Review: Jordan Peele strikes again with thrilling overstuffed "Nope"

by Nathaniel R

We name them. We train them. We live with them. Some people work with them. But do we ever really know our animal friends? Since we can't speak directly to them, their emotions and thoughts are mostly guesswork on our part. Nope takes place largely at a horse ranch. It's run by the Haywood family, Father Otis (Keith David), son OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer). The Haywoods have been training horses for movie and television shoots for generations. OJ, perpetually tense, quiet, and observant, notices it quickly; something is off with the horses. But what? The answer, without spoilers, is this: they know it's a horror film before the Haywoods do.

What kind of a horror film it is, though, is another question...

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Stage Door: The unkillable 'Little Shop of Horrors'

'Stage Door' is our new theater column. We'll review plays and musicals and, because this is a film site, we'll end each column with related movie recommendations. - Editor 

Crystal, Ronette, and Chiffon, the doo-wop chorus of Little Shop, are still a major highlight

The October 2019 Off Broadway revival of the singular scifi-horror-comedy-whatsit musical Little Shop of Horrors is still going strong at the West Side Theater in NYC. Well, minus 18 months off for the pandemic of course. The production has been through five Seymours now in its run (Jonathan Groff, Jeremy Jordan, Gideon Glick, Conrad Ricamora, and Skylar Astin) with a fifth on the way; Rob McClure takes over on July 12th so this is your last chance to see Skylar Astin (Pitch Perfect) in the role. Curiously its original Audrey (Emmy winner and Tony nominee Tammy Blanchard) and Orin (Tony winner Christian Borle) are still recycling their sadomasochistic relationship every night in this iteration of Skid Row.  Why can't the show keep a Seymour!?

Well, it is surely an exhausting role even if the anemia and sore fingers from feeding the bloodthirsty plant is fictional...

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Cláudio's Best Shot Pick: Ex Machina (2014)

The next episode of our series, 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot,' arrives Tuesday night. Since Alex Garland's Men is upon us, this week's selection falls on the director's breakthrough feature – the Oscar-winning Ex Machina. You still have time to participate! Here's Cláudio's entry:

Even though one tries to avoid the online discourse around Men – at least until everybody has had a chance to watch it – some grumblings are rather hard to block off. If that wasn't enough to affect the expectations going into the new movie, this look back at Ex Machina certainly does. The sci-fi chamber drama is a formidable reminder that Alex Garland is a better director than a writer, colligating blunt ideas and blunter dialogue with spellbinding form. Within the realm of glances refracted through glass labyrinths, insinuating architecture and eerie eroticism, Ex Machina triumphs. It's when its characters open their mouth to blabber on that the appearance of cinematic greatness gets spoiled. 

Thankfully, Hit Me with Your Best Shot is about visuals, so we're in a safe place with Ex Machina. Whatever misgivings I might have, the film looks impeccable…

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Dune: Top 10 Best Costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Dune feels more like a period movie than a sci-fi extravaganza as fashioned by costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan. West, who studied Art History, has described the aesthetic she and Morgan conceived as "mod-ieval, looking to the past for the distant future." While the story takes us to a faraway tomorrow, the world doesn't look new. Instead, it feels ancient, used-up before we ever laid eyes on it, sand-blasted but not rotten like the Lynch movie. Stuck in feudalistic pageantry and a political system that squashes the individual under imperial rule, Dune is an anachronism expanded to the monumentality of a space opera. An incredibly ambitious project, the movie deserves applause for its scale and, indeed, its costumes. 

Even the most negligible extra in the background of scenes is splendidly dressed, their ensembles as thought-through as the hero costumes. With that in mind, I decided to highlight this sartorial glory by re-watching the flick ins search of its best looks, be they worn by movie stars or background actors. There's so much to admire…

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How Had I Never Seen..."Dune"?

by Cláudio Alves

Audiences are here for Denis Villeneuve's take of Frank Herbert's Dune – its first half, to be specific. Box office numbers already guaranteed the filming of its sequel, and now there are even talks of a third movie, adapting the second book in the series, Dune Messiah. As the world goes mad for spice and space twinks, Goth nuns, and more made-up sci-fi terminology than you can shake a stick at, it feels like a good time to look at the last big-screen adaptation of Herbert's genre-defining novel. While much hated by its maker, David Lynch's Dune has gained quite the cult following over the years. Indeed, researching this piece, I came across plenty of retrospective defenses of the movie's merits, passionate screeds against its maligned critical reputation.

Does the flick earn such reappraisals, or were the initial reactions right all along? Well…

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