I tried to get through the first 10 minutes of The Grey Man, but the level of mediocre Netflix production value was too much for me to waste another precious minute of my life on.
Discuss and Rate the Last Film You Watched
- Thread starter Th3Ch33s3Cak3
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I think it was the hubris of man, the feeling that they might have a connection and understanding of wild animals beyond what nature dictates given that kid turned out to be the man wanting to put the ET on display for entertainment. But that's a broad and very generic assumption. I need to watch it again. All of Peele's films need multiple viewings to "get" the nuance.
The Black Phone:
Solid 8/10. I was a little concerned because I've read The Black Phone. It's literally like only 30 pages. The movie is almost 2 hours long. I worried almost immediately when they changed one of the characters around that this was gonna be a mess, but it all worked out. If you've read the story, the movie uses it's time to give the main character a more full-bodied arc, and show what his relationship was to each of the voices on the Black Phone. Ethan Hawk nails the villain as always. He really shines when he's given roles that should be understated. When his characters are allowed to emote rather than deliver exposition.
For those unfamiliar I think the trailer more less explains it, but a kid is kidnapped and held prisoner in a dungeon containing a lineless black phone. He eventually starts hearing it ring and when he answers it, the boys murdered previous try to help him escape by telling the things they tried before their time ran out.
Fair warning this is not strictly a horror film, it's horror drama with a lot of commentary on abuse. Small trigger warning.
It's funny that this is a Joe King story, because it plays straight up like one of Stephen Kings coming of age dramas like The Body, in the film version. That said I've read quite a bit of both authors and the only big difference I find is that joe has tighter writing and tamps down the super natural hokieness in favor of more empathetic themes.
Solid 8/10. I was a little concerned because I've read The Black Phone. It's literally like only 30 pages. The movie is almost 2 hours long. I worried almost immediately when they changed one of the characters around that this was gonna be a mess, but it all worked out. If you've read the story, the movie uses it's time to give the main character a more full-bodied arc, and show what his relationship was to each of the voices on the Black Phone. Ethan Hawk nails the villain as always. He really shines when he's given roles that should be understated. When his characters are allowed to emote rather than deliver exposition.
For those unfamiliar I think the trailer more less explains it, but a kid is kidnapped and held prisoner in a dungeon containing a lineless black phone. He eventually starts hearing it ring and when he answers it, the boys murdered previous try to help him escape by telling the things they tried before their time ran out.
Fair warning this is not strictly a horror film, it's horror drama with a lot of commentary on abuse. Small trigger warning.
It's funny that this is a Joe King story, because it plays straight up like one of Stephen Kings coming of age dramas like The Body, in the film version. That said I've read quite a bit of both authors and the only big difference I find is that joe has tighter writing and tamps down the super natural hokieness in favor of more empathetic themes.
She Will - (Prime, purchase)
A sort of moody 'switched-dynamics' horror where there isn't any genuine attempt to frighten you, but to put you perhaps on the other side of the fence instead, a subgenre of growing interest. Was a bit surprised to see Dario Argento's name pop up in the intro credits, but a quick interweb search says it's a producer credit. Nevertheless, it's made quickly clear this is all put together by people who know and love what they're doing. The protag is aged lady Alice Krige on a trip to an isolated Scotland retreat with her nurse Kota Eberhardt, who arrive to find themselves stuck with pesky other humans doing new age hijinks and talking shit. Then spookies happen, but maybe spookies are our friend? And maybe they have a dark history and presents to give? Then Malcom McDowell makes an appearance as someone clearly doing a stand-in for (spoiler tagging this in case anyone has any interest in avoiding such things) Roman Polanski, or at least his ilk, and we begin to see the tapestry unfold.
I think it was all rather well done, albeit a simple tale, told with style and atmosphere. If I had to be a finicky kunt about this though, reaching for a criticism to maintain an allure of shoddy interweb integrity: it's that this is like the 4th horror type film I've seen this year using a rolling upside-down landscape shot for the intro. Which does look cool, admittedly. However, it is probably the least interesting use here, unlike the Candyman Reboootyquel where it legitimately felt otherworldly, and Violation that played around a little with the idea. Other than than, not bad at all!
A sort of moody 'switched-dynamics' horror where there isn't any genuine attempt to frighten you, but to put you perhaps on the other side of the fence instead, a subgenre of growing interest. Was a bit surprised to see Dario Argento's name pop up in the intro credits, but a quick interweb search says it's a producer credit. Nevertheless, it's made quickly clear this is all put together by people who know and love what they're doing. The protag is aged lady Alice Krige on a trip to an isolated Scotland retreat with her nurse Kota Eberhardt, who arrive to find themselves stuck with pesky other humans doing new age hijinks and talking shit. Then spookies happen, but maybe spookies are our friend? And maybe they have a dark history and presents to give? Then Malcom McDowell makes an appearance as someone clearly doing a stand-in for (spoiler tagging this in case anyone has any interest in avoiding such things) Roman Polanski, or at least his ilk, and we begin to see the tapestry unfold.
I think it was all rather well done, albeit a simple tale, told with style and atmosphere. If I had to be a finicky kunt about this though, reaching for a criticism to maintain an allure of shoddy interweb integrity: it's that this is like the 4th horror type film I've seen this year using a rolling upside-down landscape shot for the intro. Which does look cool, admittedly. However, it is probably the least interesting use here, unlike the Candyman Reboootyquel where it legitimately felt otherworldly, and Violation that played around a little with the idea. Other than than, not bad at all!
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Mad God
The long awaited, long in production, Magnum Opus of animator and special effects legend Phil Tippett. The term "Magnum Opus" of course, having it's origin in alchemical mysticism, which is quite appropriate, considering Mad God seems to be partly rooted in it. It's a lavishly produced stop motion picture of around 80 minutes depicting various layers of a nightmarish hellscape and many of the convoluted and incomprehensible biological, mechanical and mystical processes happening in it.
Suffice to say, this is not a movie you watch for the story. Mad God is cinema of the purely visual kind. Tippett conjures up some of the most beautifully grotesque imagery ever put to film, at the very least with this level of production value. Stop Motion Animation is often considered an artistic excess by it's very nature. Generally seen as too difficult and too expensive an animation style to be commercially viable and kept alive practically by a handful of studios doing it purely for the art. Mad God has little in common with a Laika or Aardman production, much more with, say, Gerald Scarfe's animations for The Wall or the kind of digital outsider art produced by independent animators on the internet like M Dot Strange or Jimmy Screamerclawz.
It's, frankly, one hell of a thing to commit 30 years of your life to. That's a long time to dwell in the depths of stop motion hell and Tippett makes damn sure to immerse his audience in it the best he can. A wide variety of messed up creatures are seen dwelling in a wide variety of messed up environments, industrial hellscapes, war zones, dilapidated hospitals, we see a wide variety of horrific places and things that happen in them.
It's difficult to talk about what the substance of Mad God is, exactly, beyond its imagery alone. We start of with the image of the Tower of Babel and a quote from the bible and those spiritual musings seem to be at the center of Mad God. It would seem like Mad God is trying to depict a world devoid of divine grace, a place where darkness, death, violence and heresy rule. Despite it's utter desolation, though, it's also quite vibrant in its own way, full of life and creation, bizarre and diseased as it may seem to us. There are two sequences of events in Mad God that one could perhaps describe as plotlines. One involves mass produced soldiers trying to detonate an explosive under the order of what seems to be an elderly mage with claws on his hands and feet and another one which involves a worm like infant being carried from a hospital to the laboratory of an alchemist. The latter of which probably has the clearest structure and payoff to it.
I suppose at the end of the day, there are two ways to look at Mad God. One is taking it literally as a work of surrealist fantasy that is applicable, but not directly allegorical to any material reality. The other one, of course, is to read it as an allegory and look for a concrete metaphor behind every single one of its individual elements. Everyone has their own viewpoint when it comes to this, but straight up, I was never a big fan of the latter approach. I think there is little value to a film that can't, at least to some extent, be taken literally and only presents itself as a text to be decoded and translated, and I think Mad God is imbued with too much passion, emotion and creativity to be just that.
I'm unable to say what Tippett's intentions were but I can say quite confidently that he created something wholly unique and beautiful with Mad God. There are plently of clear influences, with some direct references to paintings of Hieronymous Bosch or Zdzisław Beksiński or films like David Lynch's Eraserhead or Henry Sellick's Nightmare Before Christmas. But at the center of it is a phantastical and phantasmagorical journey into a world that got to grow and gestate inside Phillipp Tippett's mind for multiple decades. If anything, it would be a dissapointment if it were easy to relate to.
Mad God is a thoroughly immersive, stylistically unique and textually ambitious descent into one of the most beautiful wastelands ever put to film. A visceral place of manifold textures, sounds and processes of byzantine complexity. A movie asking to be experienced and contemplated, more so than interpreted. It's an acquired taste, but a very rich and unusual one.
The long awaited, long in production, Magnum Opus of animator and special effects legend Phil Tippett. The term "Magnum Opus" of course, having it's origin in alchemical mysticism, which is quite appropriate, considering Mad God seems to be partly rooted in it. It's a lavishly produced stop motion picture of around 80 minutes depicting various layers of a nightmarish hellscape and many of the convoluted and incomprehensible biological, mechanical and mystical processes happening in it.
Suffice to say, this is not a movie you watch for the story. Mad God is cinema of the purely visual kind. Tippett conjures up some of the most beautifully grotesque imagery ever put to film, at the very least with this level of production value. Stop Motion Animation is often considered an artistic excess by it's very nature. Generally seen as too difficult and too expensive an animation style to be commercially viable and kept alive practically by a handful of studios doing it purely for the art. Mad God has little in common with a Laika or Aardman production, much more with, say, Gerald Scarfe's animations for The Wall or the kind of digital outsider art produced by independent animators on the internet like M Dot Strange or Jimmy Screamerclawz.
It's, frankly, one hell of a thing to commit 30 years of your life to. That's a long time to dwell in the depths of stop motion hell and Tippett makes damn sure to immerse his audience in it the best he can. A wide variety of messed up creatures are seen dwelling in a wide variety of messed up environments, industrial hellscapes, war zones, dilapidated hospitals, we see a wide variety of horrific places and things that happen in them.
It's difficult to talk about what the substance of Mad God is, exactly, beyond its imagery alone. We start of with the image of the Tower of Babel and a quote from the bible and those spiritual musings seem to be at the center of Mad God. It would seem like Mad God is trying to depict a world devoid of divine grace, a place where darkness, death, violence and heresy rule. Despite it's utter desolation, though, it's also quite vibrant in its own way, full of life and creation, bizarre and diseased as it may seem to us. There are two sequences of events in Mad God that one could perhaps describe as plotlines. One involves mass produced soldiers trying to detonate an explosive under the order of what seems to be an elderly mage with claws on his hands and feet and another one which involves a worm like infant being carried from a hospital to the laboratory of an alchemist. The latter of which probably has the clearest structure and payoff to it.
I suppose at the end of the day, there are two ways to look at Mad God. One is taking it literally as a work of surrealist fantasy that is applicable, but not directly allegorical to any material reality. The other one, of course, is to read it as an allegory and look for a concrete metaphor behind every single one of its individual elements. Everyone has their own viewpoint when it comes to this, but straight up, I was never a big fan of the latter approach. I think there is little value to a film that can't, at least to some extent, be taken literally and only presents itself as a text to be decoded and translated, and I think Mad God is imbued with too much passion, emotion and creativity to be just that.
I'm unable to say what Tippett's intentions were but I can say quite confidently that he created something wholly unique and beautiful with Mad God. There are plently of clear influences, with some direct references to paintings of Hieronymous Bosch or Zdzisław Beksiński or films like David Lynch's Eraserhead or Henry Sellick's Nightmare Before Christmas. But at the center of it is a phantastical and phantasmagorical journey into a world that got to grow and gestate inside Phillipp Tippett's mind for multiple decades. If anything, it would be a dissapointment if it were easy to relate to.
Mad God is a thoroughly immersive, stylistically unique and textually ambitious descent into one of the most beautiful wastelands ever put to film. A visceral place of manifold textures, sounds and processes of byzantine complexity. A movie asking to be experienced and contemplated, more so than interpreted. It's an acquired taste, but a very rich and unusual one.
Was starting to think I was the only person who saw this film, let alone appreciated it. What a meticulously crafted nightmare universe they've achieved! But with so few people to be able to recommend it to. Didn't realise how unsettling a baby's cry can be when you're seeing it come from an unwashed adult human mouth projected from a hanging set of TV's dangling off walls of endless meat. And that was just one disposable transistory scene!
Got recommended this video about it, which haven't seen yet, but am familiar with the narrator from elsewhere. Might be of interest, maybe not, but just in case;
I consider it a great dumb action movie too. My only complaint is some the quick cutting they used in the beginning. It's not the worst, but the action is already well shot. Why bother using such a crappy filming technique to begin with? I found this movie better than most of the Bourne films. I don't know what Double Toasted was talking about everyone, aside from Chris Evans, being "boring and too serious". The movie has personality and the jokes actually land without going overboard. Evans as Lloyd is the 2022 version of Bennett from Commando. The Gray Man I enjoyed, and would not mind watching another time.
Yeah, my first thought was, wow this feels like Winter Soldier but less interesting since no one has super strength. Very Russo brother I guess. The final fights were much better. Maybe that's where they put all their effort.
Still does not excuse the quick cutting, even if that's the case. It feels like Russo put in for the sake of it, or because "that's how the genre goes!". Yet, Atomic Blonde showed how full of shit that argument was back in 2017. You already have a well shot beginning scene, don't sour it for the rest of the film. It didn't obviously, but I was concerned the film was going to be nothing, but quick cuts and shaky cam. Thankfully, it is not the case, but there are still plenty of film makers and Hollywood who still don't get it, nor want to. Either because money, time, laziness, or all of the above. It seems like almost only those in the straight-to-DVD market care about making well shot action nowadays. Been that way since the early 2010s.
So I'm seeing some meh reviews of The Gray Man on Netflix and... they are nuts.
This movie is a hoot. I am staggered at the possibilities. I hope for an increasingly democratic entertainment paradigm. One where people come up with ideas and just make them accessible to the public. This miracle feels like an example of it.
I laughed out loud to its humor. I gasped at its plot points. I cringed at its violence. I had a blast. I hope y'all get to see this A- terrific movie.
This movie is a hoot. I am staggered at the possibilities. I hope for an increasingly democratic entertainment paradigm. One where people come up with ideas and just make them accessible to the public. This miracle feels like an example of it.
I laughed out loud to its humor. I gasped at its plot points. I cringed at its violence. I had a blast. I hope y'all get to see this A- terrific movie.
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The Gray Man (2022)
This movie for me fulfilled a cardinal sin of movies - it just failed to hold my interest. Ryan Gosling plays a murderer recruited by the CIA to go off and kill people. Then he finds information about a corrupt CIA agent, who send sociopathic ex-CIA agent Chris Evans in to deal with him, who then hauls in another load of assassins, agents and police. Fireworks ensue. Gosling is assisted by Ana de Armas, presumably just so the movie isn't too testosterone-laden.
The film rollicks along at a rapid pace. In fact, it barely stops to breathe: and this is where some of the problem is, because when something's non-stop it works like a sensory overload and just creates numbness. Forget depth, tension, suspense, empathy for the characters, emotional investment: it simply doesn't have time for any of those, and along the way therefore it also surrenders human interest and excitement. After that, it is incredibly ordinary. The action is in a sense well done, there's just too much of it, and the plot is far too much like a collection of snippets of other (better) movies: it's cliched. Horribly, horribly cliched. Arguably, it's like a B-movie ripping off a blockbuster, except with the budget of a blockbuster. I vaguely remember a blur of lots of colours, and that's about it. Gosling, Evans and de Armas look like they had fun, at least.
It seems like it's set up for a sequel. But then, Netflix has produced a lot of movies that look like they're designed to spawn sequels or spin-off TV series, and none of the teased subsequent material ever arrives. On the basis of this, I wouldn't cry if this also remains a standalone.
This movie for me fulfilled a cardinal sin of movies - it just failed to hold my interest. Ryan Gosling plays a murderer recruited by the CIA to go off and kill people. Then he finds information about a corrupt CIA agent, who send sociopathic ex-CIA agent Chris Evans in to deal with him, who then hauls in another load of assassins, agents and police. Fireworks ensue. Gosling is assisted by Ana de Armas, presumably just so the movie isn't too testosterone-laden.
The film rollicks along at a rapid pace. In fact, it barely stops to breathe: and this is where some of the problem is, because when something's non-stop it works like a sensory overload and just creates numbness. Forget depth, tension, suspense, empathy for the characters, emotional investment: it simply doesn't have time for any of those, and along the way therefore it also surrenders human interest and excitement. After that, it is incredibly ordinary. The action is in a sense well done, there's just too much of it, and the plot is far too much like a collection of snippets of other (better) movies: it's cliched. Horribly, horribly cliched. Arguably, it's like a B-movie ripping off a blockbuster, except with the budget of a blockbuster. I vaguely remember a blur of lots of colours, and that's about it. Gosling, Evans and de Armas look like they had fun, at least.
It seems like it's set up for a sequel. But then, Netflix has produced a lot of movies that look like they're designed to spawn sequels or spin-off TV series, and none of the teased subsequent material ever arrives. On the basis of this, I wouldn't cry if this also remains a standalone.
This is accurate. I watched it last night and awoke to not remember most of it because it "failed to hold my interest." It just blew by; nothing paused long enough to engage me. About the only interesting thing was watching Captain America as an evil psycho. Other than that, it's a movie that happened while my eyeballs were open and facing the screen.
I'm trying to figure out how we had such divergent views of this movie.
I had my buddies over and I guess I had no choice but to pay attention and stay with it. We all had a blast.
A movie can give one overload, especially if it gets to the point where gunfire might as well be a child's rattling toy. The last few Bond movies come to mind. But this didn't do that to me. I'm hoping there is a sequel.
You and I have been largely simpatico of late when it comes to our cinematic tastes, and I was, well, not "shocked," but certainly surprised to see such a glowing review for a film that to me was extremely bland, an amalgamation of a lot of things done far better in better films. To each their own; I'm glad you were able to enjoy it. It's not a "bad" film IMHO, just a very vanilla one.
I watched Ghostbustes: Afterlife and now I know how some Star Wars fans felt when the saw The Force Awakens.
God, I fucking hate this movie. It's braindead fan wanking of the highest degree. It just throws shit from the original movie on screen regardless of whether there's any logic or reason behind it. Hey, remember when Ray recited a verse from the Bible pertaining to an apocalyptic event in the first movie? Well, now Egon has it spray painted word for word right outside his farmhouse, eventhough when Ray said this he was with Winston so Egon never heard him say that, but fuck it right, you remember it from the original movie, so here it is. Hey, remember the Sedgewick Hotel from the first movie? Well, Egon has a door signage from that hotel at his farmhouse, eventhough he has no reason to have that at all, certainly not for this long and apparently in mint condition. Hey, remember that red gizmo thing that gets wheeled out at the start of the first movie when the Ghostbusters get kicked off campus? You betcha, Egon has it, eventhough it was confiscated.
Oh, by the way, Egon is an absentee father in this movie for reasons that makes no fucking sense. Apparently it was to do something so important he had no time whatsoever to write a letter or make a phone call. And the other Ghostbusters weren't there to help him because... they didn't believe him. I'll say again, the other Ghostbusters who busted ghosts and who vanquished a freaking god from New York, didn't believe Egon when he said he had to stop the same god again. Fuck you movie.
And ofcourse Gozer is back again, cuz the first movie. And the terror dogs are back, cuz the first movie. And look, there's little Stay Puffed marshmellow men now, eventhough the original SP Man came from Ray's naive attempt at tricking a god, but whatever... the first movie. Gozer obviously can't look any different from how it looked in the first movie, eventhough in the first movie Gozer just appeared in whatever shape it wanted whenever it was set to conquer a new realm. There's even a giant stone bust of Gozer that I guess Ivo Shandor made, which means he knew what it looked like eventhough he had no way of knowing. Oh yeah, Ivo Shandor is actually in this movie and distractingly played by J.K. Simmons. But he dies within 2 seconds of showing up, so what was the damn point? And apparently he built an identical Gozer resurrection shrine/alter in a cave somewhere which is just as capable of summoning Gozer, so why did he bother erecting an entire bloody skyscraper in New York for the same ends?
And the cherry on top of this shit heep was the old Ghostbusters returning at the end of the movie. Why now and not when Egon asked them to help? Because some random little girl called Ray. Yeah... We get Bill Murray trying and failing to not be too old and apathetic to care about what he's saying, but he's wearing the Ghostbusters outfit so I guess he got a nice check. Then ofcourse we get the crossing of the streams to shoot Gozer, eventhough in the first movie this was to close the gate that Gozer was manifesting through and something they were likely to not survive. But fuck it, it's just a thing they do now.
The most sickening was dead Egon showing up, which just made me feel wholly uncomfortable, especially when thinking about how that must've been on-set.
This movie was offensive, and I hate my brain for remembering it.
God, I fucking hate this movie. It's braindead fan wanking of the highest degree. It just throws shit from the original movie on screen regardless of whether there's any logic or reason behind it. Hey, remember when Ray recited a verse from the Bible pertaining to an apocalyptic event in the first movie? Well, now Egon has it spray painted word for word right outside his farmhouse, eventhough when Ray said this he was with Winston so Egon never heard him say that, but fuck it right, you remember it from the original movie, so here it is. Hey, remember the Sedgewick Hotel from the first movie? Well, Egon has a door signage from that hotel at his farmhouse, eventhough he has no reason to have that at all, certainly not for this long and apparently in mint condition. Hey, remember that red gizmo thing that gets wheeled out at the start of the first movie when the Ghostbusters get kicked off campus? You betcha, Egon has it, eventhough it was confiscated.
Oh, by the way, Egon is an absentee father in this movie for reasons that makes no fucking sense. Apparently it was to do something so important he had no time whatsoever to write a letter or make a phone call. And the other Ghostbusters weren't there to help him because... they didn't believe him. I'll say again, the other Ghostbusters who busted ghosts and who vanquished a freaking god from New York, didn't believe Egon when he said he had to stop the same god again. Fuck you movie.
And ofcourse Gozer is back again, cuz the first movie. And the terror dogs are back, cuz the first movie. And look, there's little Stay Puffed marshmellow men now, eventhough the original SP Man came from Ray's naive attempt at tricking a god, but whatever... the first movie. Gozer obviously can't look any different from how it looked in the first movie, eventhough in the first movie Gozer just appeared in whatever shape it wanted whenever it was set to conquer a new realm. There's even a giant stone bust of Gozer that I guess Ivo Shandor made, which means he knew what it looked like eventhough he had no way of knowing. Oh yeah, Ivo Shandor is actually in this movie and distractingly played by J.K. Simmons. But he dies within 2 seconds of showing up, so what was the damn point? And apparently he built an identical Gozer resurrection shrine/alter in a cave somewhere which is just as capable of summoning Gozer, so why did he bother erecting an entire bloody skyscraper in New York for the same ends?
And the cherry on top of this shit heep was the old Ghostbusters returning at the end of the movie. Why now and not when Egon asked them to help? Because some random little girl called Ray. Yeah... We get Bill Murray trying and failing to not be too old and apathetic to care about what he's saying, but he's wearing the Ghostbusters outfit so I guess he got a nice check. Then ofcourse we get the crossing of the streams to shoot Gozer, eventhough in the first movie this was to close the gate that Gozer was manifesting through and something they were likely to not survive. But fuck it, it's just a thing they do now.
The most sickening was dead Egon showing up, which just made me feel wholly uncomfortable, especially when thinking about how that must've been on-set.
This movie was offensive, and I hate my brain for remembering it.
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Nope (2022) 8/10
I took off the afternoon and went and saw "Nope". Eeeeh I left with a distinct feeling of minor disappointment. It was a good movie, solid 8/10, but I think I wanted it to be bigger in scope than it was. If I had to compare to anything I'd say it's strikingly similar to "Signs", unfortunately so. Better than Signs, but also not the movie Signs should have been. Without spoiling anything I just expected some more meat to it. His two previous films were very larger than life, the first in context, and then in scope. I'd say go in with expectations low and just "space alien action horror", though very well acted and directed.
If you've seen it, idk. His last two films had some pretty bombastic social themes and like things you "need to think about" on the way home. This one has some minor commentary on.. well actually the commentary goes out the door the minute the protagonists decide to film and hunt the thing rather than try and figure out what it is. The spectacle is still there. Like there's a lot of heart it, I loved the characters, but I guess I was waiting for some 3rd act twist or reveal. Other than revealing it to be one of the angels from neon genesis evangelion, there's no big surprises in this one. I liked it better as a film than Us , however I still think about Us, where as I suspect I'll forget Nope in a month and have to be reminded that I saw it.
I took off the afternoon and went and saw "Nope". Eeeeh I left with a distinct feeling of minor disappointment. It was a good movie, solid 8/10, but I think I wanted it to be bigger in scope than it was. If I had to compare to anything I'd say it's strikingly similar to "Signs", unfortunately so. Better than Signs, but also not the movie Signs should have been. Without spoiling anything I just expected some more meat to it. His two previous films were very larger than life, the first in context, and then in scope. I'd say go in with expectations low and just "space alien action horror", though very well acted and directed.
If you've seen it, idk. His last two films had some pretty bombastic social themes and like things you "need to think about" on the way home. This one has some minor commentary on.. well actually the commentary goes out the door the minute the protagonists decide to film and hunt the thing rather than try and figure out what it is. The spectacle is still there. Like there's a lot of heart it, I loved the characters, but I guess I was waiting for some 3rd act twist or reveal. Other than revealing it to be one of the angels from neon genesis evangelion, there's no big surprises in this one. I liked it better as a film than Us , however I still think about Us, where as I suspect I'll forget Nope in a month and have to be reminded that I saw it.
It was OK but I never thought of Ghostbusters as a franchise property. I did not care for #2. #1 had some laughs and fun and they really should have just left it there.
I loved this though I wrote earlier, I had to work on keeping the chimp subplot as part of this movie. I get it. It was unnecessary. But it did add fun and tension to the movie. But Signs rocks as one of my favorites.
I will think of this movie far into the future over Us. Very interesting movie in so many ways.
I do have to look up your genesis reference. My bad I'm sure but I don't know of what you are writing.
EDIT: Reviewing https://www.polygon.com/23277377/jordan-peele-nope-movie-creature-design-inspirations
Ive heard the subtext of the film revolves around the chimp and Ive heard a couple theories on what its all supposed to be a larger allegory for, but unlike his previous two movies nobody online seems to have "solved it". You know like, what in society is it commenting on, if anything?
In the film, OJ doesnt like looking people in the eyes, and it makes him anxious like Gordy. He immediately catches on that the monster feels threatened and attacks when people look at it so he figures out how to kill it by treating it like an animal. So the gordy stuff is kinda necessary for that twist to work, but not crazy important. Everybody online seems to think its commenting on show business in someways. Maybe its commenting Hollywood actors, directors etc being taking advantage of and freaking out idk.
NGE reference? peele came out and said it. NGE is a kaiju show and one of the monsters looks like this one. He based it on anime, obliquely NGE, jellyfish and squids. If you go on YouTube Im sure somebody has already done a side-by-side comparison.
Honestly Ive already forgotten the majority of the film. This happens and this happens and then this happens /end. I cant think if a single compelling character or line of dialog.
Its funny how the only reason this movie exists is because the studio owns the IP and paid for it to happen. Sony is by far the strangest studio in my opinion because they seem to have zero emotional investment in any of their franchises and the films are 100% managed by a product team. All the nostalgia stuff you mentioned. Im confident none of that is in the script. Its all just product meetings where they run test studies and algorithms to determine what "things" need to be in the movies. The rave scene in Venom 2? an email leak showed that was put in there because it would appeal to millennials. "we got plans for you parker" scene - product guy said put it in.
What ends up happening is they just film around whatever the product demands are and you end up with this kinda harmless, but souless trash.
The sad part is that the movie likely didnt make its money back. it made 200mil total on 75mil budget, plus whatever the marketing cost was. It turns out, nobody gives a fuck about the Ghostbusters franchise. They would have been better served to give Guillermo or Rogen 40 million and let them do whatever they want. Even if they fucked it up at least it would have been memorable.