Big sky scary actioner. Less didactic symbolism than previous Peele's. 

Going to see it on the big screen on Saturday with Mrs WmA and son. 

Incidentally, got suckered by Cineworld scam:
 
Turns out it isn't an £8.99 voucher, it's a £2.00 voucher off the adult ticket price of £10.99. Plus, since it only works online and there's a 75p online booking fee, it's actually a £1.25 voucher.

Still, free regular popcorn. Hooray. Probably find there's a £4.95 charge for the container with free popcorn.

We always stock up on treats at the dollar store before heading in. Cinema charges $5 for a bottle of water (etc).

Well, this looks why they're getting desperate.

 :-D

Never mind, we made a Saturday of it. Moules frites in a local gastro-joint and then the tender mercies of a multiplex. With free popcorn (mixed salt  + sweet).

Odd.

First off, it's a film-editing mess. Not quite a wreck, but majorly unbalanced and thrown together. The opening 45 minutes plus just screams of amateur-hour (I mean, it feels like a fucking HOUR) as the director establishes the street ranch-cred of his cast. Several members of the audience decided that this was a good time to visit the room-of-ablutions  and I don't blame them.

Second, what is it? There are 750 different film styles squashed in, plus a fair selection of TV series. The overwhelming impression was Sergio Leone replaces Tobe Hooper as the director of the remake of Invaders from Mars, with accents and bass-notes of (in no particular order) War of the Worlds (53 and 05 versions), Godzilla (mainly for the roaring), several early Spike Lee movies. Is it a comedy? Is it an homage (to something)? 

Third. Yeah, there's good bits. The story isn't told in an especially original way, but the story itself is original in its own way. Some slightly scary moments. Some pretty moments. A few laughs. A half-decent monster.

WTF? You make your own mind up.

Edit: Oh yes, forgot - the ending was pure Ghostbusters

You missed Close Encounters, which was definitely in the mix. I wondered whether he, or his backers, had decided it was time to give him a big movie budget and see what he does with it. But he can't or won't shake the didactic symbolism that was responsible for his fame in the first place: so he ends up with this chimera, part clever dumb actioner, part allegory that's not entirely sure what it's allegorising.

It is a mess, but ultimately, for me, an enjoyable one. Structurally, it felt like a pro-wrestling match: a number of key spots connected by improvised filler. But once it got into its stride, it rattled along fast enough to grip and engage and to gloss over the plot holes and inconsistencies. In terms of those plot holes (Absolutely nothing about Jupe's early encounters with Jean Jacket, for instance: his new show just appears without context), perhaps it was originally a much longer, hopefully more coherent edit, which he had to hack up because test audiences were finding it overlong - release was delayed by a month at very short notice. If so, expect the Director's cut to follow.

 

Just read Mark Kermode's review which points to Close Encounters along with several others. On the subject of reviews, I can't really get my head around all those that are gushing praise for the film e.g. those listed on Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, I agree, I had some fun in parts, but I'd be spitting teeth if I'd shelled out IMAX prices. 

I don't know about your last point. It was filmed on Imax cameras, and the outdoorsy stuff looked bloody good on an Imax screen.

I'm sure it looked good. I still resist the idea of shelling out £45 for three of us to sit through a not-so-great film. I've been stung in the past with eye-candy like Interstellar and Jupiter Ascending. 

"a better movie to argue about than to watch" -- Kermode

I refer you to your comments on Stasis  :-{)  ;-)

Very probably true. 

I just think that there are so many really great films to be made and so many talented people who could make them - and it will never happen - that it's a shame that something gets released so poorly edited. I think it could be rescued and turned into a decent film, even if it meant re-shooting parts or shooting more.

The opening is tedious and far too long. The ending is laughable. Are we really expected to take it seriously? I meant what I said about Ghostbusters. The acting is generally good providing you accept that the film is populated with grotesques or eccentric caricatures. I mean the cameraman??? Honestly? The story, fwiw, is quite intriguing with the UFO/Monster combo. Unfortunately (editing again) the story itself is told so scrappily. What the hell is the chimp sub-plot even doing in the film? It's like Peele read about Charla Nash and Travis and thought "ooh, that would be a good thing to put in a film" and did. In fact. I'm 100% sure that's what happened. 

 

Yeah. As I said before, my suspicion is that it was a considerably longer film (hopefully, a more coherent one) which had to be hastily re-edited after test screenings. Goodness knows it was long enough anyway.

You may well be right regarding the chimp sub-plot. Its only real contribution to the main story is (I think) to establish Jupe's memory of the incident as unreliably narrated (the shoe standing on end), thus allowing him to believe that looking at Jean Jacket - as he believes he did to Gordy - will establish a relationship. This in contrast to OJ's horse-whispery instincts giving him the understanding that he shouldn't look at it directly. I liked Em's part in the ending - the motorbike dash, the untethering of the balloon and her use of the bottom-of-the-well camera. OJ's reappearance was just daft, but put there to complete the family's (and by extension, African-Caribbean peoples') relationship with the Muybridge photographs.

I spent some time reading audience reviews, and although there is a substantial smattering (if that's a thing) of one-star reviews, the majority are three-star and above with, probably, a modal value, if not a majority, of five-stars. I saw, more than once, the view that this was the best film they have ever seen. Considering the top-billed films at multiplexes over the last few years, this may be true.

I still think that the film, as it is in the cinema, is shockingly edited and has some bizarre choices made in the story line. But, I have seen many worse, and if a director's cut appeared I would be curious to watch it.