I am, sadly, not going to SXSW this year at Austin, but I will be reviewing whatever publicists send me via screeners .. I’m all eyes and ears boys and girls of the PR world. Yesterday Jordan Peele‘s Us (being released on 3.22) was, for the most part, greeted with near universal praise after premiering over there. However, I wouldn’t count on it having a smooth landing with critics just yet, there’s a certain sense of hyperbolic fever that runs down Austin every year at this time — last year Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” was greeted after its world premiere as if it were the second-coming when it was, in fact, just a decently entertaining film. It happens every year at SXSW. I’ve heard from a few well-trusted journos covering the fest this year that “Us” is not that great. I adored Peele’s directing-debut, the time-capsule worthy “Get Out,” which also happened to top my ten best list of 2017 It was a film that came out at the exact right time — A manifest of the social anxieties, both consciously and subconsciously, going on right now in America.
Look for my review of “Us” to be posted on March 19th.