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Us (directed by Jordan Peele) at 100% on RT


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On 3/24/2019 at 1:59 AM, Emblazon said:

This is Jordan Peele's The Happening. Really NOT a good movie, not at all. It has a few moments, but the sheer stupidity of it all and completely telegraphed ending bring it all down to a one or two star movie at best. 

 

What's worse is by the end, you simply don't care about the characters... or which characters you're even supposed to care about. 

I didn't really care for it, but it's nowhere near Happening level bad.

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5 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I didn't really care for it, but it's nowhere near Happening level bad.

 

I more meant the outcome/twist was just as bad:

 

Spoiler

Comparing the trees taking over the world to copies of everyone & "Hands Across America". :sick:

 

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I thought the story had some troubling aspects, but the subtext/metaphors were really on point, and the thing was really fucking well directed and shot and scored. I enjoyed the hell out of it - fantastic movie, deserving of the accolades.

 

Is some of it patently unrealistic? Of course, but that's the point - the commentary it's giving, not the logistics of how it works. The final "twist" wasn't a twist all that much to me (as others have said, very easy to guess) but that doesn't mean it loses its thematic potency. 

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I'm still chewing on the film, but I think at least some of my reticence has to do with a set of mismatched expectations. Us is a film that, for most of its runtime, plays like a typical horror film. It's full of genre tropes that make you feel like you're on familiar ground, but the source of the horror isn't a literal evil, it's all allegory. In that way, it very much is The Happening (though I maintain it's qualitatively different) or Mother!. Unlike Mother!, Us more or less follows a traditional film narrative structure. Where Mother! has no intention in being a piece of easily consumable pop-art, Us wants to be that and be heavy handed political commentary. My initial feelings are that the two sides of this film end up subverting each other more than they do supporting each other, but again, that could be a function of my expectations as much as it is anything in the film.

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I'm a bit LTTP as I just walked out of the movie so you all have touched on my only real beef with the film. The saw-it-coming-a-mile-away twist ending really subverts the allegory it's trying to go for by forcing you to think about the mechanics of it all. Why is Red forced to copy Adelaide's activities instead of the other way around? Why is Red beholden to Adelaide in any way? Why are they getting pregnant at exactly the same time (The scary implication being that the mute/dumb copy of the husband raped a perfectly sentient Red)? How did a bright young girl not find her way out of that underground when her mute/dumb copy was able to without issue or resistance of any kind?

 

But as @Greatoneshere said the movie is so fantastically shot, acted, and scored that I'm willing to look passed the poor ending.

 

And Lupita Nyong'o was hot. A. FFFFFFFF. in this movie.

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42 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

I'm a bit LTTP as I just walked out of the movie so you all have touched on my only real beef with the film. The saw-it-coming-a-mile-away twist ending really subverts the allegory it's trying to go for by forcing you to think about the mechanics of it all. Why is Red forced to copy Adelaide's activities instead of the other way around? Why is Red beholden to Adelaide in any way? Why are they getting pregnant at exactly the same time (The scary implication being that the mute/dumb copy of the husband raped a perfectly sentient Red)? How did a bright young girl not find her way out of that underground when her mute/dumb copy was able to without issue or resistance of any kind?

 

But as @Greatoneshere said the movie is so fantastically shot, acted, and scored that I'm willing to look passed the poor ending.

 

And Lupita Nyong'o was hot. A. FFFFFFFF. in this movie.

 

Yeah, I'm with you. It's clear that Jordan Peele really didn't care about the logistics of how things work, but rather he's trying to say something. I thought this was a good take on why the twist, obvious or not, is important thematically to the film:

 

http://collider.com/us-ending-explained/ 

 

I found these two articles helpful too:

 

https://www.slashfilm.com/us-movie-ending/ 

 

https://www.slashfilm.com/us-influences/

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1 hour ago, Bloodporne said:

Totally forgot this was coming out, should probably go see it this weekend just so I can inevitably talk shit about it on D1P. 

 

Actually not really, I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised as the trailer looked kind of stupid to me. 

If the trailer looked stupid... :lol:

 

... you might want to go in holding someone's hand. 

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https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2468995/jordan-peele-says-he-isnt-interested-in-casting-a-white-dude-as-the-lead-in-his-movies

Quote

I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie. Not that I don’t like white dudes. But I've seen that movie.

 

The way I look at it, I get to cast black people in my movies. I feel fortunate to be in this position where I can say to Universal, 'I want to make a $20 million horror movie with a black family.' And they say yes."

Some people are upset over this but imo i don't see it as a big deal. 

Quote

While Hollywood diversity is always improving, the vast majority of films still star white dudes. Beyond the simple benefits of diversity, the fact is that Jordan Peele's movies standout because they aren't simply another movie about a white guy.

Makes sense to me.

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To be fair, even today the reason Hollywood primarily still stars white people is because out of America's 320 million people, approx. 73% of them are white. Peele has every right to try to want to balance out that representation in Hollywood, so good on him, but if Hollywood is a microcosm of America (theoretically, in terms of representation) then inevitably something like 73% of Hollywood casting will be white and 13% (the percentage of black people in America) would be black because it's a numbers game - there's less black people in America to cast than white people in America. 

 

Now, Hollywood has begun to shift its market focus from just America to internationally, and that changes things considerably (and is the right way to go) but until that transition is complete and Hollywood stays more America based we're always going to see a disparity, it can't be helped. 

 

That does not mean there aren't systemic and institutionalized barriers to minorities in Hollywood, just that we're always going to see a disparity just thanks to the disparity in numbers between races in this country living here until Hollywood goes full international.

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I didn't see it but my brother did. 

 

He loved it. Until he didn't. 

Spoiler

The "twist" just ruined the movie for him. Like, why was the human being controlled by the doppelganger? How come the kids are exactly the same? There was more, but it doesn't matter. Just if the mom was the OG the whole time he would have liked it. There were just too many holes or just inconsistencies due to the twist. 

 

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I thought it was good. The bigger picture stuff was a miss for me though. You spend the whole movie knowing they’re copies of people and want to replace them but we have to wait for the why they exist info and it was meh. I know the twist wasn’t meant to blindside you but it was so obvious. My friend and I both guessed it at the beginning of the movie. 

 

The actual horror stuff was excellent though. Lupita was fantastic. 

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On 3/28/2019 at 3:23 PM, Remarkableriots said:

 

People are upset about it? Seriously? Who gives a shit? Does Tyler Perry or Spike Lee ever have white dudes as the lead? If Joran is writing the movies, he's writing with certain characters in mind, and as a black man is it really a shock that the characters he imagines are black? Big freaking deal. Seriously these days I think people are just looking for something to 'outraged' about. 

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On 3/28/2019 at 4:23 PM, Remarkableriots said:

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2468995/jordan-peele-says-he-isnt-interested-in-casting-a-white-dude-as-the-lead-in-his-movies

Some people are upset over this but imo i don't see it as a big deal. 

Makes sense to me.

Silly. Writers should write whatever characters they want want and being black, I'm sure his default go-to will be black characters. 

 

After several of my movie-going pals I'm usually seeing eye-to-eye with gave this the thumbs down, I'll wait for the rental. 

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I enjoyed it a lot. I saw the "twist" as a real possibility, but it didn't really bother me when it was true. Overall this was quite original and creepy. I enjoyed the explanation and having black actors didn't take anything away from the film and shouldn't be an issue.

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