Trauma Profiteering in Jordan Peele's 'Nope'
Nope succeeds tremendously in dealing with higher concepts in an engaging and highly entertaining manner without sacrificing theme or personality.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstraction - that most quintessentially modernist innovation - maintains a peculiarly contradictory position. Used, on one hand, by post-modernist artists as just one more quotable style amongst many, it is on the other hand still considered an elitist or hermetic language by audiences intimidated by its lack of recognizable subject matter. Yet ultimately, abstraction continues to be a viable creative path for contemporary artists of all generations, many of whom embrace it as the most inclusive and fundamentally resonant of artistic languages. Filmed at the artists' studios, the Dia Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum during their exhibition, "Abstraction in the Twentieth Century."
Nope succeeds tremendously in dealing with higher concepts in an engaging and highly entertaining manner without sacrificing theme or personality.
"Thunder Road" presents the grief that comes from a family member taking their own life.
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Ricky Staub’s Concrete Cowboy, based on Greg Neri’s novel "Ghetto Cowboy", tells the story of a young teenager forced to adapt to a new lifestyle.
The film may be a thriller, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. If anything, I was bored and annoyed.
Him is visually stunning—all concrete cathedrals and bone-rattling impact shots that look like a nightmare highlight reel. Marlon Wayans is magnetic as this legendary quarterback who's basically selling salvation with a smile that never quite reaches his eyes. But the story keeps running in circles: more tests, more cryptic pep talks, more ritualistic drills. The sports-as-religion metaphor beats you over the head when subtlety would've been more effective. The middle drags, and that finale chooses spectacle over substance. It's undeniably stylish, but left me cold. Also worth noting: despite the Monkeypaw connection, this isn't actually a Jordan Peele film—he didn't write or direct.