MOVIE: Us (2019)

Us Year: 2019 Rating: R Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours I’ve been reluctant to jump on the Jordan Peele bandwagon. This has mostly been because I rarely watch horror films. What initially won me over was the social commentary Get Out (2017) provided. NOPE (2022) was an interesting take on alien films that spoke to the inherently violent nature of animals. With these two movies in mind, I finally filled in the gap and watched Us (2019). Unfortunately, my lack of desire to watch this film when it came out seems to have been justified as I ask, “What was the point?” I don’t want to spoil too much, but the twist was pretty easy to spot quite early on. Once the premise became clear, the movie seemed to be an excuse to just have the characters fight each other to the death—sometimes in the bloodiest way possible. Even the ending didn’t seem to be anything profound unless I’m missing something deeper that was...
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MOVIE: NOPE (2022)

NOPE Year: 2022 Rating: R Length: 130 minutes / 2.17 hours I don't know why I'm so skeptical of watching Jordan Peele's horror films. Once I got around to seeing Get Out (2017), it blew me away with how strong its premise challenged normal horror tropes. And while I haven't seen Us (2019) yet, I didn't need nearly as much convincing to give NOPE (2022) a try. I feel alien-themed horror is a bit of a niche genre with sci-fi entries like Alien (1979) being more prevalent than Earth-centric invasion movies like Signs (2002). NOPE (which can be interpreted as an acronym for "Not Of Planet Earth") definitely falls into the latter category. Overall, I appreciated the slow build-up to the alien reveal. Leaving hints about the cause of various strange events was a great way to add suspense until we finally got to see the alien in question. The alien itself was also a fantastic deviation from the standard "little green men" that usually...
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MOVIE: Get Out (2017)

Get Out Year: 2017 Rating: R Length: 104 minutes / 1.73 hours I'll admit that I'm not a fan of horror films. The fact that Get Out (2017) was released in that weird, "horror month" of February that merely exists so people trying to catch up on their Oscar nominations don't have to watch anything new meant that it mostly passed under my radar. When buzz about the movie continued for the rest of the year, I was still skeptical as horror has been known for its cheap tricks and gratuitous violence, both of which I don't particularly care for. The trick is, Get Out is certainly a horror film, but with the minimum required trappings to be considered one. With a few jump scares and a violent and bloody ending, Get Out works on a level that's best described as "blatantly subtle." It's not so much that it screams about the racial differences between black people and white people, but that it does so...
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