Jordon Peele's Nope is a movie about spectacle and how we tend to mine it for fortune and fame instead of considering the repercussions. A down on his luck Hollywood horse trainer named OJ (yes, Peele named him that on purpose) and his sister try to prove the existence of a UFO that's abducting their horses. They get more than they bargained for, of course; Peele expertly skirts convention and delivers a twist worthy of Hitchcock, while still horrifying the audience and appealing to their sense of wonder. One of the scariest scenes involves a flashback from the perspective of former child star Ricky, who survives a murderous chimpanzee attack while filming a sit-com. Ricky has never quite dealt with his trauma; he's built a museum to his acting career and entertains internet sensationalists who pay him cash to spend a night surrounded by the mementos of the chimp's rampage. Ricky, of course, makes a bad decision and pays for it. Unlike OJ, who is a horse trainer and therefore understand animals, Ricky thinks that because he survived a dangerous animal encounter, he can handle otherworldly forces. Nope has the kind of internal logic and layered thematic approach critics love. Really, there's nothing to criticize here. See Nope. Along with Get Out, it's one of the best sci-fi horror movies made in the last decade.
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy is refreshingly earnest and visually-distinctive when viewed through a post-MCU lens. The director's campy aesthetic enhances the material instead of rendering it a joke, a la Waitiki's Thor: Love and Thunder. These movies are also perfectly cast; Tobey Maguire captures Peter Parker's wholesome nerdiness while Kirsten Dunst plays the relatable girl-next-door. Dafoe, Molina, and Church embody the definitive versions of their famous villains, and even canceled James Franco manages to charm as himbo Harry Osborn. There's no post-credit scene, no cinematic universe to push, just a series of movies made to entertain. Of course, Sony was already moving beyond this old fashioned approach with the reboot series featuring Andrew Garfield as Spidey. Less campy, more contemporary in tone, and engineered to imitate Marvel's never-ending churn, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 nevertheless makes some of the same mistakes as Raimi's Spider-Man 3. Too much time is spent setting up future films; too many villains hog the screen; the plot meanders and doesn't quite recover. I liked the cast, however; Maguire might be the best Peter, but Garfield embodies Spider-Man's cocky kid from Queens charm, and there's real chemistry between him and Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy. A third sequel might have featured the Sinister Six, but Sony elected to hop on the Marvel bandwagon and the inevitable gravy train of cash such a union would produce. The Tom Holland films are okay, but they have the same bland sensibilities of every disposable MCU flick, and the supporting cast doesn't match the previous Spider-Man films. Spider-Man was always a property, but he's more so now, just another toy in the vast Disney pantheon of captured licenses. At least he was a character in the earlier films.
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