DOG; DAYS

Happy Friday everybody! Check out my reviews, online at Phoenix Magazine, of Dog Man...

...and One of Them Days...

...now in theaters.

YEP

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Nope--The terse title refers to the reaction that audiences often have when they're watching a horror movie, and the character is faced with investigating or confronting something scary: Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Onscreen, of course, the characters always do, and this movie is no exception.

The latest from Jordan Peele is set in Agua Dulce, a remote desert area north of L.A. (Vasquez Rocks, immortal location of countless films and TV shows including the "Arena" episode of Star Trek, is nearby). Peele's hero, once again played by Daniel Kaluuya of Get Out, is O.J., a horse wrangler for the movies who struggles to maintain the isolated ranch that's been in his family since the beginning of Hollywood. His actress/writer/singer/motorcyclist sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) works with him at times, though she can be as much an unreliable hindrance as a help.

Their father (Keith David) has recently died under weird circumstances, and gradually O.J. and Em become aware that their little corner of Agua Dulce is haunted by nothing less than a flying saucer. But while O.J.'s strong instinct is to say "nope" to exploring the matter further, Em's is to try to capture incontrovertible photographic or video evidence of the phenomenon, and she persuades her brother that it's the key to the ranch's solvency.

This basic synopsis does little justice to the richly imagined world in which Nope unfolds, however. Next door to the ranch, for instance, is "Jupiter's Claim," a western theme park run by Ricky (Steven Yeun), a former child actor and the veteran of a horrifying mishap on the set of a sitcom. O.J. has been selling off his horses to Ricky to stay afloat, but is hoping to buy them back.

Ricky's backstory is connected thematically to the main plot; Peele's persistent theme is the turbulent relationship between humans and other species, whether animal or alien. In formal terms, though, this strand is undeniably a digression. But, as with the digressions in, say, a Stephen King novel, I don't think the movie would work without it, or without Holst (Michael Wincott, growly as ever), the eccentric cameraman who agrees to help the siblings, or without Angel (Brandon Perea), the heartsick Fry's Electronics techie and UFO geek who worms his way into the project as well.

It also wouldn't work without Peele's careful, measured pacing. He teases us with a gradual accrual of creepy flourishes, even a pretty hair-raising red herring, so that when his extended big confrontation at the finale arrives, the thrills feel earned. And, like Get Out, the film is leavened with comedy--often macabre comedy--throughout.

With the help of Hoyte von Hoytema's sun-bleached pastel cinematography, Peele generates an atmosphere of preternatural Americana that inevitably recalls the work of the young Spielberg. Indeed, Nope is probably the best UFO movie since Close Encounters, though the sense of wonder is here tinged with the sinister and unwholesome.

A word should also be said for the leads. Palmer's Emerald is exuberant, exasperating and endearing. Kaluuya is strikingly laconic; his face slackening hilariously with dismay when he registers yet another setback, but remaining stoic. He spends a fair amount of his footage on horseback, and Peele showcases him like the star of a spaghetti western. In the middle of this sci-fi tale, the relatively short Kaluuya makes one of the more imposing and authoritative tall-in-the-saddle western heroes the movies have seen in quite a few years.

A LIGHTYEAR IN THE LIFE

Opening this weekend:

Lightyear--At the beginning of this animated feature from Disney/Pixar we are informed that back in 1995, a little boy named Andy got a toy from his favorite movie. "This is that movie."

The reference, of course, is to Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, the "Space Ranger," voiced in that film by Tim Allen, who competed for Andy's affections with Woody, the cowboy voiced by Tom Hanks. In this new feature Buzz, voiced here by Chris Evans, is the troubled hero of a far-flung sci-fi yarn. At the beginning Buzz, an intrepid hero in the Roger Ramjet vein, screws up while exploring a habitable but dangerous planet, with the result that a huge, radish-shaped spaceship full of scientists in suspended animation gets marooned there.

In trying to resume the space odyssey, Buzz makes repeated attempts to achieve "hyperspace," always falling short, and skipping ahead years each time. He keeps returning from these failed test flights to find a larger and more settled colony than he left, always seemingly less interested in leaving the planet; his fellow Space Ranger and best friend Alisha (Uzo Aduba) is also grayer and has moved on further with her life each time.

The movie has plenty of humor--the best of it, perhaps, from Buzz's deadpan, blandly capable robot cat Sox, voiced by Peter Sohn (Sox reminded me a little of Rags, Woody Allen's robot dog in Sleeper, though Sox proves far more useful). But Lightyear doesn't really have the tone of a comedy; it's surprisingly ambitious and surprisingly poignant. It's about the pain of living with our mistakes, and about the speed with which our lifetimes seem to get away from us.

Like so many of the Pixar films, it's an impressive, thematically complex piece of work. But despite a second act in which Buzz and his band of pals, voiced by the likes of Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi and Dale Soules, battle invading robots, this isn't a rollicking space opera, and it's a little hard to imagine it being Andy's favorite movie.

Culturally, what may be most significant about the film is that it includes a same-sex marriage, complete with a kiss. The significance isn't so much in the relationship itself, which is peripheral to the story, but rather in the splendidly matter-of-fact manner with which it comes across. Again, it belies the supposed conceit of the movie; it's hard to imagine the intensity of the reaction this element would have stirred up in 1995. But it's cheering to note how commonplace it seems today.