Wendell & Wild (2022)

Director: Henry Selick

Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Lyric Ross, Angela Bassett

Have I Seen It Before: Never. Still on the lookout for potential Cabin movies, and with Peele’s latest effort pushed from this holiday season to sometime next fall, I went about widening the lens a bit.

Did I Like It: All of the elements are there. Key and Peele have created the most consistently satisfying sketch comedy show of the last twenty years, and that doesn’t even begin to cover Peele’s current metamorphosis into the legitimate heir to both Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling. Throw in Selick, whose The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) remains the gold standard of spook stop motion animation, and the entire affair seems destined for greatness.

And yet, the film is kind of a miss. I’m willing to write most of that off to pacing issues. Key and Peele play off of each other with the easy chemistry they brought to their sketches*, but every other character feels like they are reading their lines alone in a an undisclosed location, likely because they probably were. There’s a way to make dialogue recorded separately sound like it has the life of real conversation, but it is rarely on display here. Here, most lines have the self-aware delivery of someone reciting a monologue.

I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed in the design of things, too. Things are moody and creepy, but the titular characters come across as nothing much more imaginative than light pointy-eared caricatures of their performers.

Ultimately, if the pitch for this movie appeals to you, you might be better off watching any of Selick’s, Peele’s, or Key and Peele’s work. It’s heart is in the right place, just not quite its craft.

*I still marvel a little bit that they got their start on MadTV, a show I found to be an absolute chore to watch after attaining the age of 11. Maybe their years—towards the end of the show’s run—are better? I may never know.

Nope (2022)

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott

Have I Seen it Before: No. But, a word about the crowd which surrounded me. I saw the movie in IMAX (hopefully, you can do the same) at the first available screening on opening day. As I’m departing the theater, one of my fellow moviegoers is walking beside me and says. “I can’t believe I paid money for that shit.”

I tense up for several seconds, not sure if a real-life Twitter conversation might eventually unravel into gunplay. I eventually offer a strident, “Well… I like it.”

The two Beavis and Butthead types about ten feet ahead of us didn’t like that. Not one bit. They whipped around, as if I had said something about their collective mother/cousin. “You liked that piece of shit? That ending fucking sucked!”

They immediately zero in on the other guy, thinking he had given the film a positive review. I, sensing that the discourse that was about to follow wouldn’t precisely be enlightening, immediately moved toward my car. I wonder if a fight broke out. I wonder if they worked through their misunderstanding and became the best of friends.

So first thing’s first: while I still love taking in movies on the biggest screen possible, I’m quickly reaching my wits end with the strangers who show up.

Did I Like It: Second, I have a feeling this is going to be Peele’s most controversial film yet. Some will love it, but some will not know what to make of it, and decide that is more than enough to cause them to hate it.

And they will be wrong.

I’ve taken a good week to digest the movie, and I may still put it third so far in Peele’s canon (behind Get Out (2017) and my unassailably favorite movie of the last year before COVID, Us (2019)). The story of the Gordy incident and how it relates to the Jean Jacket’s reign of terror feels too tenuous to make this plot gel together as well as Peele’s other films. Sure, you can make the case that Jupe (Yeun) has a far greater sense of just what floats above him than he let’s on, but the two traumas feel mostly unrelated until its far too late.

But this is a minor complaint. The plot doesn’t really matter in the end. I don’t think I’ve been as terrified in a movie theater as when we see the immediate aftermath of Jean Jacket descending on the audience of Jupiter’s Claim, or in those tense moments before Gordy’s fate is sealed.

Nope is a genuine terrifying trip, forging the best parts of Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)) into something entirely new. When most films disappear like vapor the moment you leave the theater, this one begs to be talked about repeatedly and re-watched just as frequently. Every performance is a delight, with Keke Palmer displaying enough charisma to power several decades worth of blockbusters, and Kaluuya turns down his considerable charisma and screen presence in a mesmerizingly understated performance.

Just go see it, and please: if you don’t already know your fellow moviegoers, just leave them alone. Especially if you’ve only got talking shit on your mind. We don’t need that.

Get Out (2017)

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: Double yep.

I don’t know if it’s worth having a discussion of diversity in film in the context of a review, but if it ever would be, this would be the film in which to have that conversation. Some might complain about increases in representation. I do not understand these people, and find no other explanation for their attitudes than some degree of prejudice. Truly, a diversification of the types of stories we are exposed to only increases variety. How many more horror movies do we need to see with white guys at the center of the goings on? John Carpenter already mastered that. Let’s try something new.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…

Peele brings every skill to bear that he harnessed in giving Key and Peele a cinematic literacy that one would not expect from a sketch comedy show. While the playing with tension and thriller tropes in this film put him in serious contention as the next Alfred Hitchcock, he now may be angling for being the second coming of Rod Serling, balancing on the line between those two lofty peaks is a worthy endeavor, and Peele is accomplishing the task with an astonishing level of skill. That he has this innate level of talent at the beginning of his feature career hints that we may have already been robbed of years of terrific films. Assuming that he continues to build on those skills in ways that I can’t at this point wrap my head around, promises that we will have a number of years of even greater films left to enjoy.

The more I gush or try to deeply think about this film, the more I start sounding like Dean Armitage (Whitford, channeling just enough of Josh Lyman to keep me eternally unsettled), so I almost wonder if I should keep this simple. This is brilliant, thoughtful, thrilling film executed with profound skill. If you’ve seen it before and loved it, it only gets better with repeat viewing. If you haven’t seen it, you should rectify your error. If you saw it, and weren’t on board with the film, you may need to re-think your life far more aggressively.

Us (2019)

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

Have I Seen it Before: New movie. On every level.

Did I Like It: Man… If you don’t, I’m fairly sure you’re actually a (SPOILER REDACTED).

And that right there will limit this review right there. I can’t, in good conscience, go into to too much detail about the various goings on in the film. Also, there’s too much. Every moment is filled with either complicated levels of subtext or next-level cinematic skills. Also, those moments interlock together to form a tableau of misdirection, and it all comes together in the end, despite what some people might say. Jokes set up scares and scares set up jokes. Us is a well-oiled machine fo a movie.

It’s also difficult to go forward with an immediate, obvious comparison between Peele’s first film, Get Out (2017). Peele has also managed to avoid one of the more ominous elements of what could have been a sophomore curse. He is most certainly not repeating himself, despite what some of the promotional material might have you believe.

The entirety of Jordan Peele’s career is a marvel. He certainly in the running for the greatest sketch comedian of all time, inside of a week, he will claim his rightful place as the heir apparent to Rod Serling, and here in directing only two features, he has cemented himself as the greatest horror filmmaker of our times. It’d be like if Alfred Hitchcock were also Bill Murray this whole time, and without the horrible mistreatment of Tippi Hedren (so far as we know).

Some may complain that the twist ending either isn’t as satisfying as the rest of the film, or is a bit too telegraphed. They’re definitely wrong on the first part, while I may be able to allow for reasonable people the believe the latter. Even if we grant either premise, it doesn’t matter. Unlike many of M. Night Shyamalan’s films, the rest of Us is so thoroughly thrilling and satisfying that the ending is incidental.