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Post by bob-coppola on Mar 21, 2019 21:24:50 GMT
Didn't see a thread for this one. Saw earlier today at the movies, and I was a bit disappointed. The first two acts are a blast, the third act is a massive disappointment and the final twist is ridiculous, soap opera-level predictable. Peele masters his skills in building an atmosphere visually (which wasn't exactly Get Out's main strenght), but lacks something as interesting to say. The social critique feels very, very shoe-horned and the resolution to the whole doppelganger thing didn't really work for me - should've stayed something more ambiguous, the sci-fi route was a huge miss and didn't make sense at all . At least, Nyong'o shines as a very exciting and troubled scream queen.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 22, 2019 1:42:43 GMT
It was insane, I loved it.
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Post by dadsburgers on Mar 22, 2019 2:03:20 GMT
There are some things I'm a little confused about, but it was a very fun ride! I really liked the twists, they gave the movie a lot of substance that was missing throughout the bulk of the movie Z(beforehand, it was kind of just a senseless slasher), although because of it there were quite a few things that didn't make sense to me. Hopefully that's a case of me being dumb and not the movie being full of holes. But overall it worked for me. No Get Out, but lots of fun. The kids were great.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 22, 2019 2:31:12 GMT
the third act is a massive disappointment and the final twist is ridiculous, soap opera-level predictable. I actually loved it for that. To be honest, I knew the movie was gonna take a hard turn, because it’s just a trapping of the genre nowadays more than Peele’s, so I saw it coming, but in a good way. It’s pure, old-fashioned camp horror in the best of ways, what with all the focus on evil twins and scary houses, and even if Peele doesn’t win points for surprises, I love that he stuck to his guns and rolled with it. If he had tried to take it more seriously than he did, it might have felt disingenuous, but he reveled in the trashiness, and I had so much fun because of it.
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Drish
Badass
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Us (2019)
Mar 22, 2019 3:33:48 GMT
via mobile
Post by Drish on Mar 22, 2019 3:33:48 GMT
How violent/gory is it?
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 22, 2019 3:51:05 GMT
Moderately. It’s bloody, but it’s not excessive.
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morton
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Post by morton on Mar 22, 2019 3:52:24 GMT
Didn't see a thread for this one. Saw earlier today at the movies, and I was a bit disappointed. The first two acts are a blast, the third act is a massive disappointment and the final twist is ridiculous, soap opera-level predictable. Peele masters his skills in building an atmosphere visually (which wasn't exactly Get Out's main strenght), but lacks something as interesting to say. The social critique feels very, very shoe-horned and the resolution to the whole doppelganger thing didn't really work for me - should've stayed something more ambiguous, the sci-fi route was a huge miss and didn't make sense at all . At least, Nyong'o shines as a very exciting and troubled scream queen. Yeah, I was really enjoying it until the third act. That twist was something that I think everyone could see a mile away, and I don't think the exposition dump worked at all. I think Peele should have left the exposition out and taken out the reveal. I think most of the audience would have been smart enough to get the twist if he had just ended with Nyong'o smiling creepily. Or at least it would have things be ambiguous as to when her and her doppleganger switched places. I didn't think it that bad. There is some violence, but I felt that a lot of it took place in the background. There's also some blood, but I didn't have to shield my eyes even though I kept waiting to shield them just in case. In comparison, I watched Halloween (2018) a few months ago, and that made me shield my eyes a few times. ETA: After thinking about it more, I think the twist was needed but still not a fan of the exposition.
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morton
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Post by morton on Mar 22, 2019 4:16:38 GMT
Okay after reading more of people's thoughts about it and what it means, I do like it more; although not the exposition at the end.
For those that were like me after seeing it here's the bible verse,
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Post by quetee on Mar 22, 2019 14:59:31 GMT
I could be wrong but I think the one glove refers to golf players.
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morton
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Post by morton on Mar 22, 2019 15:29:37 GMT
I could be wrong but I think the one glove refers to golf players. I don't think this is a spoiler, but I've read that the red jumpsuit and one glove is a "Thriller" influence which made sense to me because of the t-shirt at the beginning. Also the film is basically like "Thriller", there's a twist where the main character isn't who they appear to be.
Plus, I think it fits with the social commentary of the film in that Michael Jackson went from being black to changing his features to look more Caucasian just as some black people who grow up in poverty that become rich try to cut ties with where they come from. That's why I believe there was an OJ joke in there as well.
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Post by quetee on Mar 22, 2019 15:45:55 GMT
I could be wrong but I think the one glove refers to golf players. I don't think this is a spoiler, but I've read that the red jumpsuit and one glove is a "Thriller" influence which made sense to me because of the t-shirt at the beginning. Also the film is basically like "Thriller", there's a twist where the main character isn't who they appear to be.
Plus, I think it fits with the social commentary of the film in that Michael Jackson went from being black to changing his features to look more Caucasian just as some black people who grow up in poverty that become rich try to cut ties with where they come from. That's why I believe there was an OJ joke in there as well. I'll get back to this but I say no. Red I believe =republicans
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Post by quetee on Mar 22, 2019 21:08:37 GMT
The red line is dividing America
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morton
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Post by morton on Mar 22, 2019 21:10:43 GMT
I don't think this is a spoiler, but I've read that the red jumpsuit and one glove is a "Thriller" influence which made sense to me because of the t-shirt at the beginning. Also the film is basically like "Thriller", there's a twist where the main character isn't who they appear to be.
Plus, I think it fits with the social commentary of the film in that Michael Jackson went from being black to changing his features to look more Caucasian just as some black people who grow up in poverty that become rich try to cut ties with where they come from. That's why I believe there was an OJ joke in there as well. I'll get back to this but I say no. Red I believe =republicans I think there are many ways to interpret the tethered and the red that they wear, Republicans being one of them, and they're all equally valid. I've seen interesting theories on them representing the working class (red is associated with Communists), the industrial prison complex (jumpsuits like prisoners wear, lead character is handcuffed in some capacity for most of the action scenes ), the homeless, a commentary on slavery in America, etc.
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Post by ibbi on Mar 22, 2019 21:18:18 GMT
Not even a little bit close to Get Out. Peele's taken HUGE, admirable steps forward behind the camera, the visuals are bad ass, but narratively the thing lacks that movies clarity, and in becoming a more overt and in your face horror movie its characters have somehow caught the bug of behaving like absolute idiots in a way that nobody in a post-Scream world (I'm assuming he saw it, his movie is littered with horror movie references) should ever do if they expect to be taken seriously. Also, those monologues Lupita has for anyone that doesn't get it are Nolanesque. Massive thumbs up on his evolution as a director (cast is all superb too) massive thumbs down in his devolution as a writer.
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Post by alexanderblanchett on Mar 22, 2019 22:00:27 GMT
A creative synopsis and a fine yet not flawless execution. The film is a crazy ride, that is for sure and one ride that offers its audience many great twists and turns. The film has many good aspects, some great and some so-so. The great of all aspects is for sure the performance of Lupita Nyong'o. What a tour de force performance... and I am talking Toni Collette "Hereditary" - tour de force. A fantastic turn in her double role. First the traumatized mother on the one hurt and then her crazy "twin" where she is so fantastically freaky and gives you constantly an uncomfortable feeling. I haven't seen many 2019 films yet and this is hands down the best performance of the year so far. I also liked Winston Duke who brought a lot of self irony to his role. The kids were also truly great. Jordan Peele had a great idea but I think towards the end he lost a little bit the route to the conclusion. Because the explanation for the happening is rather a bit poor-is. But that is the only flaw I found with this film. Generally it a very scary movie that often brings you on the edge of your seat... also the score and especially soundtrack is fantastic. Not sure if I love or hate the final twist, I saw it coming but still feels that it causes some story holes ... however I will look closer on my second view. What I really dogged was the self irony Jordan Peele from time to time brought to it. Really a good film. Entertaining for sure and the characters are very likable (well.. some of them ;-) )
Rating: 8/10
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Lubezki
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Post by Lubezki on Mar 23, 2019 0:14:09 GMT
ibbi is spot on with his review. Peele has shown that he is evolving rapidly as an assured and confident director in full command of the camera. This had the potential to be a horror for the ages, and in some aspects it works brilliantly. But I don’t think his ideas were envisaged very well. Some excellent performances though, especially Lupita, whom I can now remove from my book of saltiness.
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Post by bob-coppola on Mar 23, 2019 2:18:35 GMT
I think the analogy Peele is trying to make is interesting, if my reading has some foundation. The clones would be the lower classes, who live "underground", with their struggles invisible to the public eye and eternally silenced. But in their core, they're just like the people who live out in the world: "they're americans". There's nothing inherently stopping them from uprising other then a social contract. So, one day, they do. My problem is: this is the type of movie that begs to be analysed, and once you take a closer look, how Peele stages his metaphor doesn't feel organic at all. Some things are better left unexplained, 'cause once you do, if the set-up is cheesy or too absurd (which it was imo), it undersells the point you're trying to make. Why in the actual fuck would humans make clone of every single human being in the US and casually just leaves them trapped on the sewers? Why were they created in the first place? The doppelganger thing would work were the explanation something more mystic, exoteric, because it doesn't really have to be read under a strict logic (i.e. mother!, The Shining and Hereditary). But they way Peele chose to make it, it just feels lazy and non-sense. The whole sci-fi thing plus the changeling at the end seems like something M. Night Shyamalan would do, and I thought Jordan Peele was above that. Unfortunately, the more I think about that messy third act, the less I like it. And the more the first two engaging, suspenseful acts feel tainted by the narrative choices.
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Post by stephen on Mar 23, 2019 4:46:51 GMT
Eh, I think it was good but fell a bit too short for my tastes. Us certainly is a lot more ambitious than Peele’s previous outing, but it also loses the thread much more than the watertight Get Out—and I think Peele oversteps it one twist too much.
First, the good: in terms of execution, Peele’s direction is certainly a notch above his debut (not that I think it was weak back then by any stretch, but I think it was a stronger script and he just kept it relatively simple and didn’t try to overwhelm it). Here, he actively stages some impressive sequences that show a control and a confidence worthy of a director with a dozen films under his belt. The performances are uniformly excellent—Nyong’o acts her ass off, Duke is great fun, and there is a scene where Elisabeth Moss gives the best performance of her career, Mad Men be damned.
But then there’s the basic concept of the movie, and I think that while it initially has a creepy setup, it also starts to spin out of control as the film goes on. Too many questions are raised, and honestly I found the explanations—when we got them—to be kinda half-assed. I think it would’ve been better served to not mention the origins at all, preserving the mystery and letting the audience draw its conclusions. Is it an Stranger Things Upside Down scenario? Cosmic puppets? Evil funhouse mirror reflections? None of the above? But the exposition we do get comes off so bloody clunky, and it’s only through Peele’s strong visual eye that we largely ignore it.
I also should point out that—through no fault of Peele himself, but rather the advertising—I sussed out the film’s final twist almost immediately, just because of a certain shot that was in the trailer. I think without that image in the ads, I might feel kinder about that last revelation, but as it stands, I think it feels like Peele randomly threw that twist in to pad out the ending. I don’t think it works, and it kinda undercuts a fair amount of the film in retrospect.
As far as a fledging horror director's sophomore efforts go, Peele's doing better than some of the others. I just think that it was a case of, to quote Emperor Joseph in Amadeus, too many notes.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Mar 23, 2019 6:19:54 GMT
On reflection, it doesn’t hold up as well, but I think that third act’s way more enjoyable than people are giving it credit for. And most importantly, the movie’s scary, and that’s all I really wanted.
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Post by DeepArcher on Mar 23, 2019 7:27:21 GMT
I think we need to be talking about Elisabeth Moss more here. I think my favorite moment in this entire film would have to be the shot on Kitty's doppelganger where she puts on Kitty's lipstick , I mean Moss does so much with her face in that one moment that absolutely chilled me to the core. She was fucking mesmerizing with comparatively little to work with, though of course Nyong'o is equally brilliant as well. She's really something else as "Red," and honestly I would've liked to have seen more of her (though this could've been risky, obviously), especially given that her two "big" scenes of dialogue are the exposition dumps that, I would agree, are the worst moments of the entire film. Winston Duke was a goddamn riot here, and the kids were great as well (not being annoying -- always a plus!). I definitely found myself more aggravated with stupid decision-making in a couple scenes here than I usually am with most horror movies ... I generally think it's a pretty meaningless criticism to make, but here there were a handful of moments where it just got distracting. The third act was a bit of a letdown, it definitely loses some steam after the first night, but I thought that the final fight scene between Adelaide and Red was absolutely brilliant, so I can't complain much. In general, I really loved this. Definitely gave me Funny Games vibes more than anything, and that is a great thing. Truly terrifying and intense more or less throughout. And while I don't think it's as strong a piece of work as Get Out overall (though that one also came together more completely on re-watch for me, so we'll see), I do think it's just as rich in its symbolism, if not more, and there's a lot to mull over here in terms of detail even if its central allegory becomes obvious.
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Post by finniussnrub on Mar 23, 2019 12:33:23 GMT
I liked it in terms of the execution of scenes and the acting, more so than what was written. Also am glad it didn't turn into a sketch comedy randomly for one scene like in Get Out. The final twist felt perfunctory and Peele either needed to come up with a better explanation or should've left the whole thing a lot more ambiguous.
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Post by pessimusreincarnated on Mar 23, 2019 16:06:10 GMT
Not nearly as well-rounded, thematically or structurally, as Get Out, but still a solid and very interesting sophomore effort from Peele. This definitely feels more like a traditional genre flick than his last movie, almost turning into a straight-up slasher flick at points. Lupita Nyong'o predictably steals the show, in a riveting dual performance where she often acts more with her expressive eyes than anything else.
The ending did leave a little to be desired, and the last-minute twist felt kind of shoehorned in and unnecessary, but at the same time I'm excited to go back and re-watch the movie to see how it changes my perspective on the events that lead up to it.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 23, 2019 18:48:22 GMT
Hugely disappointing. I didn't care much for Get Out and I liked this a helluva lot less. It's like Jordan Peele only thinks in social metaphors, and only knows how to deliver them using hackneyed, uninteresting horror cliches. Divorce this film from the subtext (which would be impossible to do because the film blares its intentions from a damn loudspeaker like this is some Nolan film), and this is a forgettable home invasion thriller. Once you get past that first sequence of the little girl in the hall of mirrors, which was deliciously creepy, this thing is not scary at all. Once we see the "shadow family" for the first time (my theater all laughed when Red started talking, Jesus what was going on there) it became instantly obvious what every single other scare in the film was going to look like, and it doesn't build any tension because it doesn't do anything to make them scarier than they first appear, so the final 45 minutes are a rather dull slog filled with a lot of dumb decisions. Also, as a few other people have mentioned, the central conceit doesn't make a goddamn lick of sense and is hokey as fuck. There might have been potential in this story if Peele hadn't felt the need to explain everything and make it 100% literal. And I'm realizing now that that's why I didn't like Get Out, certainly not as a horror film anyways. Because it seems from both of his films that Peele seems to think horror is an assortment of genre devices and he uses them to deliver his meta-analyses, but they're just going through the motions because in both of these films those devices aren't anchored to ideas that 1) make sense, 2) not subject to silly exposition dumps and monologueing, and 3) are frightening at a visceral level. Part of that is because he keeps breaking the tension with comic relief which is fine and has its audience, but for me it just feels like the horror is playing coy, like Peele's unwilling to let things get truly fucked up. For all the movie's bloodletting, I was never shocked or truly disturbed. It does have its highpoints though. The music was terrific, and not just the incorporation of Luniz's "I Got 5 on It" from the trailer into the instrumental score (by the way, I'm never going to hear that song again and not be creeped out by it). I really dug the cinematography too for the most part, especially in that first sequence with young Adelaide wandering off from her parents (has a night ever looked darker or more foreboding?). There's also some really beautiful shots toward the end, especially Adelaide coming down the escalator and the operatically staged fight scene between Adelaide and Red in the hallway. I think the acting was fine for the most part although Red's whole voice thing was a swing and a miss for me. More goofy than scary to be honest. And I was very disappointed Madison Curry doesn't play a larger part in the narrative because her "terrified" reaction was the best thing about the trailer, and by the by one of the best things about the movie. I just love this shot.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Mar 23, 2019 19:07:09 GMT
I thought it was rather enjoyable overall, but unlike Get Out, it was also rather forgettable. I felt the opening opening hour of more traditional slasher film nonsense was elevated out of the possible mire by some slick direction and gorgeous night time cinematography. Also, what is it about funfairs at night time that is so phenomenal to look at in a film. The last half hour was a mixed bag, and the school room scene was the films low point for sure...that exposition . Still it got a little back on track for the last five minutes, and I didn't mind that last twist at all, especially since I think we all probably saw it coming. The performances were the best thing about it. Nyong'o was devastatingly good as both characters, and like many actors have to do with tripe exposition, she managed to pull through it and embarrass no one but the writer. Shout out to Elisabeth Moss, who was horrifyingly annoying and then just plain horrifying. An entertaining one watch. 8/10
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Post by cheesecake on Mar 24, 2019 4:03:20 GMT
Definitely enjoyable but the writing lets it down. I was very impressed with Peele’s confident direction and the editing and score were aces. Nyong'o has never been better and I loved her in the dual roles. However, it was very on the nose and I think the reveal having such a large scope was misguided. Still, I had fun and it’s a decent follow up to Get Out.
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