The trailer for “Nope,” the new alien abduction film from thriller auteur Jordan Peele, now playing in theatres, is one of the rare promos that gives next-to-nothing away about the plot. It’s meant to pique curiosity, to open your mind to the possibility of… well, almost anything.
The movie exists on the edge of possibility. It’s possible to see it simply as a good-time-at-the-movies UFO flick, but if you’re looking for more, Peele adds layers of subtext to the slow burn story, commenting on Hollywood, corralling nature and the belief in something bigger than yourself.
Set in current day, just outside of Los Angeles, “Nope” sees O.J. and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) carry on the family business after the death of their father (Keith David). Descended from the Bahamian jockey who was the first person to be filmed riding a horse, they run Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, a ranch that supplies livestock to film and television shows. “Since the moment pictures could move,” says Emerald, “we’ve had skin in the game.”
Business is slow, and just as O.J. considers selling some of their horses to a local pioneer village style theme park owned by former child star Ricky “Jupe” Park (“The Walking Dead’s” Steven Yeun), strange things happen at the ranch. Some kind of disturbance in the force has caused electrical blackouts, weird weather and put the horses on edge. There’s also a cloud that hasn’t moved for months.
When O.J. spots something in the sky, something he says was “too fast to be a plane,” Emerald hatches a plan to film the airspace around the ranch to capture film of a UFO. “The money shot,” she says. “Undeniable. The Oprah shot.”
They set up surveillance cameras, and, working with tech support guy (and UFO evangelist) Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and gravelly-voiced cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), they attempt to lure the mysterious craft—which resembles a giant sand dollar—to their elaborate trap and get “the impossible shot.”
“What we’re doing is going to do some good,” says Angel, “besides the money and the fame. We can save some lives.”
Like Peele’s other films, “Get Out” and “Us,” “Nope” has jump scares and disturbing images but this isn’t a horror film. It’s a sci fi movie that explores the fear of the unknown by way of Hollywood Westerns—it pays tribute to the doorway shot at the end of “The Searchers”—monster flicks, and of course iconic Steven Spielberg sci fi films like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” These homages are lovingly assembled to create something fresh, but students of film will have a hoot dissecting the movie’s visual influences and Peele’s obvious love of the form.
Just as there are myriad visual inspirations, Peele has jam packed the film with ever-shifting thematic and plot elements. The straight-ahead alien showdown is prefaced by story threads and flashbacks that don’t always feel like they’re forwarding the story. A TV chimpanzee-gone-wild sequence, for instance, while kinda cool if it was part of another movie, is a bit of a head scratcher.
Having said that, the sheer size and spectacle of “Nope” are powerful. There are only a handful of characters, but their journeys are broad and there are unexpected twists and turns. It’s an ambitious movie that feels less focused than Peele’s other films, but nonetheless, “Nope” earns a Yup.
The opening minutes of “Lightyear,” the new, Pixar origin story now playing in theatres, inform us that what we are about to see is the film that inspired “Toy Story’s” Buzz Lightyear character. In other words, it’s the movie that inspired the merch that inspired a movie that inspired even more merch.
Chris Evans voices the square-jawed, heroic and slightly goofy Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear. After a disastrous crash landing on a strange planet, his attempt to rescue the crew, including Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba), his best friend and commanding officer, goes wrong, leaving everyone stranded on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth. His famous Space Rangers helmet weighs heavy on his head. “Everyone is stuck here because of me,” he says.
Determined to return home Buzz embarks on a series of experimental flights using various configurations of jet fuel, trying to find the right formula to achieve the hyper speed needed to cut through space and time.
But something strange happens. For every minute he’s in space, a year passes back on the planet. As Buzz tries trip after trip, his BFF Alisha ages, gets married has a child, and later a grandchild Izzy (Keke Palmer), while Buzz remains, more or less, unchanged.
On the planet, sixty years has passed before Buzz, and his smart and adorable computer companion cat Sox (Peter Sohn) try one last test trip, one that will unite him with Izzy, her “volunteer team of motivated cadets” and Zurg, a menacing force with an army of robots.
At first blush, “Lightyear” may seem like the origin story we don’t really need. Twenty-seven years, three sequels, one direct to video flick and a television series later, you wouldn’t think there would be much left to say about the character, but Pixar has found a way.
“Lightyear” is a Pixar film through and through. You expect the top-notch animation, some cool looking robots, cutesy side characters and the occasional laugh for parents and kids. Less expected is how fun the action-adventure is and how effective the patented poignant Pixar moments are.
It’s a hero’s journey, one that actually humanizes the little hunk of talking plastic (or coded series of bits and bytes) and imbues a catchphrase like “To infinity and beyond” with a new, heartfelt meaning.
“Lightyear” may well inspire a renaissance in the character and spawn more toys, but this movie is much more than merch.
If they gave out Oscars for pole dancing the release of “Hustlers” would place Jennifer Lopez one step closer to completing her EGOT collection.
“Jenny from the Block” plays Ramona Vega, centerfold turned superstar stripper. It’s the 2000s and the dancers at New York’s Sin City Café are lap-dancing all the way to the bank. “2007 was the best,” says Destiny (Constance Wu). “I made more money than a brain surgeon.” Ramona has taught Destiny the craft of separating the Wall Street bros who frequent their club from their money. She teaches the neophyte fancy pole moves like the “fairy sit” and “fireman spin,” and the nuances of customer service. “Get them a single, a double, then a triple and then a single,” she says. “You want them drunk enough to get their credit card but sober enough to sign the check.”
They follow the “green brick road” until September 29, 2008. Wall Street is gutted by a stock market crash, putting a stop to open-ended expense accounts and the dolla bills that showered the women as they danced. “It’s the end of an era in American business,” says Brian Williams on the news, and the end of way of life for Destiny, Ramona and friends.
Overnight everything changes. The business turns from glamourous to grimy. “The guys don’t want to spend the dollars,” says the dancer’s den mother (Mercedes Ruehl), “the girls don’t want to share tips in management took the cameras out of the champagne rooms.” With lap dances no longer enough to make money Ramona comes up with a new way of separating the Wall Street guys from their cash. “We can’t dance forever. We have to think like them. Nobody gets hurt.” A mix of sex appeal, flattery and knock-out drugs, it’s not exactly legal but they have no sympathy for the businessmen who they say robbed the country but didn’t get any jail time. “I know it sounds bad that we were drugging people,” Destiny says, “but in our world it was normal.” New recruits to their booming business bring trouble and soon it’s not the stock market crashing but police, crashing through their apartment doors.
Based on a true story and inspired by the New York Magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores” by Jessica Pressler, the movie’s narrative spine is an interview between a journalist (played by Julia Stiles subbing in for Pressler) and Destiny, giving the movie an as-told-told vibe.
The result is a fleet-footed dramedy that captures the heady, high-heeled days at the club when the money flowed like water and it was all giddy good times for the dancers. An early scene puts you in the mind of an R-rated snowglobe as J-Lo swings around a pole, dollar bills filling the air around her. Like the time it evokes, it’s over-the-top but easily upped by the next sequence which finds Ramona finding a quiet moment on a New York City rooftop. As the lights of the city twinkle behind her she is in repose, smoking a cigarette, a fluffy fur coat barely concealing her stage costume. Like some kind of Venus on the Half-Shell by way of 42nd Street she embodies the decadence of the time.
In the first part of the film the camp is amped. By the time Usher shows up, strutting into the club with the cool factor of Sinatra in his prime, a fistful of Benjamins in hand, the picture of the wild ‘n woolly era is complete. Director Lorene Scafaria then gear shifts, adding in the sense of desperation that comes when the money dries up. The movie shifts gears, becoming more of a caper flick as Ramona and pals go fishing for Wall Street sharks.
At the core of the story is the sisterhood between Ramona and Destiny. It’s a mother, mentor pairing that sees the two women bond on a level that transcends simply being business partners. “We are the untouchables,” says Ramona, “like Kobe and Shaq.” They become intricately involved in one another’s lives, which makes the sting of the coming events even more complicated. Lopez and Wu have spark together onscreen, bringing some heart to a story of people who trolled the dark side for a living.
“Hustlers” is a glitzy caper about money, friendship, and revenge against the bankers who went unpunished after a financial crisis brought the country and the dancers at the Sin City Café to their knees. “Everybody is hustling,” says Ramona. “This city, this whole country is a strip club. You’ve got people tossing the money and people dancing.”
An outer space acorn adventure begins the earthbound struggle for survival in “Ice Age: Collision Course,” the fifth instalment in the popular animated series.
Fans of the franchise will recognize Scrat (Chris Wedge), the dogged squirrel whose endless pursuit of an acorn is at the heart of each of the movies. He is the “Ice Age’s” equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, a lovable but psychics defying acorn hunter often humiliated but never daunted in his quest for the elusive nut. This time his journey leads him to deep space where he puts a series of event in motion that endangers the lives of Manny and Ellie, the Wooly Mammoth couple voiced by Ray Romano and Queen Latifah, macho tiger Diego (Denis Leary), the annoyingly unlucky sloth named Sid (John Leguizamo) and the rest of the gang.
On earth the mammals are preparing to celebrate Manny and Ellie’s anniversary. All is going well except that Manny forgot to get Ellie a gift. Then, when the sky fills with beautiful colours it looks like Manny has arranged a fireworks display for his bride. In fact, the well-timed meteor shower that got Manny out of an anniversary pickle will lead to other world changing problems for he and his friends. “Manny’s love is killing us,” squeals opossum Crash (Seann William Scott). Enter Buck (Simon Pegg), a one-eyed weasel and a dinosaur hunter (“You may be Jurassic,” he sings to the dinosaurs in a Gilbert and Sullivan inspired tune, “but I’m fantastic.”), who has a plan to go toward the “planet killing space rock” rather than running away from it. “I know it sounds a sub-optional,” he says, “but we can change our fate.”
Mixed in with this story of survival are Peaches’s (Keke Palmer) upcoming nuptials, hockey lessons, a dance number and even a science lesson from Neil Degrasse Tyson. Each of these digressions from the main story does little more than bulk out the running time to a feature length of 94 minutes.
Like the other movies in the series “Ice Age: Collision Course” is less concerned with telling a story as it is with coming up with premises they can populate with characters that can be spun off into videogames and toys. Episodic and disjointed, there is none of the elegance of Pixar’s storytelling, just one event loosely connected with the one before it, after another. The result is a movie with few laughs and too many subplots masquerading as a story.
The best thing in the movie is Scrat who lives in perpetual desperation, always hankering for an acorn to call his own. He’s a classic cartoon creation, an elastic faced throwback to the Looney Tunes era. If they make another one of these let’s have more of him please, and less of the other mammoth bores that fill the screen.
It might be time to put the “Ice Age” movies on ice.
Blame Rocky for the state of sports movies. The come-from-behind-to-win-or-almost-win the big game was used very effectively in the first (and most recent) Rocky movies but unfortunately filmmakers have been using that set-up as a plot template ever since. That’s more than thirty years of inspirational coaches and underdog players. The sports and that faces change, it’s just the story that remains the essentially same. The Longshots is the latest movie to recycle the tired formula to tell the real-life story of the first girl to compete in the Pop Warner football tournament.
Ice Cube is Curtis Plummer, a former high school football star whose dreams of a professional career were cut short by injury. On a downward spiral since his accident, he rediscovers a sense of purpose by molding his socially awkward niece (Akeelah and the Bee’s Keke Palmer) into the star quarterback for the local team, the Minden Browns. When she leads the team to the Pop Warner Super Bowl she not only gives Curtis a new lease on life, but inspires her entire hometown.
The most amazing thing about The Longshots isn’t the story—we’ve seen and heard it all before—nor is it the performances—Ice Cube is fine and Palmer is engagingly natural; no, the most striking thing about the movie is its director. If the name Fred Durst sounds familiar it’s because maybe you spent some time slam dancing to his nu metal band Limp Bizkit’s hit Re-arranged or maybe you downloaded his notorious sex tape off the net. The rock star and bon vivant of the 90s has matured into family friendly filmmaker in the new millennium.
The man who once choked out lyrics ripe with scatological references and used the Anglo-Saxon word for sexual intercourse 48 times in one three minute and fifty second tune has mellowed into the kind of director that has his characters say things like “If we got heart we got everything we need!” He shows an unexpected light touch, but by the time we get to the inevitable “What are you running from,” speech the build-up of clichés threatens to squash any goodwill the movie garnered in its better moments.
The Longshots isn’t a horrible movie, it’s just really average. Durst does his job adequately, giving the whole thing a kind of music video slickness, but despite Palmer’s efforts and Ice Cube’s likeability the whole thing feels like something we’ve seen before, and is quite forgettable.
Akeelah and the Bee plays like Rocky crossed with Good Will Hunting. The latest in a string of spelling bee movies—is there a stranger genre—and coming hot on the heels of the hit documentary Spellbound and the drama Bee Season, Akeelah and the Bee is a story designed to make you cheer for the underdog.
Akeelah is a shy young girl from South Central Los Angeles who has a gift for spelling. It seems her late father had instilled in her a love of language and word games—don’t bet against her in a Scrabble match—but she tries to keep her etymologic endowment a secret in school, explaining that if she appears to be too smart the only word she’ll have to know how to spell is n-e-r-d. With some encouragement from her principal—the guy who played Booger in the Revenge of the Nerds movies—she enters the school’s spelling bee. After an easy win at her school she takes on a tutor—the brusque Lawrence Fishburne—a former champ who trains her for the national bee.
Akeelah and the Bee is a sentimental story that occasionally feels over calculated, as though writer / director Doug Atchison is trying to cram every after school special cliché into one story—we have the virtues of hard work, good sportsmanship, following one’s dreams and of course the ever popular love conquers all, to name just a few. The story is emotionally uncomplicated, some of the characters come directly from central casting, and it doesn’t have the clout of Spellbound but there are a couple of elements that elevate this movie, making it worthy of a big screen treatment.
Clichés aside the movie does have good messages for young people. Akeelah starts her journey as a shy young girl and gradually gains confidence in her abilities and learns to trust not only herself, but also those around her. Her character teaches kids that they can opt for any path in life, and work towards any destination they choose.
The movie’s secret weapon is Keke Palmer as the wonderful wordsmith. Palmer is a natural talent who brings new life to a character that we’ve seen on-screen many times. Her performance is so guileless that it really feels like you are watching a real kid working through Akeelah’s issues. Her authentic sensitivity blunts some of the more obvious emotional manipulations and earns the film a recommendation.
The trailer for “Nope,” the new alien abduction film from thriller auteur Jordan Peele, now playing in theatres, is one of the rare promos that gives next-to-nothing away about the plot. It’s meant to pique curiosity, to open your mind to the possibility of… well, almost anything.
