US (US - 2019) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry, Ashley McKoy, Alan Frazier. (R, 116 mins) 2017's GET OUT came along at the perfect moment in time to serve as zeitgeist-capturing, sociopolitical snapshot of American culture. It also earned a Best Screenplay Oscar for writer/director Jordan Peele, then best known for the sketch comedy stylings of KEY & PEELE and on nobody's radar to be named the next major player in the horror genre. But with GET OUT, Peele found his true calling and horror the most effective way to explore his concerns, and US, his follow-up effort, is even more conceptually ambitious if at times muddled in execution. Even before a late-film split-diopter shot, I was continually reminded of Brian De Palma while watching US--not because of its subject or its style, but in its methodical and precise construction. Every shot, every plot detail, and every visual element is there for a reason, so much so that it'll take multiple viewings to pick up everything. Peele is making much grander thematic overtures with US compared to GET OUT, and it gets away from him a bit in the home stretch in a way that shows his intentions are clear in his own head but they're maybe too unwieldy to communicate in the most succinct fashion. To that end, US is a film that works terrifically as a visceral horror experience, and its greater concerns give it some timely resonance and much for an attentive and engaged audience to discuss and debate when it's over.
In a bygone era of exploitation hucksterism, this could've easily been called THE STRANGERS 3, but the home invasion angle played up in the trailer and TV spots constitutes a surprisingly little amount of screen time. In an extended prologue set in 1986, a young girl (Madison Curry) is with her bickering parents at an amusement park on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. She wanders off into a funhouse with a hall of mirrors and encounters her exact double. Cut to the present day and the girl has grown up to be Adelaide Wilson (12 YEARS A SLAVE Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o), married to Gabe (Winston Duke), and with two children: teenager Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son Jason (Even Alex). Still quietly traumatized by the 1986 funhouse incident though she's never told Gabe about it, Adelaide can barely hide her discomfort at the idea of spending a family vacation in Santa Cruz with everyone insisting they go to that very beach on the boardwalk. A very brief Jason disappearance when he wanders away to use a restroom is enough for a frazzled Adelaide to insist they go home, but that plan is put on the backburner with the sudden appearance of a family dressed in red jumpsuits appearing in the driveway of their beach house. This mystery family eventually gets into the house and are revealed to be haggard and almost feral doppelgangers of the Wilsons, all armed with large scissors and wearing one leather driving glove on their right hand: kids Umbrae (Zora) and Pluto (Jason), dad Abraham (Gabe) and mom Red (Adelaide), who speaks in a gasping, guttural wheeze and is the only one with any verbal communication skills. "It's us," Jason says. "We're Americans," Red replies.
That line from Red is a little too on-the-nose and on the heavy-handed side as far as being a somewhat cloddish harbinger of where Peele is about to take things. The home invasion soon leads to a subsequent escape and the film is only about 1/3 over as Peele steers things into a number of unexpected directions that won't be revealed here. It's probably no accident that Peele is hosting the upcoming CBS All Access reboot of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, as much of US plays like a feature-length episode of that very show. But there's a lot--maybe too much, even--to chew on here, not only with Peele wearing his influences on his sleeve, but with insightful, razor-sharp commentary on income inequality, the American underclass, and the good fortune to be blessed with health, success, and taking for granted the ability to attain the American Dream. The Wilsons don't appear to be rich, but they're very comfortable, though Gabe buys a cheap secondhand boat and is clearly a little jealous that it's not as nice as the one that his buddy Josh (Tim Heidecker) and his wife Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) have. The doppelgangers and the hall of mirrors are just the beginning when it comes to the recurring examples of duality (even the film's title can be read in two different ways), and it's likely the only film you'll ever see where the 1986 "Hands Across America" event takes on a completely sinister new incarnation. Peele is juggling a lot of ideas here and he can be forgiven if he doesn't quite follow through on all of them. There's a laborious exposition dump that slows down the third act and frankly, doesn't really hold up under any serious scrutiny (though I guess it doesn't really have to), and most people will see the final twist coming long before it occurs, but the film succeeds in establishing and maintaining a profound sense of unease and menace throughout and the performances by the cast, most of whom are required to play two distinctly different characters, are excellent across the board. That's particularly true of Nyong'o, who not only fashions Adelaide as a furious protector of her family but also creates a memorably terrifying figure in Red. With all its serious, heady ideas and effective jump scares (Peele is great at using every bit of the frame), US is also very funny at times, both with its snappy dialogue and a few inspired gags (like one character telling an Alexa knockoff called "Ophelia" to "call the police" only to have it play N.W.A.'s "Fuck tha Police" instead). You'll also never be able to hear The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" the same way again.
BLACKkKLANSMAN (US - 2018) Directed by Spike Lee. Written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee. Cast: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, Topher Grace, Corey Hawkins, Robert John Burke, Michael Buscemi, Frederick Weller, Ken Garito, Harry Belafonte, Alec Baldwin, Ryan Eggold, Jasper Paakkonen, Paul Walter Hauser, Ashlie Atkinson, Nicholas Turturro, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Danny Hoch, Arthur Nascarella, Brian Tarantina, Ryan Preimesberger. (R, 135 mins) As difficult as it may be to believe, Spike Lee's BLACKkKLANSMAN is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, the first black police officer hired by the Colorado Springs P.D. back in the 1970s, and the man who was instrumental in busting up a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. As a rookie hired mainly for show, Stallworth (BALLERS' John David Washington, son of frequent Lee star and close friend Denzel Washington) is immediately sent to the records department and generally dismissed and disrespected by his fellow officers. Looking for some meaningful police work, he jumps at the chance to go undercover at a rally hosted by Colorado College's black student union, welcoming civil rights leader Kwame Ture (Corey Hawkins), formerly known as the Black Panthers' Stokely Carmichael. Backed up by detectives Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) and Jimmy Creek (Michael Buscemi, Steve's look/soundalike younger brother), Ron doesn't see much more than rhetoric in Ture's call to arms, but he does make the acquaintance of Patrice Dumas (Laura Harrier), the "pig"-hating president of the black student union, though he keeps his job a secret.
Shortly after, spotting an ad for the local chapter of the KKK in the newspaper on a slow day in the squad room, Ron calls the number and pretends to be a white racist, inquiring for information about joining and, in a bad rookie mistake, giving his real name. Police chief Bridges (Robert John Burke) and Sgt. Trapp (Ken Garito) assign Ron to lead an undercover infiltration of the KKK, with Jewish Flip posing as "Ron Stallworth" while the real Ron coaches him and backs him up from a nearby location. As "Ron," Flip gathers intel by ingratiating himself with local chapter president Walter Breachway (Ryan Eggold) and his two chief underlings, hot-headed Felix Kendrickson (Jasper Paakkonen) and mouth-breathing moron Ivanhoe (Paul Walter Hauser, who seems to be cornering the market on such characters between this and his role as the hapless Shawn Eckhardt in I, TONYA). The ruse can't last forever, especially with Felix's overwhelming suspicion that "Ron"/Flip looks "too Jewish" and when he looks up "Ron Stallworth" in the phone book and sees that a black man lives at the address. Ron and Flip always manage to cover themselves and explain away inconsistencies, whether it's Flip avoiding a Felix-administered lie detector test or the real Ron getting in the good graces of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) over the phone. Tension soon escalates with Duke planning a visit to Colorado Springs for "Ron"'s initiation and Felix, Ivanhoe, and Felix's wife Connie (Ashlie Atkinson), who's desperate to be accepted as one of the guys, planning to bomb a civil rights demonstration organized by Patrice.
Co-produced by the GET OUT team of Blumhouse and Jordan Peele, BLACKkKLANSMAN is Lee's best narrative film in at least a decade, maybe since 2006's INSIDE MAN. Alternately edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, funny (the great Isiah Whitlock Jr. stops by long enough to drop his signature catchphrase), satirical, and biliously enraged, the film balances its moods perfectly and satisfies on all fronts, serving as a 1970s-set police procedural and as a bitter polemic about the current state of Donald Trump's America. It's no coincidence that the film was released on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, and Trump is invoked both in archival news footage and in the platitudes of Grace's sinister yet folksy ("You're darn tootin'!") David Duke, both in his political aspirations and his use of "America first" and the KKK"s background chatter of "making America great again." Lee even opens the film with a faux-editorial by fictional white supremacy advocate Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard (Alec Baldwin), whose disturbingly prophetic inflammatory hate speech sounds exactly like the Laura Ingraham diatribe that aired on Fox News just a couple of nights before the film's release. The riveting, kinetic third act balances the thwarting of an act of domestic terrorism along with a cross-cutting of "Ron"'s induction into the Klan and a celebratory viewing of D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION and Patrice and her fellow black students listening to a lecture by elderly activist Mr. Turner (Harry Belafonte) as he recounts the horrifying 1916 lynching, mutilation, and burning of Jesse Washington, itself inspired by the renewed interest in the Klan following the box-office success of Griffith's film, which was praised by none other then President Woodrow Wilson.
Lee's output has been wildly inconsistent in recent years. Small, crowdfunded indies like 2012's RED HOOK SUMMER and his 2015 horror film DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS, a remake of the 1973 cult film GANJA AND HESS, were intermittently interesting curios at best, while his ill-advised 2013 remake of OLDBOY was a disaster that he disowned after the producers took it away from him in post-production (I haven't seen 2015's CHI-RAQ, which many praised as a return to form, or his barely-released, 2018 filmed play PASS OVER). But BLACKkKLANSMAN finds the 61-year-old auteur at a full fury on a level we haven't seen since DO THE RIGHT THING (or possibly BAMBOOZLED), a perfect mix of his commercial capabilities and his sociopolitical concerns. The cast is outstanding across the board, and over the course of its 135 minutes, a star is born with Washington, who turned to acting after his pro football career failed to pan out. His transformation into a leading man occurs with his character's growth over the film, and by the end, you'll absolutely see his dad in his performance. Dazzling from start to finish, and funny and frightening in equal measures, and with an utterly devastating final montage, BLACKkKLANSMAN immediately establishes itself as one of Lee's essential works and one of the best films of the year.
GET OUT (US - 2017) Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lil Rel Howery, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Trey Burvant. (R, 104 mins) GET OUT is getting the best reviews of any 2017 release thus far, and when a genre film shows any degree of insight and razor-sharp social commentary, it's easy to overrate it. But GET OUT is one of the best and smartest fright flicks to come along in a while--caustic, uncomfortable, and refusing to pull punches, but remembering to be entertaining and witty at the same time. It deftly balances the majority of its time being genuinely unnerving but also with more than its share of funny moments, some engineered to make you laugh out loud and others designed to make you uneasy. The directing debut of KEY AND PEELE's Jordan Peele, who also scripted, GET OUT stars Daniel Kaluuya (SICARIO and the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of BLACK MIRROR) as Chris Washington, a 26-year-old photographer who's about to go away for the weekend to meet the parents of Rose Armitage (GIRLS' Allison Willliams), his girlfriend of four months. He's a bit nervous--he's black, she's white, and she hasn't told them--but she assures him that they won't have a problem with him. The ride there includes a collision with a deer and an unpleasant run-in with a local cop (Chris is quick to comply, realizing it doesn't take much for a situation to escalate from zero to Trayvon Martin), but once at the estate of the wealthy Armitages, things are pleasant if awkward. Rose's mom Missy (Catherine Keener) is a psychiatrist who wants to hypnotize Chris to help him quit smoking, and her neurologist dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) means well but tries too hard to ingratiate himself, with everything from repeatedly calling Chris "My man," to numerous mentions that he "would've voted for Obama a third time," and asking how long Chris and Rose's "thaaang" has been going on.
Chris has a strange dinner conversation with Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) where Jeremy tells him he has the physique to be a monster MMA fighter. He's also taken aback by the presence of two oddly-behaving black employees--groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel)--who aren't very good at conversation and have dead, vacant stares in their eyes. Dean says he hired them to help out when his parents were ailing and after they died, he didn't have the heart to let them go ("I know how it looks," Dean says). The Armitages hold a party for all of their wealthy and almost across-the-board elderly friends, all of whom try too hard to appeal to Chris, whether it's feeling his biceps, mentioning how much they like Tiger Woods, or making winking assumptions about how well-endowed he must be. Chris seems to be used to well-intentioned whites trying too hard but something isn't sitting well with him. He believes Missy hypnotized him without his knowledge and he recognizes Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), the young black companion of a 30-years-older white woman, as Andre, an old acquaintance of a friend of a friend who went missing six months ago. Chris takes a pic of him to send to his dog-sitting buddy Rod (a scene-stealing Lil Rel Howell) but he forgets to turn off the flash and it causes a brief seizure where Logan, who dresses like an old man and has no idea how to fist-bump, snaps out of his stupor and seems to briefly take on another personality until he's attended to by Missy. Rod theorizes that "rich white people are brainwashing brothers into becoming sex slaves," and while Chris laughs it off, his paranoia grows more intense by the minute and he can't ignore his gut feeling that something is very wrong here.
Of course, something is wrong but GET OUT doesn't quite go in the direction the trailers and your initial assumptions might indicate. It invokes a few classics from the 1970s, from THE WICKER MAN to MESSIAH OF EVIL and one in particular that's too much of a spoiler to mention. Despite its modern themes, it actually feels like a 1970s movie in both its working in of social issues and the emphasis on building suspense instead of focusing on gore and cheap jump scares (though a couple of jump scares here work quite well). In the end, GET OUT ends up being more about class division than racial injustice, a scathing rebuke not just of white privilege but also the entitlement of the wealthy for whom money--and people--are no object. No one is immune from criticism--even Chris is shown time and again to be a pushover and someone who doesn't want to rock the boat. Peele's script piles on the unease and the dread until it's almost suffocating, broken up by Rod's comic relief that's actually a welcome breather from the choking tension (Rod's Jeffrey Dahmer rant is one for the ages). Performances are pitch perfect across the board, whether it's Whitford's vaguely passive-aggressive glad-handing as Dean or Gabriel's often heartbreaking turn as Georgina, whose constant smile always seems a little too forced, masking a sadness that isn't lost on Chris. Alternately frightening, funny, and thought-provoking, with the kind of crowd-pleasing finale that horror movies used to know how to deliver, GET OUT isn't a quite an instant classic, but it's one of the stronger genre offerings of late, and one that establishes Peele, already a respected comedian and satirist, as a serious filmmaker to watch.
