Break out your decoder rings; the flawed but intriguing Us’s political subtleness is hidden by its straightforward terror. Among other things, Jordan Peele’s followup to Get Out breaks a long drought. Santa Cruz, with its deep cold bay and hoodooed mountains, ought to be California’s Transylvania. Instead, it’s remembered for The Lost Boys, which is just The Goonies wearing plastic vampire fangs. There hasn’t been a good movie made there since Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). Now the curse is lifted, even if much of Us is shot in a lake in the San Bernardino Mountains.

There’s a strange ride at the Beach Boardwalk that most visitors fail to notice. In 1986, young Adelaide slips away from her family and wanders into “The Shaman’s Cave.” Passing an old derelict holding up a cardboard sign with a particularly vicious Bible verse (“Jeremiah 11:11”), she enters. An electric owl calls her name. Amid the hall of mirrors and the painted images of redwoods, her identical double awaits.

Somehow she survived. In our present, she (Lupita Nyong’o) is a calm, pretty mom married to a living dad-joke, Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke of Black Panther). Two kids: one a monkey-mask-loving, naughty little boy Jason (Evan Alex), the elder, a disdainful daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph). They are as tight as the quartet of stick figures on the back window of their SUV.

The “Shaman’s Cave” is still on the beach 30 years later, with a new paint job. It’s Arthurian now instead of Native American. The doorway beckons young Jason.

That night as the Wilsons go to bed, the power goes off. Standing in the driveway are four figures in red jumpsuits, smiling maliciously, armed with long sharp scissors. Each wears a driving glove on one hand, Michael Jackson–style, perhaps to keep the blood from making their weapons slip. Jason’s monkeyish double is crouched on all fours. On his face is what the burn-ward doctors call a “TFO mask”—so you’ll know what to ask for next Halloween. At some cost, the family gives their captors the slip. But they’re not the only ones being visited tonight.

Home invasion terror isn’t always elegant, but it’s always effective. Peele is a genial shocker: the comic relief arrives between never-too-horrible mayhem. Before the attack, Gabe lounges in plaid shorts, waiting for his wife in what he hopes is an alluring position. It’s funny and tragic, too, when the cuddly man tries to act badass to scare off the intruders.

The movie’s suggestiveness is in the title, which could be misread as “U.S.”; what will be the fate of a society divided between “influencers” and the influenced? Deeper analysis of Us will be deserved. Nyong’o is constantly startling with her display of terror and maternal wrath. As seen on Us’s sensational poster, Nyong’o is a master of the horror-face, a look described in the theater world as ‘the skull.’

‘Us’ is playing in wide release.

For more than 20 years, award-winning photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter have been chasing the bloom. That’s the way they describe their work in photographing wildflowers across the Western U.S., an ongoing project that aims to raise awareness about the dangers of climate change on native plants and local ecosystems.

Now, the two Marin City residents present a new exhibit of photography that emphasizes Marin’s vast public lands and scenic array of flora. “Beauty & the Beast: California Wildflowers & Climate Change” runs April 2 to June 1 at the Bay Model Visitor Center in Sausalito and features more than 70 photos of wildflowers taken on the trails of Mt. Tam, Ring Mountain, Point Reyes and other county hotspots as well as locales like the Sierras and Death Valley.

“The point of the project is to use art and text to inspire people to take action. We call it an art to action project,” says Winter.

“Because climate change is affecting ecosystems slowly, what we are showing are the flowers that will be affected by climate change,” says Badger. “We are showing what we have to lose.”

Both East Coast natives, Badger and Winter met while living and working in the Bay Area. Badger’s photography has been focused on nature conservation since the 1980s. Winter’s photography at first was aimed at capturing portraits of underserved communities, though she joined Badger in documenting nature in the early ’90s, when the two moved to Marin.

“We were creating these beautiful images,” says Winter. “But still as activists we wanted to figure out what we could do with them to create change and to create healthier natural communities.”

Ten years back, Seattle-based organization Blue Earth Alliance invited them to create a conservation-themed project, and the idea for “Beauty & the Beast” was born. The exhibition originated at the San Francisco Public Library and currently travels the western states. The Marin chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the Marin Community Foundation and the Marin Municipal Water District are co-sponsoring the upcoming show at the Bay Model.

Much more than landscape photography, Badger and Winter take portraits of wildflowers found on the trails, setting up a black or white background, like a mini-studio, that is carefully wrapped around the plant.

“We isolate the plant from a distracting background,” explains Badger. “We want to isolate the beauty of the blossom. It’s a time-consuming process, but we value the individual (plant) and it’s very rewarding to be able to see the beauty, and the diversity of beauty, and to be able to share the beauty of what is on our public lands.”

In conjunction with the exhibit, a schedule of events offer the public a chance to meet the artists at a reception on April 6, shop for native plants on April 13 and take a tour on May 4 of a native plant garden recently installed at the Bay Model. “The garden is a real-time example of what we are promoting,” says Badger. “It’s not just about the flowers, it’s about all the different life forms that depend on these ecosystems.”

‘Beauty & the Beast: California Wildflowers & Climate Change’ runs April 2-June 1 and features an artist reception on Saturday, April 6, at Bay Model Visitor Center, 2100 Bridgeway, Sausalito. Free admission. cnpsmarin.org.

Q: I’m a straight single woman nearing 50. My best friends are a lesbian couple. I’m going to get some nonsurgical skin tightening on my face, and they got very judgmental about it: “We think you’re beautiful as you are.” Next, it was “What if it goes wrong?” and “Will you keep getting procedures till you don’t look like you?” I ended up crying and then getting really angry. First of all, it’s my face. Secondly, I don’t think they understand the pressure on straight single women to look young and beautiful. Thirdly, I think my friends should support me in my decisions even if they don’t agree with them. Am I wrong? —Upset

A: I’m 55. Eventually, if a man catcalls me, I’ll go over and give him a dollar.

So I do understand the desire for dermatological intervention. That said, your friends probably feel they have a right (and maybe even a mandate) to tell you what to do—probably because they’re trying to look out for you. The problem is, criticizing people doesn’t make them want to change; it makes them want to clobber the person doing the criticizing. And this seems to be the case whether that person is giving unsolicited advice to a friend or muttering “Dude … seriously on the 24-pack of doughnuts?” to that stout stranger in the supermarket.

This happens because our brain’s threat response system is a little primitive. A central player in it is the amygdala, which makes split-second decisions about whether we’re in danger. Unfortunately, to your amygdala, an attack is an attack—meaning, a verbal attack triggers the same responses as a physical attack. Your adrenaline surges, your heart pumps like crazy, and blood gets shunted away from your reasoning center and to your extremities. This gets you into the perfect state to bolt or punch your attacker in the nose.

Tell your busybody friends it means a lot that they care about you, but that their context—as two nesting lesbians—is not your context as a single straight woman careening toward 50. Set a boundary: Explain that you want their advice on your appearance only if you ask for it. You could also ask them to be supportive of you—even if they aren’t on board with the steps you’re taking—simply on the grounds that you’re trying to improve yourself and go after what you want. It’s nice when your photo on a dating site makes some man reminisce about a classic beauty from his youth—but not when it’s his grandma’s prized Hermes alligator clutch.

Q: I’m a guy, and I’ve noticed that many women (at cafes, etc.) give me flirtatious looks, suggesting they’re interested in me, yet they never approach me. Why don’t they just come over and say hi and get my number and call me or message me? —Annoyed

A: It isn’t hard to get a woman to chase you. Just grab her purse and take off down the street.

However, as a dude, if you’re looking for dates or a relationship, you should plan on doing the chasing rather than the waiting. “Males chase/females choose” evolved to be kind of a thing across species—those in which the females get stuck with the greater share of child production and caretaking (“parental investment,” in anthro terms). As evolutionary scientists Peter K. Jonason and Norman Li explain (in their research on playing hard to get), “the sex that bears the greater obligation to offspring is the more choosy sex (females in most species) and will put the opposite sex (usually males) through ‘tests’ for access.”

Keep in mind that many men will have sex with a woman they aren’t all that interested in simply because she pursues them. (In guy terms: “My wrist is tired. You’ll do.”) In line with this, Jonason and Li’s research finds that women benefit from playing hard to get in a way men do not. A woman who refrains from pursuing a man “may increase her perceived value” in his eyes and motivate him to work harder to pursue her. “In contrast,” they write, “men who limit their availability may pay heavier costs than women will through the loss of potential mating opportunities.” As for what this means for you, waiting for women to ask for your digits and blow up your phone with calls and texts is a fantastic idea—if your mail comes addressed to Chris Hemsworth, 26 Movie Star Avenue.

After the end of the world, the lights are still bright in Chicago’s Loop; there’s a veneer of normalcy, as long as you’re in the right class and stay in the right places. The top-notch, poorly titled Captive State, by Rupert Wyatt of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is the first feature film to acutely deliver the mood in the Trump era. This is what a real resistance would be like.

After a shock-and-awe alien invasion, the world’s governments capitulated and instituted a collaborationist regime. Nine years after, the aliens—rebranded as “the Legislators”—run things, strip-mining the earth, drilling, baby, drilling, and sending obstinate humans to some off-world slave-labor colony.

The script by Wyatt and his wife, Erica Beeney, centers around the rebels: nurses, teachers, whores and street criminals. The aliens monitor all broadband, so the resistance uses analog technology: reel-to-reel tapes, carrier pigeons, and secret messages hidden in cigarette papers. We’re lured into the story through a set of lovers in the slums of Pilsner, a Chicago suburb: prostitute “Jane Doe” (Vera Farmiga) has luxuries, a record player and a vase of fresh cut flowers; her trick is the secret policeman William Mulligan (John Goodman).

Wyatt cuts from this sadness to brutal urban guerrilla action. On the graffitied walls are memorials to Rafe (Jonathan Majors), seemingly killed in an insurrection in Wicker Park, flattened by reprisal bombings. His surviving little brother Gabriel (Ashton Sanders, of Moonlight) is pulled into the rebellion.

Captive State isn’t perfection; there’s an inelegant info dump by teletype in the opening: it’s like an arcade game telling you what you’re going to be shooting at. The whippy small camera technique can leave you puzzled; a couple of escapes are exciting in the set-up, but vague in the finale.

The $25 million budget doesn’t permit a new kind of alien. They’re standard-issue buggos, nicknamed “roaches.” We never see their throne room, but we learn that visiting humans must be enveloped in germicide because they can’t stand our smell.

It’s tough to read Captive State as anything but a film on the side of the insurgents, a thriller of colonists and colonizers. Farmiga, a delicate and deeply apt tragic actor, and the magnificent old bull Goodman, with his eloquent grunts of displeasure, make the pair emissaries from a richer, more soulful age of movies. Captive State provides a hopeful end without simple-mindedness. You can read a lot of the fate of fascists into Goodman’s line, “Didn’t you pay attention in history class, Gabriel?”

‘Captive State’ is playing in wide release.