Nope

And yet Peele is not just making an inventive sci-fi thriller. Nope is tinged with the acidic satire that suffused his last two movies, as Peele examines why ...

One could argue that he’s due a little indulgence after the grand success of his films Get Out and Us, both of which were more tautly plotted and had third acts heavy with exposition. The cheerfully obnoxious Emerald seems a born performer herself, but OJ is taciturn to a fault, the one true introvert amid the film’s portrayals of spotlight-seeking artists and actors. Ricky is one of Peele’s most compelling creations, a chipper yet vacant spirit who provides a brutal, if indirect, critique of the showbiz machine. When asked about the chimpanzee attack, he cheerfully points to a Saturday Night Live parody of the event that “pretty much nailed it.” After spotting the UFO in the sky, he designs a whole live rodeo show around it, trying to conjure the magic of his youthful performances, even though that line of work led him to his darkest day. Nope is tinged with the acidic satire that suffused his last two movies, as Peele examines why the easiest way to process horror these days is to turn it into breathtaking entertainment. At one point, his gaze alights on a strange, specific sight: a single shoe, balanced on its heel, pointing straight up in seeming defiance of gravity.

In “Nope,” writer/director Jordan Peele presents us with a big, shiny summer blockbuster — a cowboys and aliens riff built from the DNA of sci-fi spectacles ...

Deeply mysterious and sometimes inscrutable, “Nope” is also funny, wry and even bleak, thanks to the incredible actors who walk Peele’s tightrope. It also bears the imprint of Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and is deep with references to ‘80s and ‘90s cult sci-fi. Daniel Kaluuya stars as OJ Haywood, a taciturn horse wrangler grieving the loss of his father (Keith David) in a freak accident, while continuing to run the family business, Haywood Hollywood Horses, with his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer), providing animals to movie sets.

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer star in Jordan Peele's latest horror-thriller "Nope", about a family whose life and livelihood is threatened by a ...

One could point to the fame-chasing child star, the animal wrangling for film and TV, and the quirky camera operator as indicators that Peele is prodding at the absurdities of Hollywood. Or you could focus on the cloud, and wonder how its real-life inspiration might be at the heart of Peele's purpose. In the end, the title of Nope might be its thesis. One of this horror film's most harrowing moments isn't one of violence or gore, but of OJ, trapped and waiting for a break in the storm of horror. Meanwhile, cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who is new to Peele's repertory, gives us wide, wide shots of majestic terrains, reveling in the beauty of the Haywood ranch, visually reminding us of its importance, grandeur, and also its remoteness. Like Spielberg, Peele leans on character, seeding his horror film with simple human moments of frustration, failure, and fraternity between the Haywood siblings. He has the stoic machismo of a world-weary cowboy, but within his reserved reactions, there's a slice of sadness glinting from his eyes. (One standout terrifying sequence involves a shadowy barn and a man who thinks it's just him and the horses in there.) But beyond iconic scares, these horror hits of yesteryear also share an earnest interest in the character, and a slow-burn terror born from embedding us in the lives of a family. On their quest to catch "the impossible shot," they wrangle in a frenetic tech salesman (Brandon Perea), an eccentric cinematographer (Michael Wincott, brooding like the '90s-era badass he is) and a former child star turned theme park entrepreneur, who is just as unnervingly obnoxious as that description would suggest (a perturbing and entertaining Steven Yeun). Palmer knows how to make an entrance and snag the spotlight, which she does neatly in Emerald's introduction, where she folds the "safety minute" speech for a film crew into history lesson on her family's legacy and a pitch to hit her up for whatever else might be needed. As a comedic performer, Peele showed a madcap energy and welcoming charisma that made his every appearance a vibrant joy. As teased in the haunting promotional poster for Nope, the supernatural horror at the center of the heralded writer/director's third film is a dark cloud, ominously trailing a string of brightly colored flags. With Get Out, Peele and his subdued but sensational (and Oscar-nominated) leading man, Daniel Kaluuya, brought a modern edge to possession horror.

(AP) -- A great debut in Hollywood can be a blessing and a curse. Once you knock it out of the park like Jordan Peele did with “Get Out,” which captured the ...

Audiences want to feel the same way they did with “Get Out.” But “Us” didn’t quite do it. Now three movies in, Peele is in a bit of conundrum. (AP) -- A great debut in Hollywood can be a blessing and a curse.

After enjoying critical and commercial success in TV comedy via his hit series, Key & Peele, Jordan Peele surprised the world by sharing his inner-Rod ...

Peele helped Daniel Kaluuya become a star via his lead role in Get Out, and Kaluuya has gone on to Oscar fame via his portrayal of Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. Peele’s leadership in this realm will help prove to skeptical Hollywood decision-makers (once again) that films featuring non-white casts can not only work here in the U.S., but around the world. The horror/thriller genre has been the playground of some of the most important, genre-bending, edge-of-your-seat creativity in the history of cinema. Peele’s success with Get Out seemed to come out of nowhere, but Jason Blum certainly knew of Peele’s potential, bet on him, championed the film and the rest is history. Let’s not forget, the most successful film of all time, Avatar, is based simply on a James Cameron idea, not a best-selling fantasy-adventure novel. To Peele’s credit, he continues to celebrate and discover a wide bench of talent, not only from the African American community, but from the Asian American and Latinx world as well. He should know; he’s had approximately 60 films released in the genre, with an average budget of $6M per film, generating over $4.6B in box-office revenues.

While patriarch Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) always expected that his son Otis Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) would eventually take ...

But instead of trying to present itself as a wholly new spin on the kind of film it appears to be, Nope exceeds by going a bit meta as its heroes realize that they’re going to have to fight for their lives using, among other things, cameras. As characters, both OJ and Em are so firmly within Kaluuya and Palmer’s wheelhouses that they have a way of feeling like archetypical performances you’ve seen from them before, but it works within the context of Nope’s slightly amped-up reality. Even those willing to do business with the Haywoods, like former child actor turned local show cowboy Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), are hesitant to see them as more than the people who tend to animals — people so low on the call sheet that they’re almost invisible. While Nope — Peele’s third feature with Universal — definitely runs on the distressing, disorienting energy his projects have become known for, it also feels like the director’s first movie that’s actually about filmmaking as a thrilling and terrifying art form. Blessedly, racism (or some anthropomorphization of it) is not the frightening menace that eventually gets Nope’s characters uttering the movie’s title aloud. The Haywood siblings are still grieving in their respective ways as Nope opens on Otis Jr. (who goes by OJ) doing what he can to maintain Haywood’s Hollywood Horses and Emerald making it very clear that she’s ready to become a part of the showbiz in a non-equine capacity.

Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Brandon Perea in 'Nope.' (CNN) Jordan Peele's "Get Out" marked such a thrilling directing debut ...

Yep. But to the extent "Get Out" offered the complete package in an Oprah-worthy way, this latest journey into the unknown is entertaining without rising to meet those over-the-moon expectations. Peele shrewdly draws from a variety of sources, including sci-fi movies of the 1950s at least in tone, relying on viewers to putty in gaps. Although the marketing has teased an alien-invasion plot, Peele again seeks to turn some of our expectations on their heads, playfully toying with conventions of the genre.

Jordan Peele is back with another provocative horror film. But many might be better off saying “nope” to the film itself.

And the UFO that seems to be homesteading in the area? Why, it might just be the key to unlock that opportunity. His father was the businessman, the showman. For decades, he’d supplied studios with steeds for their movies and television shows But even with all of Otis’ skill and savvy, the Haywood ranch’s galloping business had slowed to a slow saunter in recent years. One minute he was prepping for a big motion picture job, the next he was slumped over in the saddle, bleeding from the head, a piece of freak debris embedded in his skull. In fact, Otis literally died in the saddle, aboard one of his favorite horses.

The film follows a pair of siblings, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, struggling to keep their family's horse ranch afloat when an object appears in the sky ...

Shot by “ Dunkirk” and “Tenet” cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on large format 65mm film, the film’s best special effect is the expansive California sky, which Peele allows us to study at length while waiting for the UFO to emerge. Palmer is enormously charismatic, personality-wise the opposite of her pensive brother yet both communicate in a sibling shorthand that feels lived-in and true. OJ could swear he saw something moving behind it the other day, and after an awfully lengthy stretch of table-setting, “Nope” finally gets rolling when he and his sister decide to try and get a picture of what looks a lot like a flying saucer. “Nope” is a throwback to funny Friday night fright flicks like “Tremors” or “Signs,” an audience picture full of good, old-fashioned jump scares and blessed with an economy of scale. “Nope” lacks the scathing social commentary that made the writer-director’s 2017 debut “Get Out” such a zeitgeist-defining smash. (In the ‘90s, he worked on a wacky family sitcom starring a chimpanzee that went berserk one day during a taping and ripped the faces off a couple of his co-stars, live in front of a studio audience.

Wondering how to watch Nope? We have all of the details on the latest Jordan Peele movie, from showtimes to streaming info.

To find when and where you can watch the film, check the local showtime listings at the links below: If you want to watch Peele’s previous two films ahead of Nope, you have a couple of options. The shroud of mystery surrounding Jordan Peele’s next horror movie is about to be lifted.

How to Watch 'Nope': Is The Jordan Peele Movie Streaming or in Theaters? ... Jordan Peele's latest lands on July 22. ... Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya are ...

Judas and the Black Messiah: This crime drama feature is a biopic of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party of the late 1960s. The crux of the story is not the flying object or what they do. And the siblings’ approach to the presence of aliens is also different from what we are used to seeing in sci-fi movies like these. The fact that random objects are falling from the sky and a flying saucer-like object destroying everything in its way, is a straightforward hint at an alien presence. There’s also a little undertone of dark humor as we see in some scenes and dialogues. Since its inception, Nope has fetched a lot of attention and become a highly anticipated horror movie with Peele’s popular narrative style and concept.

July 21, 2022 9:31 PDT - By Sam Mendelsohn - Box Office News. As the summer winds down, the stream of major franchise films has dried up, but there are ...

Universal is doubling down with Nope, which has a $68 million budget compared to $4.5 million on Get Out and $20 million on Us. The low budgets meant Peele’s earlier films were hugely profitable, while the significantly larger budget on Nope means the margins are bound to be much lower, though it is still likely to make its money back assuming it doesn’t fall considerably short of Peele’s earlier grosses. While both Get Out and Us were well received by critics (98% on Rotten Tomatoes for Get Out, which also got Oscar noms for best director and picture and won for original screenplay, and 93% on RT for Us), audiences took to Get Out, which received an A- CinemaScore, but not to Us, which got a B CinemaScore. This was reflected in the box office, with Get Out having an exceptional multiplier of 5.27 after its strong $33.7 million opening. Universal is doubling down with Nope, which has a $68 million budget compared to $4.5 million on Get Out and $20 million on Us. The low budgets meant Peele’s earlier films were hugely profitable, while the significantly larger budget on Nope means the margins are bound to be much lower, though it is still likely to make its money back assuming it doesn’t fall considerably short of Peele’s earlier grosses. While both Get Out and Us were well received by critics (98% on Rotten Tomatoes for Get Out, which also got Oscar noms for best director and picture and won for original screenplay, and 93% on RT for Us), audiences took to Get Out, which received an A- CinemaScore, but not to Us, which got a B CinemaScore. This was reflected in the box office, with Get Out having an exceptional multiplier of 5.27 after its strong $33.7 million opening. The goodwill from Get Out led to Us nabbing one of the biggest openings ever for an original film with $71.1 million, but it ended up with a multiplier of just 2.46, finishing practically on par with Get Out despite more than doubling its opening. The goodwill from Get Out led to Us nabbing one of the biggest openings ever for an original film with $71.1 million, but it ended up with a multiplier of just 2.46, finishing practically on par with Get Out despite more than doubling its opening.

It's gutsy to start a movie with a verse from Nahum, which is surely one of the Bible's least-quoted books. But Jordan Peele likes a challenge.

The name of the TMZ reporter who shows up on a motorcycle — with a mirrored helmet, no less — is listed in the film’s credits as “Ryder Muybridge,” which is obviously a reference to the man who shot the film starring Alistair Haywood and who has gone down in history with all the credit. Yet it might help to explain why OJ is the first to realize that the saucer isn’t a saucer at all, at least not like the kind they’re used to seeing in the movies. It’s a movie with a thousand references to the past. When midway through the film, the saucer rains guts and blood down on the ranch house, you have to think of Nahum’s words: “I will cast abominable filth upon you.” The first night, as OJ dodges the saucer, a nearby coworker in the store, munching chips and hanging out, even breathlessly asks, “What happened to OJ?” As if he’s a character on a show, and not a real guy whose life is in danger. But you can’t really opt out of a spectacle culture — it’s around you, and whether or not you want to participate, it tends to suck you in anyhow. Jupe’s development of a “family show” at Jupiter’s Claim is just another harnessing of spectacle — in this case, the flying saucer — to get paying customers to his amusement park. Watching and being watched is everywhere in Nope. When OJ and Emerald first come to believe there’s a saucer in the sky, they head straight for the electronics store to get surveillance cameras, which Angel installs on their property. In any case, the Haywood ranch is just up the road from Jupiter’s Claim, and OJ’s been selling horses to owner Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) to keep the ranch afloat. Nope is centrally about how our experiences of reality have been almost entirely colonized by screens and cameras and entertainment’s portrayals of what it calls reality, to the point that we can barely conceive of experiencing reality directly, with honesty and without any kind of manipulation. Just before this verse, Nahum describes Nineveh as a lion’s den, the “city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims,” a place with “galloping horses and jolting chariots,” full of bodies of the dead. TV and movies over the past several decades have coaxed us to expect explanations and puzzle boxes in our entertainment, and to be annoyed when creators refuse to reveal the trick at the end of the show.

With his third film, Peele has an original screenplay Oscar to his name (for his debut “Get Out”), while Tarantino has been nominated five times and won twice ( ...

One more caveat for home viewing: Failure to reach that $50 million consensus means Universal has the ability, per its agreement with top circuits, to make “Nope” available for PVOD after its third weekend. If so, it will join “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Elvis” as the rare films that inspire audience interaction that can only be experienced in theaters. The original “Nope” would be an impossible production if it were packaged with almost anyone but Peele. That’s why the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” comp bears emphasis. The consensus preopening projection for “Nope” is $50 million, about 25 percent less than “Us” — but that shouldn’t be perceived as a disappointment. With that take, it would beat Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which opened to $41 million in July 2019 (it was #2 behind the second weekend of the live-action “The Lion King.”)

While Jordan Peele's new sci-fi horror movie, starring Daniel Kaluuya, has loads of ideas and builds up considerable suspense and dread, it eventually ...

- Opinion: The Senate’s Semiconductor Spending Trick You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. Mr. Peele has loads of ideas and builds up considerable suspense and dread, but he fails to tie everything together with a resounding final act.

Jordan Peele's latest thriller, Nope, has been shrouded in secrecy, but the shroud comes off this weekend.

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Jordan Peele subverts expectations (again) with 'Nope' ... When the first trailer for Nope dropped, viewers almost immediately swarmed social media trying to ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.