US by jordan peele

no it isn't

the allusion is obvious, but the title is written as Us in the film and every piece of promotional material

Still not a coincidence, imo.

well they say we’re americans

Oh, and the uppercase US can't be a coincidence. US=U.S.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, March 29, 2019 10:06 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

look what you did Simon

jesUs christ

justice, or just us?

The very beginning in the funhouse was great, and that twist at the end - which I winced at right after it happened (didn't see it but I never try to work stuff out in advance) and then it worked its way through as mirroring the kind of confusion that we find ourselves in. Until then this settled into a serviceable enough Romero-by-numbers with a hint of Haneke's Funny Games, with its play and violence in those well-off settings, but that ending hasn't yet let go.

Haunting. Movie will stick with me. Great performance all around.

this was great, all the performances were so excellent. i did sense the twist coming, starting from that early scene in the psychologist's office, but the movie didn't depend on the twist being surprising, necessarily.

Re: the final twist, is there anything really gained by that? I suppose it's just the final character beat of a villain who has played a veeeeeeery long game, but even so it (like the film) might have been a little more effective with some more ambiguity, though to be fair the movie's already ambiguous enough to bear a few different interpretations. Anyway, it's the rare movie definitely worth thinking about despite any number of elements that you're better off not thinking about. Peele toes a pretty precarious line with the exposition drop and the final twist, but he's such a good director and the acting is so good that he pretty much pulls it off.

Ending, fwiw, reminded me of the ending of "The Invitation." Lots and lots of echoes of "The Birds" in this, too, ending and all.

all the performances were so excellent.

yeah, I'd give this the imaginary casting Oscar

Ending, fwiw, reminded me of the ending of "The Invitation." Lots and lots of echoes of "The Birds" in this, too, ending and all.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, March 31, 2019 10:05 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

something i read pointed out that the final shot of lupita was a wink towards the final shot of the thriller music video and that makes so much sense

Huh. Yeah, I like that!

That owns

I was always struck at what a good actor Peele was (along with Key) in their show, which made the parodies and skits really convincing, but the downside is that every time I see him interviewed now I keep thinking he's playing a character.

lol maybe he is, did you see his Jack Torrance outfit?

Winston Duke as Gabe = Winston Duke as Jordan Peele

saw it again. decided that the ending isn’t illogical at all really, it makes the film make sense

i think it’s undercooked

feels like ‘the metaphor’ was left ambiguous for the sake of interpretive ambiguity, but there’s not actually much there for rich inrerpretating...

Haven’t seen again but my sense is that the “nonsensical” part is not at all the carefully foreshadowed ending but the expository speech in the dénouement, which was the one part I struggled with when I saw it.

i mean yes, it totally is, and yet i'm also not really bothered by the expository speech especially bc, even without the twist, it's much less expository than it seems

my feeling is that adelaide's submerged memory of being one of the tethered resurfaces gradually over the course of the movie though it also doesn't require this reading at all to *work* bc either way... she's a survivor in every negative and positive sense, whether she's aware of how corrupt her moral compass is or not

also, the script wasn’t actually that good..? the dialogue between the family in the beginning felt stiff, most of the character development was cliched; dad is goofy (the scene with the boat fell flat, like the physical comedy wasn’t even well-timed), daughter’s on her phone, mom stares out window with uneasy dread... i really think this is a huge drop off after get out

All fair enough, I need to rewatch both (and I am never your man to talk to about “character development”)

yeah I thought the same thing about the script flopson, remarkably awkward & stilted dialogue, and not the actors' fault (who were all great in this)

i'm probably ruined forever re: being able to tell when dialogue is stilted but also i don't really care. all the character development seemed credible and felt to me

Eh, family stuff was pretty solid, imo. Dad was a buffoon, but a plausible one. There was a really good line in the Lane review:

What the Wilsons encounter, in the course of the plot, is harrowing and outlandish, but they have too many wits to be frightened out of them, and it’s the very normality of the family that sees them through. If Pixar made an animated version of “Us,” it would be called “The Credibles.”

I think this is one of the best aspects of the film. They're freaked out to begin with, but it doesn't take them long to get into the swing of things (so to speak), and during the brief respite when it transitions from a take on a home invasion movie to, essentially, a zombie comedy, the family dynamic played out pretty amusingly. Speaking of swinging, what was up with the golf gloves the morlocks had on? Or, for that matter, the bloody handed guy who is the first of his kind we encounter on the surface?

I also don't know what to make of all the 11:11 stuff, other than ... twin numbers. By why those numbers? Anyway, Red Letter Media guys made a really clever observation that the Golden Gate Bridge and Twin Towers from the Hands Across America video are visually pairs of "11," too.

Or, for that matter, the bloody handed guy who is the first of his kind we encounter on the surface?

blood dripping from his hand was from his double whom he had just killed

i didn't notice the first viewing that he's the first person in the hands across america chain

11:11 is explicitly linked to a bible verse, that’s why those numbers

it was also pointed out to me that the black flag logo is 1111

pretty sure this isn't significant but it's funny

Black Flag shirts show up twice, iirc.

I thought Lupita's double was the first to lead them up, but I guess it was already in progress? So the "real" 11:11 guy, the one being loaded into the ambulance, had he then apparently been killed by his double? He seemed really old, but the bloody guy seemed young.

And xpost my friend and I both thought Jeremiah was a made up book of the bible!

So the "real" 11:11 guy, the one being loaded into the ambulance, had he then apparently been killed by his double

yes

the bloody guy seemed young

you don't see his actual face until later in the film and he's the same actor so ... idgi

I probably just missed it. I guess 11:11 guy just jumped the invasion gun.

11:11 guy was there freaking out red before she even went into the funhouse so both versions of him are kind of outside of the plot

Yeah, he was there in 1986. But that wasn't "red" then, that was "real" Adelaide. Right? So he was probably just the "real" version of 11:11 guy, and bloody guy at the end was the tethered one who had replaced him. Def. a lot of things to miss/catch in this, I look forward to seeing it again.

NIV: "Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them."

KJV: "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."

i mean wins is still technically correct. but yes def see it again josh xp

AD: "And As It Is Such, So Also As Such Is It Unto You"

Yes, red is “real” Adelaide sorry for spoiler josh

But before she first went into the funhouse and was kidnapped and brainwashed she was just regular ol' Adelaide, right? So the first time she sees 11:11 guy he is just weird 11:11 guy, but the second time, as an adult (and only in her son's picture, right?) 11:11 guy is her bud from the Underneath. Right?

Yeah the person we know as red is the grown up version of the original Adelaide

My whole point is that that guy already points to what’s up in the “normal” world, hence “kinda outside the plot”.

Literalist version: proximity to tunnel entrance and marginal status make him sensitive to the underground world

Non-literalist version: it’s a freaky thing that peele put there

In both versions it makes sense that he’d be in the vanguard of the invasion

overworld Adelaide sees overworld 11:11 guy before going into the funhouse and getting snatched

underworld Adelaide does not have active memories of the underworld for the next thirty years, so we don't know if dead overworld 11:11 body reminds her of an underworld 11:11 pal, or of the first overworld human she set eyes on when she swapped

but either way it reminds her of the 30-years-ago trauma she has been trying to avoid by staying away from the beach

some have theorized her voice was so labored not because she hadn't spoken in 30 years and was out of practicce, but that her voicebox was injured due to the choking she was subjected to by her tether and of course, no doctors below, so the damage was never repaired and she was Tha D.O.C.-ed

I assumed it was Red violently lunge-choking her (plus disuse) as soon as Red violently lunge-choked her

So last night for our mom/son movie weekend, I picked “The Shawshank Redemption”. Tonight he picked “Us”. 😳 #NoComparison #IWillBeSleepingWithTheLightsOn@JordanPeele

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) May 5, 2019

This was kinda bad...? Just on a structural level - too little characterization, way too much exposition (which still managed to somehow leave tons unexplained), a “twist” ending that I had watched the whole film assuming was the case, loads of flubbed beats/things that should’ve been scary but just came off stupid. Great cast all around, looked great, good score, loved the Santa Cruz stuff but all in the service of some not-too-well thought out ideas.

yup. huge disapointment

I'll still watch whatever he does next - I liked that one Twilight Zone episode of his that I saw - but it was weird how slapdash this felt, plot-wise. Really everything that was wrong with it came down to the writing.

At least Heidecker was reliably hilarious.