From HE’s 7.20.22 review of Jordan Peele‘s Nope: “No discipline, this fucking film. It’s ‘imaginative,’ if you want to call it that. As slow and talky and stodgy as Cleopatra was, it at least made sense. Which is more than you can say for Nope. So Cleopatra is better.

“Say it again — when Gordy the monkey appears, the film comes alive. What Gordy has to do with the dumbshit rascal white-oppressor aliens is anyone’s guess.

“Steven Yeun costars in Nope, and I couldn’t understand why he was in it. Yes, he has something to do with Gordy (I won’t say) and he wears a red suit and a big white cowboy hat in one scene, but he has NOTHING to do with anything.

“I need to re-watch this movie with subtitles some day.

“Why the hell is Kaluuya’s character named ‘OJ,’ of all things?

“If Dore Schary had somehow returned from the dead and become the producer on this film, before filming began he would have invited Peele to lunch and said, ‘Look, I’m just a Jewish white-guy producer and I don’t know much about African Americans or horse ranches or Fry’s Electronics, but WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS MOVIE ABOUT?? You don’t know, do you? You’re just farting around with spooky alien visitors and trying to cook up something different and trippy, but THIS MOVIE IS BULLSHIT, JORDAN…you know it and I know it.’

“And Peele would reply, ‘It’s a metaphor about white people’s oppression of BIPOCs.’ And Schary would reply, ‘What are BIPOCs?’ And Peele would say, ‘Don’t worry about it, bruh…I got this.’

“No white-ass producer would dare say ‘bullshit’ to Peele, of course, lest he/she be accused of harboring racist attitudes. Which is why Nope turned out this way…a crazy, impressionistic, Jasper Johns-like mess. Peele was apparently given carte blanche control, and this is what happens.”