Midnight Special…First, the good. The tone was incredible. It was seductive. It was menacing. It was creepy. It was engaging. It kept you on the edge of your seat. Finally, it had the right director. Jeff Nichols (Mud, Shotgun Stories) is still pretty new to the game. This is just his fourth directorial effort, and, once again, Nichols teams up with Michael Shannon as his leading man (99 Homes, Revolutionary Road) for the first time since the absolutely incredible Take Shelter, a movie that was nothing short of a thing of genius. In addition to the amazing Take Shelter, Mud and Shotgun Stories were both fantastic movies. Midnight Special was supposed to be the next great chapter in the Nichols/Shannon book of greatness. Unfortunately, this was the furthest thing from the truth.
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Category Archives: Michael Shannon
99 Homes (2015)
99 Homes was a movie I was confident I was going to love. I was wrong. It was good, but not great. It had unavoidable flaws. Even with the most accomplished director, I don’t think it could have avoided some of its pitfalls and still fit in a two-hour time frame. Just like an unusually high number of films that I’ve seen this year, I knew very little about this movie going in. My knowledge of the film was reduced to knowing that it starred Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spider-Man, The Social Network) and Michael Shannon (Take Shelter, The Harvest), that it was a heavy R-rated drama based on home foreclosures, and that it was scoring a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes at its time of release. I hadn’t seen a single preview of the movie, but what I did know about it was enough for me to see this movie. There was a 100% chance I would see this movie in the theater. While I think this is a pretty good movie, it does not need a theater viewing. It’s not going to win any awards. If you get a chance to see it on Netflix or cable, give it a shot. You may not love it, but I think it’ll grab your attention. While it is predictable and gets in its own way, it is a tense and engrossing film. Furthermore, it continues to showcase Shannon’s dominating screen presence. Love him or hate him, he creates memorable characters.
The Harvest (2015)
It’s never really a good thing when your movie is released on Video on Demand the same day it opens in the theater. This is slowly changing and becoming a more accepted practice because it helps some of these independent movies earn more money. However, it still means that regardless of how good a movie is (in any category), it is not eligible for Academy Awards nomination consideration. So if it is a movie that you think will be great, you wouldn’t allow it to be available on OnDemand until after he exits the theaters. With that said, I believe that all those involved with this movie (regardless if you loved it or hated it) knew that it would never be in contention for an Oscar award. This is a movie I would not have seen in the theater, and had it not been on OnDemand at the same time as its theater release date, it would have been a movie that I would have missed altogether. Their release plan was a good one. The film, on the other hand, was meh.
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Take Shelter (2011)
The most overlooked performance by a lead actor in 2011 was Michael Shannon’s performance as the delusional Curtis LaForche in the Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) bone-chilling drama Take Shelter. Though Shannon’s acting career began in 2001, and the first three movies he appeared in (Pearl Harbor, Vanilla Sky, and 8 Mile) each grossed over $100,000,000 at the box office, it wasn’t until 2008 when he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor after two jaw-dropping scenes as a mentally unstable man in Revolutionary Road.
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Revolutionary Road (2008)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York, The Departed) and Kate Winslet (The Reader, Little Children) reunite for the first time since they smashed the box office record as Jack and Rose in 1997’s Titanic. Revolutionary Road is also a love story, but it’s about a couple falling out of love rather than falling in love. Both are superb in this movie. It is easy to identify with each of their characters. And while Winslet and especially DiCaprio are at the top of their game, they are overshadowed by two scene-stealing scenes involving Michael Shannon (Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Take Shelter). Shannon plays the mentally unstable son of their real estate agent, friend Helen (Kathy Bates – Misery, Dolores Claiborne), and her husband. Michael has no filter between his brain and his mouth and thus tells anyone and everyone exactly what he is thinking at any given moment. This is not a good thing, as Michael’s outlook on life and people, in general, is as pessimistic as one can be. It creates moments of intensified drama resulting in unfiltered anger. Rightfully so, Shannon was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award (the award went to Heath Ledger for his role as The Joker in The Dark Knight), even though he was on the screen for fewer than 15 minutes.
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