As busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. In a new review series, I'm opening my site to friend submissions for guest movie reviews.
TODAY’S CRITIC: Lafronda Stumn
Lafronda Stumn is a student at Madisonville Community College and intends to graduate with an Associate's degree in Associate of the Arts. She plans on earning a Bachelors Degree in Motion Picture Studies and English at Wright State University. Her favorite Directors are Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Spike Lee, and her favorite actors are Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Halle Berry. Lafronda contacted this page looking for a place to get published and I enjoy giving people that very kind of opportunity. This is her 17th guest review for Every Movie Has a Lesson. Welcome as always, Lafronda!
HER REVIEW: Us
Many first-time filmmakers give great debut features, such as Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. John Singleton for Boyz N the Hood, James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment, Sam Mendes for American Beauty, and Sofia Coppola for The Virgin Suicides are just a handful of filmmakers whose sophomore efforts were just as great or even better than their debut features. Jordan Peele's Us is excellent; I think it a better film than Get Out. I picked Get Out as the best film of 2017.
Us begins in 1986 when young Adelaide is at a carnival with her parents on the beach in a town in California. Adelaide's father gives her a Michael Jackson Thriller t-shirt from winning a carnival game. Adelaide soon wanders off to a house of mirrors away from her parents and sees a doppelganger and is taken aback by what she sees. After coming home from the carnival, Adelaide's parents wonder why she has become mute and has no desire to dance, which she loved to do.
Now 33 years later, Adelaide (Lupita N'yongo) and her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two kids Zora (Shahidi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) are returning to the beachside California resort to spend some quality family time together and to deal with the passing of Zora and Jason's grandmother. Adelaide is weary of the visit but goes along with their plans where they met up with friends Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker) and their twin daughters Gwen and Maggie (Cali and Noelle Sheldon). Adelaide and Kitty talk about Adelaide's quiet nature and briefly her childhood. Jason leaves the beach and goes to a homeless man drenched in blood with a Bible verse. Panicked, Adelaide finds Jason and leaves the beach with Adelaide, hoping not to go to that beach again.
In the late evening, the lights go out at the beach house, and one kid notices a family is outside late at night with the family all carrying signs of symbols. The family goes outside to get a closer look at the other family, only to realize they're all replicas. All the counterparts threaten to kill them as they go into the house. Each family member is being held hostage in various areas of the beach house. Gabe's doppelganger takes him to the lake, and Gabe kills his double.
Adelaide tied up to a table with a gun being waived by her double. Jason and his double are in a closet, and Zora is outside trying to run away from her double. Somehow, they all escape their perpetrators and go to their neighbors Kitty and Josh for help, only to get into a fighting duel with their counterparts. The rest of the movie is where the family tries to escape from their doubles and various doppelgangers, who are taking over Americas and for Adelaide and her family to destroy each double and find out why they came to their house.
Peele does a brilliant job with the suspense and pace of the story. The plot has many twists and turns, and the movie is very ambitious in this follow up to Get Out. Many scenes stand out. The scene where Adelaide talks to Gabe about fearing something wrong will happen while they're vacationing and Gabe reassuring her (falsely) that everything will be ok.
Jason is trying to impress his double with a magic trick to escape, and Zora is driving to flee from her counterpart and Gabe going toe to toes with his at the lake, and a treacherous boat accident occurs. There are subliminal images of people holding hands. There are many images of rabbits randomly appearing throughout the movie. What do the rabbits represent? What is about holding hands?
The film doesn't give you straightforward answers to these many questions the movie imposes. The film is the homage to many films that Alfred Hitchcock made during his long film career. The film doesn't give you an easy answer. The movie provides us many scenarios about what scenes and what it implies. It executes brilliantly, with an ambitious screenplay, great suspense, and tight, intense Peele direction.
The performance that is brilliant in particular is by Lupita Nyong’o. Her two versions couldn't be more different from each other, and Nyong’o's voice of the double is so eerie and haunting. That performance is of sheer terror and contrast by Nyong’o's 180-degree term from Adelaide to Red is a stroke of brilliance and execution. The performance is worthy of Oscar consideration. We prove once again that Jordan Peele is no fluke. Peele will have a long successful career as the Hitchcock of the 21st century. This film is one of the best films in 2019.
CONCLUSION
Thank you again, Lafronda! You are welcome anytime. Friends, if you see a movie that I don't see and want to be featured on my website, hit up my website's Facebook page and you can be my next GUEST CRITIC!
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