Yep

Jordan Peele's Nope (2022) is a little different from his previous horror features. It's a little looser, and more... cinematic, I guess.

It starts a mysterious scene of a TV set full of bloody corpses, and a chimpanzee. But never mind that for now. It really starts on a ranch in the LA hills - Agua Dulce, it turns out. There is a neat, Victorian-style farmhouse, and a paddock where Keith David is running a horse through its paces while Daniel Kaluuya looks on. Something that seems to be hail kicks up, knocking David off his horse. He is rushed to the hospital, where he dies. He had been struck in the head with a high-velocity nickel. The "hail" had been small random metal objects.

Kaluuya keeps working. He takes a horse to a TV set - David's family business is wrangling horses for TV and movies. Kaluuya doesn't seem very good about the part of business that includes the show-biz patter, making rich white people comfortable. But his sister Keke Palmer shows up, and she has a much better line of BS. Unfortunately, someone spooks the horse, and they are let go - the show decides to go with CGI.

To keep the business going, Kaluuya has been selling horses to Steven Yeun, who has a little Wild West theme park near their ranch. Yeun was a child star in a western called Kid Sheriff. But he was also the only survivor of the sit-com from the start of the movie. The chimp who was the "star" got spooked and killed everyone else on the set. Yeun sort of takes pride in this, with a little museum room of mementos of the massacre. Oh, he's traumatized, but is still happy get status and money for it. 

One night, back at the ranch, Kaluuya and Palmer witness electrical disturbances, fleeing horses, mysterious wind storms, and, faintly, a UFO among the clouds. Palmer immediately starts planning to capture it on film to gain fame and fortune. So the next day they go to Fry's Electronics (RIP) and buy a major security system. The nerdy yet aggressive sales tech, Brandon Perea, makes sure can go out to do the installation - I think he just likes Palmer. 

The first attempt to film the UFO fails because of the electrical issues. So Palmer tries to get famed cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michale Wincott) out to capture it. He refuses, until he finds out that everyone at Yeun's park has mysteriously disappeared. Now they just need a plan. And Kaluuya has figured out that the UFO is not a machine, but an animal, a predator. And you can't train predators (see the chimp, and as Wincott says, "Just ask Sigfried and Roy").

The plan turns out to be a pretty good one, involving dozens of those flappy inflatable tube guys. It does get a little hazy here, with people running around, trying to get footage on a mechanical movie camera, and not get eaten. But it's a great third act, but the rest of the movie has less action, less of Poole's social commentary (although there's plenty of that), and more just awe of nature. There are many scenes of the landscape of Agua Dulce canyon, and the clouds overhead. We're looking for a cloud that doesn't move like the rest - but we're seeing a beautiful canyon. Note that Agua Dulce is the location of Vasquez Rocks, those tilted rocks where Kirk fought the Gorn. There are also some beautiful night shots (day-for-night using some interesting infrared techniques) of clouds and glimpses of the UFO.

There's also Yeun as a grown up child star, dealing with the trauma of his youth and life of mid-level fame. There's Perea, a hipster/slacker who gets totally into the hunt for the UFO, and hopes to get into the life of Palmer and maybe Kaluuya too. But especially Kaluuya. 

Kaluuya plays a real cowboy type, quiet and strong, but shy in society. Palmer can be pushy, gossipy, outrageous, but Kaluuya mostly seems to want to melt away. He maybe isn't confident like his dad was, or maybe that's just how it seems now that he's the "man of the family". I noticed his relation to the horses - he doesn't treat them like family or friends, but also not like products or resources. They are their own thing - maybe partners. (Or maybe Kaluuya himself doesn't really bond with horses, so there's a coolness.)

I've been aware of black cowboys since I learned about the Bronze Buckaroo and Oscar Micheaux's early black cinema. Also, Pam Grier has been twittering about her horses for a while now. It didn't start with "Old Town Road". It won't end with Nope.