• Home
  • Movies
  • Music
  • TV
  • Video Games
  • Wrestling
  • Topics
  • Latest Comments on Cult of Whatever
Search
Cult of Whatever logo
  • Movies
    Featured
    • The Living Daylights: Timothy Dalton as James Bond

      The Living Daylights is still awesome, thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 28, 2022
      Movie Blogs
    Recent
    • Lethal Weapon: Danny Glover and Mel Gibson as Roger Murtaugh and Martin Riggs

      Lethal Weapon is still awesome thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 9, 2022
    • Nope: Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya

      REVIEW: “NOPE” wants to be more than it is, which is just good enough

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • Brave: Kelly Macdonald voices Princess Merida

      Ten years later, BRAVE remains Pixar’s most underrated film

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 21, 2022
    • A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Heather Langenkamp as Nancy

      A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is still awesome, thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 20, 2022
    • Where The Crawdads Sing: Daisy Edgar Jones and David Strathairn

      REVIEW: Where the Crawdads Sing deftly blends genres to good effect

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 19, 2022
    • Thor Love and Thunder: Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth as The Mighty Thor and Thor

      REVIEW: THOR – LOVE AND THUNDER is an adventure of mirth and sadness alike

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 9, 2022
  • Music
    Random
    • Paul Mccartney 2

      One on One with Paul McCartney

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 8, 2016
      Music Blogs
    Recent
    • The Beatles: Get Back

      What GET BACK reveals about the Beatles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 15, 2021
    • Simon And Garfunkel at Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam1982

      The Boxer is a song about being conned

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 4, 2021
    • Lady Gaga: Chromatica Album Cover

      Lady Gaga’s discography is totally out of order

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 3, 2021
    • Michael Jackson Thriller Album Cover

      Thirty years ago music fans said “Nevermind” to Michael Jackson

      By Matthew Martin
      | March 21, 2021
    • Queen II Album Cover

      On Queen’s The Miracle, and the importance of track ordering

      By Matthew Martin
      | February 16, 2021
    • Linda Paul Mccartney 1976

      50 years ago, McCartney dropped “Lennon” and went solo…

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 5, 2020
  • TV
    Featured
    • Nancy Drew S03e01: Kennedy McMann as Nancy

      Nancy Drew S03E01 Review: The Warning of the Frozen Heart - Uh-oh!

      By Salome G
      | October 10, 2021
      TV Blogs
    Recent
    • American Horror Stories S02e04 Cody Fern and Seth Gabel as Thomas and Walter

      American Horror Stories S02E04 Review: Milkmaids – Very ambitious

      By Salome G
      | August 14, 2022
    • Roswell New Mexico S04e09: Allie Myers and Jeanine Mason as Shiri Appleby and Liz Ortecho

      Roswell, New Mexico S04E09 Review: Wild Wild West- Okay…

      By Salome G
      | August 11, 2022
    • Evil S03e09: Party Time

      Evil S03E09 Review: The Demon of Money – Dark moments…

      By Salome G
      | August 8, 2022
    • American Horror Stories S02e03: Bella Thorne as Marci

      American Horror Stories S02E03 Review: Drive – Unsettling experiences

      By Salome G
      | August 8, 2022
    • The Orville S03: Penny Johnson Jerald and Mark Jackson as Dr. Claire Finn and Isaac

      The Orville season three finale review: Don’t say goodbye

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 8, 2022
    • Roswell New Mexico S04e08: Michael Vlamis as Michael Guerin

      Roswell, New Mexico S04E08 Review: Missing My Baby – The truth hurts

      By Salome G
      | August 3, 2022
  • Video Games
    Featured
    • Arkham Knight

      Batman: Arkham Knight - A fitting end to a trilogy

      By Tom Farr
      | July 18, 2015
      Video Game Reviews
    Recent
    • Nintendo Switch Logo

      Looking ahead to the Switch 2: Predictions and Wants

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 15, 2022
    • Legend Of Zelda

      Can a Legend of Zelda movie work?

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 6, 2022
    • Super Mario 64

      Which system had the better launch: A battle of four Nintendo consoles

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 1, 2021
    • Luigi's Mansion

      Happy twentieth to Nintendo’s underrated gem, the Gamecube

      By Matthew Martin
      | November 18, 2021
    • Metroid Dread

      Metroid Dread – Post Game analysis and sequel needs

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 29, 2021
    • Mario Headphones

      The SNES Turns 30: A look at some of the system’s best soundtracks

      By Matthew Martin
      | October 22, 2021
  • Wrestling
    Featured
    • Wwe Payback 2017 Poster 2

      Your SO OF COURSE preview of WWE Payback 2017

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 30, 2017
      WWE Blogs
    Recent
    • AEW Dark: Ricky Starks (22/09/20)

      The future of the AEW World Championship

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 14, 2022
    • AEW Forbidden Door 2022: Claudio Castagnoli

      ROH Death Before Dishonor 2022 kickstarted a new era with a bang

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 25, 2022
    • Vince Mcmahon Stone Cold Podcast

      Vince McMahon is out as WWE chief. First reactions here…

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • AEW Double or Nothing 2022: CM Punk vs Adam Page

      REVIEW: AEW Double or Nothing 2022 delivered an up-and-down show

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 30, 2022
    • MJF on AEW Dynamite 17th November 2021

      Getting AEW to the next level…

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 29, 2022
    • Raw 210501: Triple H and Stephanie McMahon

      May 21, 2001 – A (forgotten) date that will live in WWE infamy

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 20, 2022
  • Topics
    • site logo
    Latest
    • Looking ahead to the Switch 2: Predictions and Wants
    • American Horror Stories S02E04 Review: Milkmaids - Very ambitious
    • The future of the AEW World Championship
    • Roswell, New Mexico S04E09 Review: Wild Wild West- Okay...
    • Lethal Weapon is still awesome thirty-five years later
    • Evil S03E09 Review: The Demon of Money - Dark moments...

    REVIEW: “NOPE” wants to be more than it is, which is just good enough

    By Matthew Martin
    | July 22, 2022
    Movie Reviews

    With just three movies under his belt, Jordan Peele has solidified himself as a rare thing in Hollywood these days: A “name” director. There are precious few men and women working behind the camera who can command an audience’s interest with just their name atop the poster, but Peele is one of them. Whenever a director like that clicks with me, I make it a point not only to see whatever they release but to see it with as few spoilers as possible. In the case of NOPE, I saw the initial teaser and avoided everything else like the plague.

    Likewise, with just three movies under his belt, Peele has established a template for the kinds of films he revels in making. They are heavy in subtext, coated with a layer of horror. If you’re not interested in the “message,” he won’t beat you over the head with it. If you want to dig deeper into the meaning of the movie, you could probably spend a couple of hours just talking out everything he was trying to tell us in his films.

    His first major release, Get Out, wrapped a fun thriller around a story about white liberal hypocrisy. The result was one of the tightest, sharpest screenplays put to film that year, and one of the best thrillers released this millennium. The follow-up, Us, was clunkier, to say the least. My initial rating was 10/10 but in hindsight, there are numerous structural flaws in the storytelling and a ton of plot contrivances. You can think as long and as deep as you want about Get Out, you won’t find any loose threads that would unravel the picture. With Us, you barely have to dig under the surface before the whole foundation of the story starts to unravel, making you say “wait, so why…” and “but wait, does that mean…” It’s still a fantastic feature, though, especially on the surface, and with the subtextual message he tells with it.

    Now comes NOPE, a movie that, based solely on its initial teaser, promised some kind of an alien invasion/abduction story. That’s the text. That’s the surface-level story at work. With Peele, that part is almost guaranteed to entertain. The question is: Does the subtext get its point across, and does it do it in a way that doesn’t strain so much credulity the whole thing snaps in two? Answer: Yes, the subtext works, and no, there are no plot contrivances that collapse the narrative.

    Nope Poster

    Surprisingly, my biggest problem with NOPE is that the surface-level story is what’s lacking.

    Let’s start with the subtext, as it was, I suspect, what the film’s author started with (and then crafted the sci-fi/horror story around it). Black people have been involved in the motion picture industry from the beginning, a point expressly told to us in the film’s opening minutes. And yet, despite how much “skin in the game” African Americans had/have, their accomplishments and, more importantly, key contributions to the birth and growth of the medium, are mostly ignored. They are used, but not honored. They are everywhere, but not seen. A black person was one of (the movie claims the) first people ever filmed in a motion picture format and yet, the history of cinema is lily white until sometime around the rise of Sidney Poitier. Sure there are actors and actresses like Gone with the Wind’s Hattie McDaniel, and To Kill a Mockingbird’s Brock Peters, but they played second fiddle to the likes of Clark Gable and Gregory Peck.

    Nope: Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya

    The movie begins with Oj and Emerald, the apocryphal great-great-great-great grandchildren of the supposed-first man ever filmed (a black jockey riding a horse), who operate a horse training ranch a few miles north of Hollywood. In reality, there actually was a black jokey captured in one of the first motion picture film reels, but no one knows who he was. In fact, that’s the movie’s point. We know who invented motion picture technology (the Lumière Brothers) and we know who built Hollywood (Jack Warner; I’m only half-joking), but no one knows the name of the first movie star. In an industry built on movie stars, who treat them as veritable idols, isn’t that an amazing omission? No one knows who was in the first motion picture! Why? You know why.

    So, as he did with Us, which explored classism in America, and as he did in Get Out, which explored racism amongst those in denial over their racism, Jordan Peele tackles the subject, not of black exploitation in Hollywood, but of black erasure in Hollywood’s biggest achievements on film.

    How? How else but with a UFO story!

    Nope: Movie Still

    SPOILERS AHEAD…

    The twist, and it’s a clever one, is that the UFO in question is not a ship carrying little green men, but is instead a living animal, hunting people. The alien has marked OJ’s horse farm as its territory and is hunting his herd like an owl hunting mice, only this owl is as big as a football field. The predator looks like a traditional 1950s flying saucer; it’s silver with a big hole in the bottom for sucking up people and horses on earth, and it hovers around without an obvious engine or propellor in sight. The more we see of it, however, the more it resembles something akin to a balloon. At first, it hunts only at night, providing for some early frightful moments. As the story progresses and OJ and Emerald begin to “hunt” the alien, Peele grows confident enough to shoot the action in broad daylight, a welcome change of pace for most horror films.

    Tying in with the subtext of the story, the goal of the main characters is not to hunt and “kill” the creature, but instead to capture it on film. They want to be the first ones to provide indisputable proof of alien activity on earth. They want to make motion picture history, in other words. In the climactic moment, it appears as though cinema history will be made, not by either OJ or Emerald, but by the eccentric, white documentarian brought onto the ranch to help. But when he gets sucked into the alien’s belly, it’s up to the stars of this movie to save the day, which is done in the most delightful way possible: Emerald hand-cranks an old carnival game that takes a picture from the bottom of a well, looking upright. She takes half a dozen shots, each capturing a single image which, when put in sequence (to make a “motion” picture, if you well), shows the flight and forms of the alien menace.

    Mission accomplished, history is made, and the movie ends.

    In terms of telling its subtextual story, I give NOPE high marks. My only problem is the very slow and deliberate pace it takes from one scene to the next. It feels like a movie that wants to be bigger and more grandiose than it is. With some tighter, snappier editing this could have been an excellent film. Instead, it’s only a good one. There are a few good scares, a few beautiful shots, and a well-told story in the subtext, but on the surface, the film is just okay.

    8/10 – NOPE is not Jordan Peele’s best work, but it is his third film in a row to illustrate how in command he is of a multi-layered story. I just wish the top layer of this one had been a bit more exciting.

    Nope: Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya

    Share this article:

    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit

    Tags

    Horror MoviesJordan PeeleSci-Fi Movies

    You might also like

    • Arrival Review: Making a baby and a killer adaptation (Spoilers)

      By Matthew Martin
      | November 18, 2016
    • E.T. is still awesome, thirty-five years later…

      By Matthew Martin
      | December 19, 2017
    • The Sixth Sense is still awesome…twenty years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | January 20, 2019

    FIND THE TOPICS YOU WANT...

    Movie Topics

    Recommended for you

    • Lethal Weapon is still awesome thirty-five years later

      By Matthew Martin
      | August 9, 2022
    • REVIEW: “NOPE” wants to be more than it is, which is just good enough

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 22, 2022
    • Ten years later, BRAVE remains Pixar’s most underrated film

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 21, 2022
    • REVIEW: THOR – LOVE AND THUNDER is an adventure of mirth and sadness alike

      By Matthew Martin
      | July 9, 2022
    • REVIEW: ELVIS beautifully mythologizes the King of Rock and Roll

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 25, 2022
    • REVIEW: Jurassic World Dominion – Here we go again…again

      By Matthew Martin
      | June 12, 2022
    • REVIEW: Top Gun Maverick is a sequel that soars!

      By Matthew Martin
      | May 27, 2022
    • Can a Legend of Zelda movie work?

      By Matthew Martin
      | April 6, 2022
    • Read the Book Instead: The most disappointing book-to-film adaptations

      By Oliver Johnston
      | September 20, 2021
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Affiliate Disclosure
    • Cookie Policy and Settings
    • Terms of Use
    • Photo Credits
    • RSS
    All Cult of Whatever articles, logos, illustrations and graphics are copyright CultOfWhatever.com. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. © 2021 CultOfWhatever. All Rights Reserved.
    • facebook
    • twitter