Representation and Survival

Nope (2022) - Peele With his third feature, adroitly titled genre mashup, Nope, Jordan Peele is fast becoming the new original voice in American cinema dominated by sequels and franchises. And using the power of cinema - visual (under)represenation in more ways than one, he incapsulates historical, institutional injustices. It also counters the industry which preaches the most liberal tendencies, but seldom practices, especially in casting. With wit and humor, Peele is obliterating the notion that a message film, a Black message film to be precise, has to be always literal. The 90's Spike Lees of the world don't have the same appeal to the tik tok, BLM generation of now.

The Haywoods owns a California horse ranch, which has been supplying horses for Hollywood productions and commercial shoots for decades. After the old Otis Haywood (Keith David) dies in a freak accident (hit by random debris raining down from the sky - happens to be an old Indian Head penny), the less sociable Jr, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) reluctantly takes over the business with his small time LA schmoozer sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). It would be hard to give up and sell all the beautiful horses and move on. There is a pride involved as a black owned business which is woven into the birth of cinema - the unnamed black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge's short moving picture of Man Riding a Horse in the early days of cinema was a fictional Haywood, an ancestor to OJ and Emerald.

There is another thread that Peele starts the movie with: Gordy's Home, a cheesy 90s sitcom featuring a chimp named Gordy. Things went horribly wrong when Gordy went on a killing spree on set and young Asian American co-star Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun) was spared. It was the friendly gesture, a fist bump, that saved the young Ricky. Now Ricky runs a UFO themed Western show near the Haywood ranch which supplies it with horses.

After some weird happenings - electronics, phones and power cutting on and off randomly around their ranch, OJ and Emerald suspect that there is an alien entity hiding in the static cloud nearby mountain range. They enroll the help of a nerdy CCTV installer, Angel (Brandon Perea) and a grizzled cinematographer (Michael Wincott) who's armed with a handcranked camera (to be immune to electrical storms), to record the Alien sighting and go 'Oprah' with it.

Nope is actually very much like a Spike Lee joint, packed to the brim with ideas and messages, but in a simple, breatheable, cinematic symbolist way. It has little to do with character development or backstory or the classic structure. Things go haywire with unexpected twists and turns. Its references range from Roy Rogers, Close Encounters, Phenomena, 90s TV sitcoms, reality TV, tabloids, even to Akira, not to mention all the other clever pop culture references. It speaks volumes about the notions of the untamed west, nostalgia, colonization, captivity and spectacle. And the gaze: one of the many brilliant moments comes in when OJ understands not to look at the predator in the eye, like many traffic stops POC faces everyday. Loved the unconventional design of the entity as well as hilarious use of the air balloon modeled on Steven Yeun as a weapon. There are many more details I am forgetting to mention here. Engaging, playful and original, Nope is one of the best films of 2022.

Reaching for the sky just to surrender...

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) - Altman





A rumored dangerous gunslinger John McCabe (Warren Beatty) arrives a snowy mountain town to open up a salon and a whore house. His affable manner wins the villagers over soon enough. Words travel fast and enterprising whore house madam Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) offers her service and business partnership. She convinces him to upscale the whore house equipped with baths for hygiene. McCabe is smitten by no-nonsense Miller who still keeps everything business-like.

A powerful local mining company tries buy McCabe out but out of boyish pride, he refuses their offer. Soon they will dispatch hired thugs to kill him. Miller, sensing danger of losing her share and perhaps fearing for his life, tried dissuade him to no avail, falls back into her opium habits.

Beautifully shot by Lazlo Kovacs, imitating old velvet paintings of yesteryears with a melancholic soundtrack by Leonard Cohen, cold, dark and brooding, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is one of the best westerns I've seen.

The Great Western Pathos

Day of the Outlaw (1959) - de Toth

The self-righteous anger and violence has been a staple pathos for the Western genre. This tough male victimhood is as privileged and outdated as white supremacy movement that is rampant in this country. One can't deny that America is built on violence but no one wants to admit it. All highly regarded Westerns follow pretty much the same pathos - The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance, etc. Andre de Toth's Day of the Outlaw is no exception but it makes a hero out of Robert Ryan's gruffy rancher without ever firing a gun. So kudos for that.

Ryan plays Blaise (more like Blasé), a hardened rancher who's had enough of Crane, a farmer and husband of his former lover Helen (Tina Louise), encroaching his territory. Blaise has no qualms about shooting down Crane just on principle alone. But a group of outlaws, headed by former army captain Bruhn (Burl Ives), rolls into town, just in time for Blaise & Crane showdown and start terrorizing its twenty or so citizens of the small town. Bruhn's men are thirsty and lusty. But perhaps because he knows that he is dying, Bruhn promises the townsfolk that his men will not touch the booze and women, until they have secured a safe passage, away from trailing calvary. Blaise, knowing that Bruhn's death will commence raping and pillaging, urges the town's horse doctor to extract the bullet from Bruhn's chest and keep him alive as long as he can.

After a night of dancing and some molestation of women, Blaise decides to deceive the gang and lead them to certain death in the mountain, promising that there is a secret safe passage through the snowy mountains. Greedy and trigger happy, the gang starts to kill each other off.

Day of the Outlaw is a great western. Top notch acting from Ryan and Ives and Louise is a real beaut. Snowcapped vista also accentuates the harshness of the American west.

Back from the Dead

The Revenant (2015) - Iñárritu

In the tradition of ambitious, bravura, excessive filmmaking, Alejandro G. Iñárritu goes there with The Revenant and achieves Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo worthy greatness. It's an unsentimental, relentlessly brutal, macho filmmaking that will undoubtedly turn a lot of viewers off. But I loved it. It concerns fur trapper/guide Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) leading a cavalry of men in felt business to safety through the snowy and hostile western territory in 1800s. Because Glass has a half-breed, teenage Pawnee Indian son named Hawk and the group reeling after a vicious large scale Indian attack, the tension rises among the crew, especially from Fitzerald (Tom Hardy) an unsavory character who'd fuck over anyone standing in his way and his share of the profit. After the horrendous bear attack that leaves Glass almost dead, the captain of the cavalry (Domhnal Gleeson) orders (with the promise of large rewards) Fitzerald and young Bridger (Will Poulter) to care for Glass and Hawk and give Glass a proper Christian burial when the time comes, and leaves them behind to catch up later.

For the next two hours, The Revenant becomes a harrowing tale of survival and a revenge story. It's an amazing feat for DiCaprio, finally shedding all remnants of youth for the first time in my eyes, crawls the snowy earth, then dove right into the freezing roiling water, eats raw meat and fish, trek and climb the snowy Rockies with his bare hands. He is a live-action Wiley Coyote - he gets mauled, buried alive, almost drowned, thrown off the cliff, and so on and so on. He even uses a dead horse as a shelter, Empire Strikes Back style. Tom Hardy is perfect as a villain with his shifty gaze and mumbling.

Emmanuel Lubezki's only natural lit cinematography doesn't really chart anything new here, but the look and feel of The Revenant is polar opposite from Malick's The New World. And I am very glad that I decided to see the film in theaters. There are some blissfully beautiful shots in Glass's flashbacks/dreams of his dead Indian wife floating over him, but most of the time, the film is all dirt, mud, snot, wet felt and blood. And in its own way, it's spectacularly beautiful.

Life During Wartime

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) - Sturges

Macreedy (Spencer Tracy), a mysterious one armed man in black, comes to Black Rock, a small desert town in the West and starts asking questions about a Jap farmer named Komoko who is nowhere to be seen. The townsfolk are less than welcoming, even downright hostile. The local honcho Smith (Robert Ryan, On Dangerous Ground, Billy Budd) who seems to be in charge of everything, wants Macreedy disappear.

This tale of racism/blind patriotism in the post-war small town America presented in anamorphic widescreen, features some amazing desert vistas in day time as well as night exterior scenes. Ryan is as menacing as ever, even shooting down a woman in cold blood in order to keep his racist murder case dead and buried in Black Rock. We get to know Macreedy's retired vet story. Tracy keeps the righteous torch burning 'til the end. Sturges mixes elements of Western and noir and the result is spectacular. Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin appear as Smith's goons. I got a great kick out of watching the scene where Tracy karate chops Borgnine. Great stuff.

I'm half horse half alligator scene