Us

Official Australian release date: 28/3/19. Viewed: 30/3/19.

Directors: Jordan Peele

Actors: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Joseph, Evan Alex

Genre: Horror / Thriller

Rating: MA

‘Us’ is the second film from Jordan Peele, after ‘Get Out’, and is similarly a psychological thriller, with moments of violence thrown in. It takes a little while to set everything up and provide some backstory (& rabbits!?), but then the doppelgangers show up and the film turns into a home invasion/survival film. The main cast – Mum Adelaide (Nyong’o), Dad Gabe (Duke), Daughter Zora (Joseph) and Son Jason (Alex) – are all great and clearly have a lot of fun playing their dual roles.

Josh (Heidecker) and Kitty (Moss) also have significant supporting roles, but it really comes down to how the family of four handles their terrible situation. No spoilers, but Peele does well with building tension, using a creepy girls-choir score, colour motifs and flashbacks. It’s not a typical horror film, but it certainly has scary moments.

There’s an almost Shyamalan-like twist at the end, but the whole thing’s probably 15min too long and runs out of steam a bit. There’s a lot of how/why questions left unanswered, but it’s still fun and smart enough, without being exceptional.

Overall: Solid and interesting thriller.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.

Captain Marvel

Official Australian release date: 7/3/19. Viewed: 9/3/19.

Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Actors: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action

Rating: M

‘Captain Marvel’ builds the bridge between ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and does a good job of it. Most of the film works well as the standalone origin story of Carol Danvers (Larson), as she pieces together her past. Starting with her already on the Kree (the blue aliens, as seen in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’) home world is smart and saves dealing with the whole aliens on Earth thing. Vers is being trained by Yon-Rogg (Law) and has almost no memory her life on Earth, save some snippets of Lawson (Bening) and Maria (Lynch).

After Carol ends up back on Earth, she starts to unravel the mystery of who she is, with the help of Nick Fury (Jackson) and (to a lesser degree) Coulson (Gregg). She reunites with Maria and deciphers that they both used to be pilots – which leads to some good jet battles later on! The main plot though is that Carol is caught in the middle of an intergalactic war between the Kree and the Skrulls (the green aliens, shapeshifters). Talos (Mendelsohn) is a Skrull and does a great job – great to hear his Aussie accent when he’s in Skrull form! Ronan (Pace) is back for some scenes, but the other Kree offsiders don’t have that much to do.

There’s still a bit of jigsaw-piecing-together going on (stay for the end credit scene), but when Larson and Jackson are on screen, it’s a very solid action/adventure film. There was more laughs than I was expecting, especially with the “flerken”! It’s not ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, but the 90s film and music references are fun to see/hear. Great to watch Carol’s powers develop and the “twist” just after halfway through. It’s not too long and there’s under seven weeks until ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (likely to be the highest-grossing film ever) comes out!

Overall: Another well-made Marvel super-hero origin story.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.