‘Twisters’ Indeed Has Plenty of Twisters, But What Does It Do with Them?

July 17, 2024

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

(from left) Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Javi (Anthony Ramos) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.

Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Patton, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brian

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Running Time: 122 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Windborne Injuries

Release Date: July 19, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Twisters, the legacyquel to 1996’s Twister, is the movie that dares to ask the question: what if there were MORE than one tornado? Honestly, though, wasn’t there already more than one in the first edition? Maybe I’m misremembering, but I’m pretty sure that tornadoes are generally not something that happens in total isolation. Regardless, Twisters is basically positing a once-in-a-generation confluence of as many tornadoes as have ever been observed. Hot on their tail are meteorologist Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), her storm chasing colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos), and peacocking YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). Along the way, there might just be some romance, and maybe even a bit of humanitarian aid.

What Made an Impression?: You’ve Climate Changed, Man: After a bravura opening sequence that ends with the loss of a few of Kate and Javi’s fellow chasers, the fallout cuts ahead five years, with Kate working an office job in New York City and Javi tracking her down for a new and exciting opportunity. These moments have a vibe that suggest that they’re outside of harm’s way in the city, but anyone who’s lived in the mid-Atlantic U.S. in the past few years is all too aware of how tornado territory has been expanding more and more lately. Any ecological disaster movie can easily be read as a warning about climate change, but Twisters doesn’t have to take it to extremes. The storms may be deadly, but they’re too believable to feel like a roller coaster. With that in mind, this is more like a speculative documentary than a work of fiction.
Don’t Forget the People: Is Twisters ashamed of itself? Or is it just feeling a little guilty? That’s the sense I gather from scenes of the chasers offering food and water to the people who have been in harm’s way in the paths of the tornadoes. I don’t think it would have been irresponsible to leave these moments out, but Joseph Kosinski’s script apparently disagrees. Maybe it could have gone even further and transformed the entire movie into a Tornado Relief Telethon halfway through. That certainly would have been more predictable than what we got, which is competent, but also kind of quotidian.

Twisters is Recommended If You Like: Finding a soul beneath the YEEHAW!

Grade: 3 out of 5 Forecasts

‘Nope’ Looks to the Skies and Identifies a Flying and Flummoxing Object

July 20, 2022

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Nope (CREDIT: Universal Pictures)

Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Keith David

Director: Jordan Peele

Running Time: 135 Minutes

Rating: R for Stunning Bloody Moments and Aw-Hell-No-Style Profanity

Release Date: July 22, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) work as horse wranglers on their family ranch out in the middle of nowhere. But they’re also Hollywood royalty, in a way. Their great-great-great-grandfather was the jockey riding a horse on the first strip of film ever assembled as a motion picture. But that’s just background info for the main attraction, as random debris starts falling out of the sky and a cloud begins behaving rather strangely. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve probably already said to yourself, “Jordan Peele and aliens? I’m down for that.” But befitting Peele’s cerebral filmmaking style, this isn’t your typical take on UFOs and ETs.

What Made an Impression?: OJ and Emerald’s dad Otis Sr. is played by Keith David, who 40 years earlier starred in my favorite sci-fi horror film of all time, The Thing. That connection eventually helped me crack the tough egg that is Nope. Typically in scary movies, characters react to the monsters by screaming and running away. There’s a decent amount of that in Nope, but as in The Thing, there’s also a lot of stunned silence. The terror is just too confounding for everyone to know how to react to it. There are several moments in Nope when I couldn’t quite understand what was happening, because people were seemingly under a spell of Zen acceptance when they should have been taking cover from something threatening to devour them. Similarly, I’m not bothered by how much Nope confused me, as I was also fully consumed by Peele’s unique and clever vision.

To be clear, there’s also a lot of energy and verve in response to the unidentified creature. Which is to say, the title is blurted out multiple times in the “I’m not dealing with that $h!t” vibe we were all surely hoping for. But even among the characters who recognize the danger, there’s plenty of excitement about capturing alien activity on film. Michael Wincott plays an eccentric filmmaker who at one point is overcome by a life-threatening urge to capture a moment with the creature with golden hour lighting. Maybe this is just a world where everyone has accepted that they could die at any minute, and they want to go in as thrilling a manner as possible.

But perhaps my favorite scene is one that has nothing to do with the premise, at least not directly. Steven Yeun stars as a local carnival barker and former child actor who shares a story about the time his chimpanzee co-star went berserk on a sitcom set. Or actually, he tells the story about the Saturday Night Live parody about that incident (with era-appropriate cast members, including Chris Kattan as the chimp) in chillingly matter-of-fact detail. It has the surreal energy of a nightmare that also feels like a dream world I never want to leave.

Nope is Recommended If You Like: “The Spielberg Face,” Signs, Declassified alien evidence, Mr. Peepers from SNL

Grade: 4 out of 5 Clouds