Take Shelter: Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Nichols (dir.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Shelter

everyone go see this terrific movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5U4TtYpKIc

I didn't care for the last scene at all, but Shannon especially and Chastain were really good.

last scene was totally necessary! either he was a schizophrenic or there was something biblical happening. didn't like the answer?

Well, skirting an outright spoiler, no, and I didn't necessarily view it as "the answer."

w/ Morbs on this one - I like the movie a lot but the last scene didn't work for me.

none of the reviews i've read so far have talked about religion at all. economics, a little.

this is pretty great! i suppose im partly saying this cause of chastain but it feels like a weird dark companion piece to tree of life

orrrr maybe the "christian" a serious man?

Tree of Life wasn't dark enough for you, max?

I agree, some great stuff but the movie really wanted to have its cake and eat it too - last scene was some BS

i dont really get that, i thought the last scene was fine, and handled pretty well

SPOILERS

i mean it seems to me that the idea is kind of that everyone whom he dreams about ends up betraying him in some way (except the dog i guess?)--so his buddy from boardwalk empire gets him fired--and then the last 20 minutes or so is his wifes betrayal

how does his wife betray him?

how do his kid and the mysterious men in the rain betray him?

i just felt it was like, ok, this ISN'T a movie about a dude who is an actual prophet, whose cassandra-like dreams drive him crazy, it's actually a pretty heartbreaking story about mental illness and what it means to suffer from it w very little support systems in place and in a really financially precarious situation, but at the end it was kind of like, oh, it actually IS the first kind of movie too! which i thought just didnt work.

well his wife betrays him by not believing him, by forcing him to come out of the tornado shelter, by making him go to the shrink

his daughter doesnt have to betray him, shes not one of the "bad ppl" in the dreams

anyway yeah i can see that complaint. im basically okay w/ it being both things, though

she is the one person loyal/trusting/willing to help him even in his most mad, i cant see that as a betrayal

just kinda wish if it was gonna be both things, that it be MORE both things, if that makes sense

embrace the mystery

its the worst betrayal of all, because she goes so far but wont go all the way. im not sure what id have her do instead (stay in the storm shelter?) but its her actions that take him away from the shelter at the time when they need it.

yeah, i suppose. i would probably feel like you do if i didnt think that last scene was handled well. it is a little bit tacked-on.

a serious man is better, but jews are better than christians so

I'm not okay w/ it being both things, because supernaturally themed films generally suck.

To me it begins to go downhill when she insists on taking him to the community chowdown. Oh, this should go well... Also the "You must open the shelter door yourself" numbnuts therapy scene.

oh boo you dr morbius, supernatural stuff rules

ya, the "you gotta do it for yourself" scene was pretty trite, felt like dude couldnt figure out how to get his characters out of this mess

sometimes, max, but not here.

not here max. not now.

A STORM IS COMING, YALL

A ~~SUPERNATURAL~~ STORM

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

i just felt it was like, ok, this ISN'T a movie about a dude who is an actual prophet, whose cassandra-like dreams drive him crazy, it's actually a pretty heartbreaking story about mental illness and what it means to suffer from it w very little support systems in place and in a really financially precarious situation, but at the end it was kind of like, oh, it actually IS the first kind of movie too! which i thought just didnt work.

― the jazz zinger (s1ocki), Friday, October 21, 2011 9:44 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

see, i really enjoyed this. the movie rests on very conservative (or conservative-coded) ideas like faith and duty. critics i think have missed the point by running off to talking about economics or "american paranoia". googling around, only a few have even mentioned Noah, which is a bizarre cultural blindspot in action, imo. it is a movie about a guy who really is beset by horrible visions, which are indistinguishable from mental illness until something from them becomes visible to someone else. and he has a wife who really is loyal to him far beyond what anyone i know would put up with, so she's still there, finally, to see that it wasn't schizophrenia after all. her classical uh 'wifely' virtues of endless patience and forgiveness and all that are even more mysterious than the visions, frankly.

jesus i sound like phyllis schlafly or something, idk, i liked that it wasn't just insanity. i guess you have to be willing to enjoy letting the movie go into the unreal instead of the plainly sad.

if it's any consolation, god totally kills everyone on earth after the credits roll.

agree w/ s1ocks, morbs - the end did not work for me more as a choice than in its execution & the swelling music opening the shelter door scene is awful; shannon being "right" abt disastrous shit going down seems like it should be the jumping off point of a different movie than the ending to this one

one maybe interesting way that last scene could have played is the little girl seeing/signing that she sees/senses a storm coming or w/e on a clear, calm day & the implication/fear in the parents that mental health probs have been passed down to a 3rd generation (or havent and shes just mimicking her dads actions)

critics i think have missed the point by running off to talking about economics or "american paranoia". googling around, only a few have even mentioned Noah, which is a bizarre cultural blindspot in action, imo.

thats crazy!

thought the ending of martha marcy may marlene was way worse, as endings of is-it-a-dream-or-reality movies go

critics really don't think in Biblical terms anymore (esp those under 40).

i think me and goole are both under 40

but its also weird b/c it seemed like critics "got" both tree of life and a serious man as "biblical" in some way--and those are both kind of less obvious in their parallels

Saw this today and liked it. But why (SPOILER) does anyone assume the last scene is any more "real" than the other visions? The difference is that this time she's there with him and sees it too -- which, if you assume this is all happening in his head, could signify his acceptance of her as an ally. A healing step. (Important, because when they get back from vacation he's going to be institutionalized at least short-term.) I mean, yes, you can also read it as aha the world's ending. But nothing else in the movie gives any support to that. The visions are always in his head. Over and over you half-expect them to not be, but they always are. It makes more sense to me to see the ending in that light.

But anyway, the ending aside, I really liked the uneasy atmosphere, and the way it was all grounded in this very prosaic, unremarkable world. Plus, it sure is gorgeous. Don't know if anyone's ever made Ohio look so otherworldly.

which, if you assume this is all happening in his head

but it's shot from her POV - cinematically where do you justify that assumption?

i liked this a lot. thought its world felt very lived-in and believable. i think the ending didnt sit well with people because it was so nakedly symbolic in a way that felt incongruous w/what came before. i found it a really tense and distressing movie to watch because of how the economic struggles of this family were drawn, and i thought the ending was an extension of that, saying curtis' burden isn't a personal one - it's coming home for all of us. the choice to depict the apocalypse rain as droplets of crude oil seems key there

Fantastic film. Not sure what I thought of the ending - I think it could have ended a number of ways but that was the easiest, so... Yeah I don't have an opinion on that one.

I thought the "fit" scene was one of the most distressing bits of a movie I've seen in a long time.

Can someone point me to a Michael Shannon role where he hasn't played someone undergoing severe mental strain? He seems very comfortably typecast in this role.

as Kim Fowley in The Runaways

(the strain is on everyone around him)

as the mobster in Kangaroo Jack

(though cursed with a short-fuse, his anguish is largely marsupial)

i feel like a jerk saying this but i kind of wish it had ended with that shot of him from behind opening the shelter door where the sky is basically colorless.

interesting movie, some amazing stuff (mostly cinematography) and a bunch of stuff that didn't really work. got a v. strong "first feature for young writer/director" vibe from it so hopefully he'll get better.

he made 'shotgun stories' which is less ambitious in scale, but prob better executed

also has just made 'mud' which is in cannes & first word seems p positive

i liked this movie, it reminded me of michael tolkin's 'the rapture' (although not as good)

anyone see mud yet? i have, it's good go see it

took abt half the movie for it to click in but mcconaghey w/ his teeth jacked up & the "dumb guy" smirk looks exactly like john turturro

I think we can start a separate thread for it, since every Michael Bay movie gets one.

i feel like a jerk saying this but i kind of wish it had ended with that shot of him from behind opening the shelter door where the sky is basically colorless.

You're not a jerk. I wished for the same thing - not that I disliked the ending, but it felt that was using different symbolism and just made it feel tacked on. goole OTM about how it digs into conservative-coded themes that don't often appear on folks' radar. Felt like i was in rural Ohio. Good film and outstanding acting, but couldn't quite sink into it in the way I could with The Rapture.

so, i finally saw this and i guess i'm going to go along with the consensus and say this is a stone masterpiece. the ending was U&K.

i mean the ending was constitutively ambiguous, in several ways

it isn't an "answer" to the questions the film raises at all, it's a provocative continuation of them

i also don't think the ending was "symbolic"

if it had ended with him leaving the shelter it would a movie about triumphing (step by step, but still) over mental illness by means of support from those you love. and the familiar metaphor (storms = mental illness) would be literalized in a way that is, to use ILX's favorite phrase, on the nose.

that's one way to read the actual ending, too, but there are several other ways.

i feel that if it had ended in the other places it could have ended, or if the real ending were any less ambiguous, it'd be a less interesting film and we wouldn't be taking much about it

and i'm not necessarily one of those "rah! rah! ambiguity!" people

i thought mud was really good. liked it way more than moonrise kingdom or beasts of the southern wild

jeezus, start a Mud thread

...cuz it's the best of Jeff Nichols' three films.

I'm not sure the Peckinpah detour needed to be there--I found it improbable about three different ways--but otherwise thought Mud was very good. A lot of strong supporting performances: Shepard should win an award from a film-critics circle or two, and the parents, Witherspoon, Shannon, and the two kids are all excellent. (The blonde-haired kid felt a little more authentic to me.) The way Ellis viewed Mud though the prism of his own family's situation was conceptualized well.

i liked the movie OK but the plot his some really, really obvious beats. and a lot of it felt phony in the way that, say, david gordon green's UNDERTOW felt phony. insofar as it _almost_ felt like it could have been made by DGG (a lesser filmmaker I think), it was a disappointment.

it attempted this kind of "spielberg in the late '70s/'80s" thematic limpidity that felt a little too thesis-like to me. like, "child learns lessons about the vagaries of human relationships."

but i was still pretty riveted and enjoyed it and would recommend it. i just wasn't moved by it--moved emotionally, or moved to think much about it afterward.

it only made $20m. i can't decide if that's a minor success or a minor failure. probably the latter. i can't imagine it cost more than $5m to make.

i really hope he doesn't go the DGG route and make some tongue-in-cheek retro adventure movie next.

that rahmin bahrani (?) film w/ dennis quaid was rather bad. another good example of what jeff nichols should avoid.

I actually was moved by one part: the father almost breaking down when Ellis woke up near the end. (Don't want to be more specific.) There was a catch in his voice that seemed very real.

Meant to say how much I loved the last shot of Ellis: town life, not so bad after all.

could never quite tell if father was on the verge of a breakdown or not and if so whether he'd lash out at his loved ones or just off himself

he was very "on edge"

somehow reese witherspoon kind of took me out of the movie during her scenes, tom cruise-style

just couldn't get "big movie star dirtying up for SAG base wages" out of my mind

The two boys are marvels: two of the best child performance I've seen. What chemistry.

Unfortunately Nichols the screenwriter isn't as shrewd as Nichols the director. The last twenty minutes are ridiculous (130 min!). Still, it's an excellent movie, and strong enough that I'll remember it year's end.

I don't think Nichol's has any shortcomings myself. Just minor quibbles maybe but not enough to complain.

am this was considered a sleeper hit

He's in the middle of directing his first studio feature for Warner Bros now titled Midnight Special, a "government chase film" sci-fi inspired by John Carpenter about a kid who develops "extraordinary power"; starring Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver.

Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special was being billed as more of a family film, and it certainly has that sound to it. WB is releasing it on Thanksgiving week, right in time for the big openings around that Wednesday / Thursday holiday week. Aside from the new Pixar movie, the only other one opening around then is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 finale just a week before (which will of course be huge). I think this might be a big break for Jeff Nichols. In an interview he explained the origin of the idea behind this: "I want to make a 1960's biker film. I want to make a big, PG summer blockbuster family film, kind of like I want to revamp Tremors. I've got an idea for that. That kind of movie."

It sounds quite awful but it has Shannon and a decent looking cast, this is the next Nichols project =)=

Midnight Special preview looks amazing.

http://www.wired.com/2016/03/jeff-nichols-midnight-special/

& could def see his next 1 (already done apparently) getting Oscar attn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_(2016_film)

that wired profile was extremely good reading

midnight special was great

midnight spesh was just like an american arthouse reduction of 80s sci fi. 'hey lets take some really good movies, but remove all the sentimentality of them cos we are just too sophisticated for that.' never mind that in the process of doing that, the film will simply become enigmatic to the point of meaninglessness. nichols is an excellent director, i LOVED take shelter, but this was a genre film without really grappling with any of its ideas, themes, or characters, even. like, his attempt at a normal hollywood genre pic, but without understanding what makes those work, or maybe understanding, but feeling too superior to lower himself to that level. looked great though. nice goggles effects too.

Saw it basically cold tonight--knew it was made by Nichols, and I'd seen the poster, but didn't know anything about the cast, not even Michael Shannon. (So I spent much of the film thinking, "That's Kirsten Dunst...no, it's not her...yes it is...not it's not"--there was finally a shot near the end where I 100% knew it was her.) I thought Take Shelter was a pretty effective tabula rasa in that you could read anything you wanted into it or not anything at all and just enjoy its weirdness. I was with the new one for the first half--kept thinking of Close Encounters--then more and more it just seemed like the work of an M. Night Shyamalan who could bring the noise a little better. Found the explanation for everything very unsatisfying.

RONG THREAD

Thought this was awesome tbh. And i think Nichols conveys emotion well, well it can't hurt having that fucking face of Michael Shannon to work with, but I found some of the family moments I'm this film affecting. And yeah the explanation for everything was a little daft, whatevs.

Sam Shepard and Adam Driver are good.

definitely

no matter how unsuccessful a michael shannon genre movie this was, it can't be worse or less understanding of genre movies than the michael shannon genre movie where he is a floating corpse and jessie eisenberg squeezes his blood all over him. is the explanation for everything as unsatisfying as jerkface vs jerkface moms having the same name?

also, "can I come with you?" "nope" is up there with garry shandling's "hail hydra"

Jeff Nichols got Shannon his first decent film role, so this aint really a 'MS genre movie'

shotgun stories + blue ruin + john wick triple feature

i completely forgot that I saw midnight special. eh.

sort of incredible how well reviewed this is.

i thought it was pretty good--some wonderful images (im thinking in particular of a shot of a road that seems as if its a POV from a car and then swoops upward)--but yeah slightly disappointing overall. i think the adam driver character should have been more central, possibly.

I liked this quite a bit (reminder me of Starman). Great score too. Surprised this isn't getting more love here.

Binge watched Mud, this and Midnight Special last week. Liked Mud very much. Thought this and MS were silly. Plus Michael Shannon seems to have only one expression in every film he's in : constipated.

Midnight Special: there's enough good here that the whole thing should have been a lot better, if that makes any sense. Also, Sam Shepard was way under-utilized.

I think that's about right. My feeling was that the Adam Driver character should have been more central, more of an audience surrogate.

i thought midnight special had a few nice moments but was kind of disastrously undercooked. just a big nothing, with good actors. it's like he takes all the fun stuff out of the spielberg and carpenter films he admires and just leaves a lot of dull elliptical plotting and searing close-ups.

i got kind of excited about the film after initial reviews, then it never played in my city (!!), then i finally caught up with it on video and was completely underwhelmed.

I agree for the most part. All I remember is Sam Shephard's quiet defiance during the interrogation.

yeah... and then he completely disappears from the movie!

i happened to watch starman a few weeks ago and while it's not the finest john carpenter movie, it has a range of tones (broad humor, paranoia, swooning romanticism, etc.) that nichols doesn't seem capable of, or interested in. that was probably the most frustrating thing about midnight special, aside from the undeveloped plot -- it was so uniformly somber, even grim. even the color palette was limited.

oddly, take shelter has some similar problems, but i liked it. maybe i just didn't come in with any expectations, whereas i had my hopes up for this one. or maybe the central mystery was just more compelling. maybe i wouldn't like it if a saw it again. it seems increasingly clear that nichols works a very narrow range and probably needs to switch it up, challenge himself more.

I also liked Driver, who I'd never previously had cause to care about as an actor (I thought he had only one sullen note to play in the latest Star Wars, and apparently he didn't leave much of an impression on me in Inside Llewyn Davis and Frances Ha, as I didn't know he was in them until checking his filmography), mostly because he seemed to be getting as much range of his character as was possible--I actually laughed the bit where he asked Joel Edgerton to punch him in the face, and then responded to Egerton's confusion/non-compliance with an embarrased "never mind." No one else in the film was permitted a moment like that.

I liked Take Shelter better, probably because Nichols' bone-dry tone was a better fit for the subject matter.

it was also his first major movie; it felt fresher

whereas Shotgun Stories played like above average Sundance lab fare

midnight spesh was just like an american arthouse reduction of 80s sci fi. 'hey lets take some really good movies, but remove all the sentimentality of them cos we are just too sophisticated for that.' never mind that in the process of doing that, the film will simply become enigmatic to the point of meaninglessness. nichols is an excellent director, i LOVED take shelter, but this was a genre film without really grappling with any of its ideas, themes, or characters, even. like, his attempt at a normal hollywood genre pic, but without understanding what makes those work, or maybe understanding, but feeling too superior to lower himself to that level. looked great though. nice goggles effects too.

― StillAdvance, Thursday, May 12, 2016 11:01 AM (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

almost xactly my take also