Us

      

       Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort ‘Us’ is so hard to review because depending on your individual viewpoints and biases it can be interpreted so many ways.  The only way it can’t be interpreted is on face value. Throughout the film one goes through the emotions of “What?”, “Oh, I get it”, “Uhhh?”, “OMG”, “That doesn’t make sense”, “What’s that mean?” And pretty much a dozen other feelings too numerous to mention.   I can’t say one will walk away from this film satisfied, but you will walk away thinking and talking about this film for a long time to come. Despite that nebulous praise, I think it falls a bit short of Peele’s debut offering ‘Get Out’ from two years ago, but ‘Us’ is something to definitely be proud of and I think seals Peele as a new “it Director” in Hollywood.  

‘Us’ opens in1986, complete with console TVs showing ads for ‘Hands Across America’ (do you remember that?  Then you are showing your age).  A young Adelaide Wilson is vacationing with her family on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.  The tone is eerie and dreamlike as Adelaide observes the revelers around her. Adelaide becomes separated from her father while he is playing a carnival game and wanders into a funhouse hall of mirrors.  Peele shows his adeptness at creating horror and tension as Adelaide panics as she is unable to find her way out among the multiple reflections.  When the images in the mirror stop mimicking Adelaide our terror increases with hers.  At the end of the prologue, Adelaide sees something profoundly horrifying in one of the mirrors and we are left wondering what as we are whisked to present day.

The grown-up Adelaide (the beautiful Lupita Nyong’o) is grown and has a husband Wade (Winston Duke) and two adolescent children.  She has obviously moved on from whatever childhood trauma she experienced.  We realize Adelaide is not completely over what happened when Wade announces that he has arranged a vacation at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with old friends of theirs (Kate Moss and Josh Tyler).  In a quiet panic,  Adelaide resists, but she is eventually talked into the trip on the condition they don’t go out at night.  Even with those conditions, Adelaide starts noticing coincidences, each small, but too numerous to be inconsequential once they arrive.  When finally one late evening, they are mysteriously confronted by another family of four in their driveway, they are taken hostage by what they come to realize are their evil doppelgängers.  A premise that sounds cheesy as I write it, but effectively done with horror and surprising humor in Peele’s hands.

What follows is the predictable ‘Survive the night’ horror trope as the family escapes only to realize that the whole town has been invaded by each citizen’s evil doppelgänger.  The film converts into a zombie film in the second act, but we never let go of the “WTH is going on?”, disorientation.  Peele shows his love of the horror genre with his mix of horror and humor that he obviously grew up with.  We see obvious clues and puzzle pieces everywhere of what is happening, but they don’t fit together easily for the audience… or at all. No matter what is happening, we struggle with understanding what is actually going on.

As the third act gets underway, Peele throws in the twists and turns.  He starts answering questions, but his answers sometimes confuse us more than we were before the questions. The new ‘Twilight Zone’ series is narrated by Jordan Peele and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the revelations at the end very much reminds one of that TV series.  There is a twist ending, but as I have said before, it leaves us more confused than satisfied.  Maybe that was the intention.  Your views and individual perspectives will determine how you interpret it.

No matter how well this film does or how it is received, Jordan Peele is no longer just a sketch comedy actor.  He is a full fledged Hollywood director.  Much like M Knight Shyamalan, Peele as a unique artistic vision that makes him a welcome change from current Hollywood cookie-cutter products.  I won’t rate this film as high as ‘Get Out’, but I will give credit where credit is due.  If you aren’t averse to horror movies, then I highly recommend you give this one a try.  It won’t blow your mind, but it will definitely twist it a little.

I give this film *** out of 5 stars.

Us trailer

Captain Marvel

After much hype and fanfare, ‘Captain Marvel’ is here.  Acting as both an appetizer for the upcoming ‘Avengers: Endgame’ in April and as Marvel’s declaration of having their first female lead in one of their movies.  I never thought I would say this about DC, but they did it first and they did it better with Wonder Woman.  That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy Captain Marvel and that I don’t think she is a great addition to the MCU, but the expectations were too high and the deliverables were too low.  Where ‘Wonder Woman’ exceeded ‘Captain Marvel’ is in that Wonder Woman did not dwell on feminism or trying to prove something, WW was simply the lead protagonist of an inspiring film.  ‘Captain Marvel’ wallowed a bit too much in “girl power” and trying to prove herself to the audience that a woman can be powerful (despite her protestations that she didn’t have to prove herself).  I felt that if they had minimized the social justice aspect of this film and enhanced her as a well defined and developed character it would have delivered more.  

Some quick back story; while comics have long been lauded for leading social change and diversity in particular, they still struggled in the beginning with it like the rest of the culture.  Women in particular were side novelties at best in the early pages of comics.  Their powers were more defensive or posturing than their male equivalent’s visceral strengths.  Many of the female heroes were mere shadows of male counterparts or worse just powered down versions of another hero like She-Hulk or in this case Ms Marvel (Her original name).  The original male Captain Marvel (technically ‘Mar-Vell’) was a rather uninteresting Kree warrior whose story I never truly understood.  Still, he was a cosmic level hero and was even considered Thanos’s main adversary.  Writers just didn’t know what to do with him, so eventually they just killed him off (‘The Death of Captain Marvel’ is a really good graphic novel if you are so inclined).  Ms Marvel was still around and with a sexist name at that, so eventually, in Marvel’s strive to create strong female characters, they retconned her and bestowed her with the Captain Marvel mantle.  I’m not a big fan of SJWs reinventing of characters to fit agendas (i.e. the female Thor), but this one seemed to stick.  Captain Marvel quickly became the lead female character in the Marvel universe, so it was only a matter of time before she got her own movie.

Despite the revamp, I still don’t find Captain Marvel that interesting a character.  There’s still a muddled backstory of her being a Kree/Human hybrid named Carol Danvers with vague and difficult powers to define.  In fairness to the film, I thought they did a much better job of defining her than I ever read in the comics.  So given all that and the fact that her cosmic universe backstory would be too difficult to explain in a 2 hour movie they decided to just jump in and leave it up to us to figure out.

The movie is set in the 1990s (I never really figured out why) and they do a great job re-creating mid-90’s earth, right down to the Blockbusters and Radio Shacks.  However, we start on the Kree home world of Hala with our future warrior Captain Marvel (Bree Larsen) now called Vers struggling with her amnesiatic past with only flashes of her previous human life in her nightmares.  The Kree are in a galactic war with their nemesis, the shape shifting Skrulls. Vers is part of an elite Kree military squad yet she still tries to prove herself to her mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).  We’ve seen the Kree race a few times in other movies and TV shows, but this is the first time we are introduced to the leader of the Kree dramatically named The Supreme Intelligence (Annette Benning…sort of).  An A.I. culmination of the greatest minds in Kree history, one sees the person they most respect when communing with it.  In Vers case, a mysterious woman from her nightmares named Mar-vell’. Yon-Rogg tries to guide and help interpret Vers communions with The Supreme Intelligence, but Vers is left even more confused after each time. Anyone not familiar with the comics will be completely lost, but you can still enjoy the ride.

After a botched rescue mission involving Skrulls, Vers is separated from her team and marooned on Earth in the 1990’s where she quickly uncovers a Skrull plot to infiltrate the Earth.  Fortunately and coincidentally (as conveniently happens in films like this), Vers runs into a cynical SHIELD field agent who turns out to be a younger and two eyed version of Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) along with his rookie partner Agent Coulsen (a welcome return of Clark Gregg). The film went for predictable laughs with the ‘fish-out-of-water’ routine, but the comedy fell rather flat I felt that Brie Larsen’s performance was a little wooden for an Oscar level actress, but overall it was fun to see Nick Fury’s backstory.  The film also employed many twists and turns to keep the viewer guessing who was the good guy and who was the bad guy.  Without being too much of a spoiler, I felt they emphasized the Skrulls innocence and victimization without really acknowledging any of their horrific acts they are known for (just my pet peeve as a reformed comic nerd).  

Vers best friend from her earth past and fellow fighter pilot was a highlight of the film for me.  Maria Rambeau is not just a side kick, but a stalwart companion and pillar of strength for Vers as she struggles to reclaim her Terran past.  Even more important for the initiated, we recognized that Maria’s young daughter Monica will eventually become a superhero in her own right and given the time the film highlighted Vers and Monica’s relationship, I would be surprised if we don’t see her debut very soon (‘Avengers: Endgame’ will be 20 years in the future from this story). 

Like I said, I didn’t not like this film (double negative intended), it just wasn’t one of Marvel’s highest deliveries.  For me it was just a whetting of my appetite for the upcoming Avengers finale next month.  Fortunately, it will save the audience the necessity of an introduction to Captain Marvel when she appears in ‘Avengers: Endgame’.  I will end on a high note in that the opening credits of ‘Captain Marvel’ alone was worth the price of admission.   Marvel decided to forego their traditional opening and gave us a touching montage tribute to Stan Lee.  As they said: “Thank you Stan Lee”.

I give this film ** 1/2 out of five

Captain Marvel Trailer