laird’s review published on Letterboxd:
He told me, I've seen it all before
I've been there, I've seen my hopes and dreams
A lying on the ground
I've seen the sky just begin to fall
He say, "All things pass into the night"
And I say, "Oh no sir, I must say you're wrong
I must disagree, oh no sir, I must say you're wrong"
Won't you listen to me
Goodbye horses I'm flying over you
I think I liked this more than US, even though it suffers from some of the same messiness, it (at least on a first watch) feels like this is a product of being over-stuffed with ideas rather than just being a single, awkwardly communicated one. I get superficial comparisons to Spielberg (the movie certainly invites them many times over), but classic-era Spielberg is never this chaotic or arch or metatextual (or maybe it is and I just never noticed). I've seen other people say this is Peele's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (??), but I'd say, with all of its concern for image-making and exploitation, it's more his Deathproof (there's even a shot of Keke Palmer that is probably intentionally supposed to be a "Spielberg face" shot but reminded me more of the Rosario Dawson smile moment in Deathproof).
Nope felt like a season of a TV series condensed to two-and-a-half hours (to the extent that I wonder how much more character development may have been shot that didn't make the final cut). But I would trade all of the tidiness in the world for something that is an original work from someone who seems to be chasing some personal ideas (what those ideas are, I won't really attempt to get into, both because it's not entirely clear to me, but also for fear of being ruthlessly mocked by Jordan Peele), but there's undeniably threads about representation, recognition, exploitation, image, control, property, fear and trauma, etc, in the fabric of this story about strange things happening on a horse ranch. Peele doesn't do much to untangle much of it save for providing some rhymes, and that's fine. Given the slew of recent genre movies (ahem, MEN) that are barely a single metaphor first and a genre exercise second, the movie world could use some more mystery and mayhem. Also, as one would hope, it's frequently funny!
