-therapy angst is the film's most successful running joke, and the ongoing bluetooth dialogue with his handler earns a great late-in-the-day payoff. More surprising in its entertainment value is the relationship between Ritchie-esque London hitmen Tangerine and Lemon (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry); the affection you end up feeling for these multiple-murdering besties may take you by surprise. Add to that the gravitas of Hiroyuki Sanada's elder yakuza and the acidic sweetness of Joey King's lethal mob daughter and you've got one eclectic mix of deadly opponents, not all of whom will make it to the end of the line.

Criticisms have been levelled at the story's over-the-top conclusion, but for my money the outlandish premise lends itself to excess, with the more ludicrous stunts only adding to the entertainment. Plus, a fine third-act addition to the cast ups the ante. True not all the jokes work, but enough do, and even the one that felt to me most laboured took on new poignancy by the end. And as for accusations of the original novel having been 'white-washed', Isako himself has pointed out the benefits of a global cast to story and box-office; the film is culturally Japanese, and has more than one key Japanese players, but assassins come to the party from all over the place, when the stakes are sufficiently high. 

This cinematic ride will not be to everyone's taste, as the discrepancy between critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes already suggests. (General audiences like it better). If you're looking for something remotely deep and cerebral, this isn't it. If however you want an unashamedly flashy big-screen experience with barrelling momentum, countless twists, and cheerfully crass gags both verbal and visual (including several gratuitous cameos one of which made me laugh out loud), here's your movie. Bullet Train does exactly what it says - plus quite a bit more - on the titular tin.

Gut Reaction: Started by wanting to laugh more. Then it swept me up, and I did. A lot. (Also, I want the pin-stripe waistcoat worn by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.)

Memorable Moment: So that's how that guy died. I'd been wondering!

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. Slick and trashy, violent and hilarious, Bullet Train is sugar-rush of a film for grown-ups - just not when they're feeling very grown up.