When you have a political system and society built on the absolute control of information, and the projection of being all powerful and always infallible, then, when something disastrous happens, the first inclination is denial, then a cover-up, and finally finger pointing, deflection and blame storming with the various people having any sort of authority or power trying to save their own asses. The fact that the party bosses and ministers were "Apparatchik's", the Soviet equivalent of bureaucratic hacks, who had been gifted their appointments with minimal or even no knowledge of the actual workings of the bureaucracies they oversaw, poured gasoline and threw a match on an already untenable situation. It's easy to strut around in a cheap suit and impress the peasantry, especially when you can have anyone who calls you out on your BS sent to the Gulag's or even worse. It gets a bit trickier when peoples hands and faces start melting off, and they're detecting abnormally high radiation 1000 miles away.
I feel worse for the civvies, whose naive faith and trust caused them to believe the lies and half truth's they were being fed, and kept them from not only questioning the official story, but, willingly living and working in such close proximity to a disaster waiting to happen, and, thinking it was a privilege to do so. They had no idea of the dangers lurking near them, and, like Lyudmilla, who even when warned not to get too close or stay too long, hugs, caresses, and even places her irradiated husbands hand on her growing womb, thinking he just has some severe burns, because no one has the courage to speak the truth, even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Granted, it really didn't matter after the fact, because the battle now was to keep from decimating the ENTIRE Soviet Union and most of eastern Europe, so, what's 10 or 20 thousand dead if it means saving the country? So, if the neighborhood cheap suit pulls your name from a hat at the point of an AK-47, you tend to cooperate and not ask too many questions. Unless you're a coal miner extra enough to work butt nekkid in a radioactive hole with no hope of survival, and no thanks or glory. I tip my hat to them. Hero's all, even if Moscow never acknowledged them.
Great movie, but what exactly are you trying to say, Peele?
How do I make sense of the weirdness in your film?
Are you trying to say that those who unite to build a wall, those who use their scizzors to divide other people in half, can’t see the light in the ‘US’?
Is the twist meant to indicate that we can’t be sure who’s on which side?
In other words: is this a big political metaphor, a critique against republicans?
Then again, you can also find themes about capitalism and class here, it’s so ambiguous and broad that it’s not being very precise on a subtextual level. Not that a movie has to, but this is a little too broad for my taste.
Still, great craftsmanship, really well acted, memorable, scary, funny, it’s very good.
The whole 300 million people are living underground reveal might be a little too much of a leap, I don’t think the movie was that fantastical up until that point (a similar problem that I have with Get Out, where the brain replacement twist kinda feels a little too out there compared to the movie preceding it).
7.5/10
I am definitely not a fan of the last couple of Spider-Man movies. Maybe that's because the older I get, the more childish high-schoolers appear...and I know that's all a huge part of the whole Spider-Man/Peter Parker storyline. But I can't get into the teen drama stuff; having two daughters of my own, I had to deal with all that idiotic "My life is such a living hell" drama so this puke is really off-putting to me. Not sure how they roped Samuel Jackson and Jake G. (I can't spell his last name so I'm not even going to try) into being a part of this one; both seemed completed disinterested and only there for the paycheck. The fight sequences - while providing plenty of action - were difficult to follow because they were so busy, and I still don't understand who Mysterio is or where he fit into the whole MCU. Overall, this movie was just difficult for me to feel anything for ANY of the characters...and come on, seriously, who came up with the idea of making MJ a scrawny little dark-haired geek freak? And the whole "hot" Aunt May banging Happy....this Spider-Man line is so far removed from the original that I don't know if I'll follow any more of them, assuming (and it's a safe assumption) they'll continue trying to milk this cow. If I had known...if only I had known...but I'll never get those two hours back.
