Jordan Peele‘s Get Out was about a covert and malignant plot on the part of wealthy, Obama-supporting Anglos to turn blackfolk into obedient zombies through hypnosis. The basic message was “whiteys might act friendly and profess to understand and applaud black culture, but they’re actually Satan’s spawn.”

Us (Universal, 3.22), Peele’s soon-to-open followup, is about…well, not exactly another whitey conspiracy but something close to that.

Once again innocent blackfolk (or the vacationing Wilson family, played by Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright and Evan Alex) are being viciously preyed upon, only this time by house-of-horror reflections of themselves — by spooky, raspy-voiced, scissor-wielding dopplegangers dressed in red jumpsuits. Moreover, the red jumpsuits are part of a coordinated nationwide army of predatory fiends. But why? To what end?

In turns out that the inspiration behind all of this feral, howling, over-acted viciousness is another white-person scheme — the up-with-people, let’s-all-hold-hands-and-love-each-other vibe behind Hands Across America, the 1986 nationwide charity organized by the evil Ken Kragen and supported by USA for Africa, a charity org that promoted “We Are The World” (and was prominently allied with the nominally black Michel Jackson).

The message is something along the lines of “corporate whiteys and their allies might talk about love and togetherness and communal giving, but they’re actually killers of the African spirit so, you know, keep them at a distance…in fact, you might want to arm yourself with a pair of extra-large scissors.”

Yes, the doppleganger plague also happens to the Tylers, a white family that’s friendly with the Wilsons (Elisabeth Moss is the mom). This obviously dilutes the racial scheme to some extent. But Us is about the Wilsons and Ken Kragen is the wicked Beelzebub behind it all, so don’t invest too much in the “innocent whiteys are suffering too” aspect. White rabbits are all over this film (particularly in the third act) and…well, you figure it out.

After a half-hour set-up in Santa Cruz with a particular focus on the city’s beachfront amusement park (which I haven’t visited in 30 years), Us turns into Night of the Living Dead Dopplegangers meets Karyn Kusama‘s The Invitation. Kusama’s 2015 thriller is a far better film that Peele’s, but they have a similar attitude about abstract cosmic malevolence.

How good is Lupita? She’s excellent — the absolutely valiant hero of this jumbled, lurching, hazy-minded horror pic. How likely is it that she’ll end up as a Best Actress contender, as Variety‘s Marc Malkin recently suggested? No fucking way. It’s just a Jamie Lee Curtis terrified-victim performance. Update: I’ve just learned that men in freshly laundered white outfits are currently searching for Malkin as we speak.

Is Us boring? No — it’s engaging as far as it goes. It plays its own horror music, dances to its own choreography, snaps and snarls in ways that will make you sit up and say to yourself, “Whoa, that was striking.” But it’s not that clever or brilliant. It’s approvable but calm down.

Time Out‘s Joshua Rothkopf has compared Us to John Carpenter‘s The Fog (’80), the somewhat disappointing follow-up to the hugely successful Halloween. That’s about right.

For the truly hip and attuned, the cosmic levitation and cultural changeover moment that was fanned by the mystical influence of Revolver and Sgt. Pepper lasted for only 18 months or so. As Terry Valentine later noted, “It was ’66 and early ’67…that’s all it was.” But for everyone else the playtime vibe was still happening, especially in the Hollywood realm during the spring-summer of ’69.

Everyone was coasting on be-here-now hedonism — a tingly roach-clip current, a sense of mystical whoa-ness and communal bliss — the last euphoric gasp of Woodstockian, LSD-propelled, Bhagavad Gita-tinged flower power before the bubble was popped by the Manson murders. And then, four months later, by the Altamont music festival killing.

The just-released teaser for Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Columbia, 7.26), which is set during the first few months of the Nixon administration but after the Mamas and the Papas had more or less split up (which makes the use of “Straight Shooter” on the trailer soundtrack seem odd), is about what the ’60s were like for mostly clueless Los Angeles fringe players. Atmospheric impressions of a dreamy, self-absorbed realm of gently stoned none-too-brights.

There are two versions of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Rick Dalton in the trailer — a lean, traditionally coiffed, tidily dressed TV actor who danced on Hullaballo in ’65 or ’66 vs. a somewhat heavier, longer-haired, unshaven doobie toker of ’69.

The trailer contains an amusing exchange between Brad Pitt‘s Cliff Booth and Mike Moh‘s Bruce Lee.

Like many others I’ve been thinking about a seismic event happening tomorrow, which is basically the end of 20th Century Fox as we’ve known it for so many decades. It’s officially being absorbed (i.e., swallowed whole if being strategically maintained as a separate unit) by Disney on 3.20.19. By any measure a sad end of an era.

But of course, the 20th Century Fox brand had been eroding and diminishing for a long time. Which regime presided over the most bountiful or influential Fox heyday? The Daryl F. Zanuck era (20 years from the mid ’30s to mid ’50s)? The Alan Ladd, Jr. era of the early to late ‘70s? Or Bill Mechanic‘s reign (’94 to ’00)? The standard answer is to point to Zanuck’s as the greatest, but I have a special respect and affection for the Mechanic reign, perhaps because I personally lived through it as a covering journalist.

Mechanic-wise, most people would point to the following highlights: Titanic, Bulworth, Fight Club, Independence Day, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Mrs. Doubtfire, Speed, True Lies, Braveheart (co-production with Paramount), Cast Away, Boys Don’t Cry, There’s Something About Mary, Ice Age, X-Men, The Full Monty, Boys Don’t Cry and Moulin Rouge. Most of these were high concept, yes, but many were masterfully written, high-craft efforts about actual people and real-life capturings, which happened from time to time in those balmy days before the superhero plague.

Laddie highlights include Star Wars (’77) , The Empire Strikes Back (’80), Alien (’79), Julia (’77), The Towering Inferno (’74), The Omen (’76), Young Frankenstein (’74), Breaking Away (’79), Norma Rae, The Boys from Brazil (’78), The Turning Point (’77), An Unmarried Woman (’78), All That Jazz (’79), Silver Streak (’76), The Rose (’79), 9 to 5 (’80) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (’75).

The Zanuck films were primarily regarded as serious, socially reflective takes on the states of American being. Sone of the highlights included The Grapes of Wrath (’40), Song Of Bernadette (’43), The Ox-Bow Incident (’43), Laura (’44), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (’45), Gentleman’s Agreement (’47), A Letter to Three Wives (’49), Twelve O’Clock High (’49), Pinky (’49), All About Eve (’50), Twelve O’Clock High (’49), Viva Zapata (’52), The Robe (’53), Demetrius and the Gladiators (’54). Which others?

The TCM Classic Film Festival is hosting a special tribute to Fox’s fabled history on Saturday, 4.13. The copy doesn’t even allude to the fact that Fox has been eaten by Disney.

Mechanic remarks: “As with any studio, there were peaks and valleys. The Zanuck films were obviously distinctive within their realm. I thought Laddy left behind a good legacy, and felt that we restored some of the luster.

Not sure I have much more to say than what I already have. [Rupert] Murdoch never liked movies, and never cared to build the studio into anything other than a supply line for TV/cable (much like the streamers are doing), and thus dumped all the history unceremoniously and without a tinge of regret.”

Lucy In The Sky was originally called Pale Blue Dot — an even cooler title would have been Marbled Bowling Ball.

After a lengthy space shuttle mission, astronaut Lucy Cola (Natalie Portman) returns to earth and begins an affair with fellow astronaut Mark Goodwin (Jon Hamm). She falls into a vaguely depressive mindset and then a downward spiral as she begins to feel increasingly alienated from her family — a condition that can allegedly afflict those who spend a long time in space. Things take a turn for the worse after Goodwin starts another affair with an astronaut trainee.

Noah Hawley‘s film, due for release later this year through Fox Searchlight, is “loosely based on astronaut Lisa Nowak‘s alleged criminal activities around her romantic involvement with fellow astronaut William Oefelein.”

What is this Once Upon A Time in Hollywood poster showing Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate? Standing in front of the Fox Village in her black turtleneck and go-go boots and blah blah. I’ll tell you what it is — it’s nothing. I’m also informing the Sony guys that the long, drawn-out Hollywood glamour-tease phase of this film’s marketing campaign is over here and now, and that things have to get more substantive from here on. Really. The first trailer (where is it?) has to have aroma, atmosphere and teeth.

We now know that Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is locked for Cannes ’19, and that Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman will almost certainly appear there also.

And now Variety‘s Cannes ’19 prediction piece (written by Peter Debruge and Elsa Keslassy, and co-reported by John Hopewell, Nick Vivarelli, Patrick Frater, Leo Barraclough and Richard Kuipers) assures that Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies, a drama about the FBI’s ghastly persecution of poor Jean Seberg from the late ’60s and into the ’70s, is more or less firmed.

Pic stars Kristen Stewart as Seberg, and costars Jack O’Connell, Anthony Mackie, Vince Vaughn, Margaret Qualley, Zazie Beetz, Stephen Root and Colm Meaney.

A March ’17 draft of Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse‘s script, titled Seberg, ends well before Seberg’s 1978 Paris suicide, when she was 40. The final scene in the script is about Seberg learning from a sympathetic FBI guy (Jack O’Connell) about a fictitious FBI allegation that the father of a baby girl born to Seberg on 8.23.70 (and who died two days later) was Black Panther activist Raymond Hewitt.

Seberg was nonetheless romantically linked with another Black Panther member, Hakim Jamal (played in the film by Anthony Mackie).

From Seberg’s Wikipage: “In 1970 the FBI circulated a false story that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband Romain Gary but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party. The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times, and was also printed by Newsweek magazine.

“Seberg went into premature labor and, on August 23, 1970, gave birth to a 4 lb (1.8 kg) baby girl. The child died two days later. She held a funeral in her hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the infant’s white skin, which disproved the rumors.

“Charles de Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck, so the question for the United States is whether it should consider the age of likely presidential candidates who, statistics and experience tell us, stand a pretty good chance of foundering on the rocks of old age. I’m talking Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

“Sanders and Biden are about the same age. Sanders is 77, and Biden 76, and because the next president will be inaugurated in 2021, I can say without fear of persnickety fact-checkers that both men will be almost two years older by then. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the next president of the United States will be well into his 80s before his first term is up. That’s a shocking figure.

“Biden and Sanders have waited too long.

“A pledge to serve only a single term would not reverse the clock. It would only hobble the president, making him a lame duck before his time. Of course, the ultimate decision is their own, but they have to know they will probably decline. If they don’t think so, they have gotten old without getting wise.” — from “Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are too old to be president,” a Washington Post opinion piece by columnist Richard Cohen and posted on 3.18.

If and when Terrence Malick‘s Radegund debuts at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, it will have spent 30 or 31 months in post — roughly six or seven months longer than the average length of time that Malick’s last three films — To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song — have logged in the editing room. Will Mr. Wackadoodle actually risk screening his German-language antiwar film to Cannes critics? My instincts tell me no — Malick is a hider, a ditherer, a lettuce-leaf tosser. He prefers the cool shadows of the cave to the hot glare of exposure.

“Case of the Missing Radegund,” posted two months ago: During the summer of 2016, or two and two-thirds years ago, Terrence Malick shot principal photography on Radegund, a fact-based anti-war drama set in Austria and Germany. Directed and written by the press-shy auteur, the German-language drama is about Franz Jagerstatter (August Diehl), an Austrian conscientious objector who was executed by the Third Reich for refusing to fight.

The parliamentary beheading of Al Franken pains me still. It hurts. I get why Senate Democrats felt they had to cut him loose (i.e., they wouldn’t have any moral authority in subsequent sexual harassment cases if they hadn’t). But God, what a shame. Plus the fact that the initial Leeann Tweeden USO accusation felt to me like a semi-orchestrated rightwing hit job. I’m not saying Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was wrong to call for his resignation, but it does muddle my perception of her. She’s not going to make it anyhow — face it.

I know the issue of Sen. Franken is hard for many Democrats. But he had eight credible sexual harassment allegations against him, and I had to choose whether to stay silent, or not. If some megadonors have a problem with that, that's on them. pic.twitter.com/POLWcTQUsY

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) March 19, 2019

Heartfelt thanks to the Los Angeles publicists who haven’t invited me to recent screenings of Craig Zahler‘s Dragged Across Concrete (Summit, 3.22). I became a Zahler fan after catching 2017’s Brawl in Cell Block 99. From Jordan Ruimy: “Just saw Concrete…FANTASTIC. Grim, Tarantino-esque, politically incorrect, ballsy and, above all else, incredibly well-directed. Is there such a thing as ‘right-wing avant-garde’? Because this deserves to be called that.” Deadline‘s Pete Hammond raved earlier today.