Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) is an expert at creating ordinary characters, putting them in everyday situations, and allowing interactions and relationships to carry the story. He has masterfully accomplished this through films I adore, such as Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud, and through films, such as Midnight Special and Loving, that aren’t quite as good as a whole but still have well-crafted characters. The Bikeriders, his most recent film, follows a similar blueprint but fails to tell an exciting story or have a single character we genuinely care about. While well made with a stellar cast that put forward the effort, the film was a snoozefest.
Category Archives: Jeff Nichols
Loving (2016)
Jeff Nichols’s (Take Shelter, Mud) Loving is an early contender for my most disappointing movie of the year. While there are plenty of other candidates, Loving is the only one likely to be considered for Oscar contention. It likely will get a nomination for Joel Edgerton (Warrior, The Gift), who I think is one of the best actors we currently have but whose performance was not one of the five best of the year (and probably wasn’t even one of the ten best). It likely will also get a nomination for Ruth Negga (Of Mind and Music, Warcraft), whose performance was equally uncompelling. And it could earn Oscars for Nichols (who I also love, but who should get nominated as well as Best Picture).
Midnight Special (2016)
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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Mud (2013)
Back in 1996, adaptations from John Grisham novels were the big thing. Tom Cruise starred in The Firm. Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts starred in The Pelican Brief. Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones starred in The Client. All were critically acclaimed and performed exceptionally well at the box office. A Time To Kill was Grisham’s first novel and the next the fourth to be adapted for film. Arguably, it is Grisham’s best novel, and the buzz surrounding the film was tremendous. A host of Hollywood A-listers wanted the lead role of Jack Brigance. The question was who would get the lead in the movie that also starred Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kevin Spacey. There was a lot of head-shaking when the lead part went to a little-known actor named Matthew McConaughey (Frailty, Amistad). McConaughey nailed the role, and the movie was critically acclaimed and earned over $100 million domestically. The film put McConaughey on the map, and many considered the part of Jack Brigance the role he was born to play.
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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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