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: Michael Shannon
Before the Devil Knows Your’re Dead (2007)
Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Sidney Lumet’s (Guilty As Sin, Dog Day Afternoon) Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is a good-old-fashioned robbery gone wrong that involves older brother Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote, The Savages) and younger brother Hank (Sinister, Before Sunrise) fleecing the strip-mall jewelry store of their parents Charles (Albert Finney – Erin Brokovich, Tom Jones) and Nanette (Rosemary Harris – Spider-Man, Tom and Viv) on a day where neither parent was expected to be there.
What They Had (2018)
Will everybody be okay in the end? In fairytales, yes. In real life, maybe not so much. If we work hard enough, we can maintain a tolerable life at its worst and, at its best, offer enough of a glimmer of hope to move on. First-time director Elizabeth Chomko provides the most authentic movie of 2018 with the touching and sentimental What The Had, a look at Alzheimer’s Disease/dementia (I don’t think it is ever specified) that hits you like a ton of bricks. Predecessors like the slightly overrated Still Alice, the underrated Away From Her, the brutally honest The Savages, and the Nicholas Sparks/Ryan Gosling/Rachel McAdams’ Welcome to Hollywood’ tearjerker The Notebook. None of these four pretty terrific movies could do what What They Had was able to do, which was to make it real for me. By the end of this movie, I was lost in all of the major characters and was on the verge of tears at the movie theater for the first time since 2016 (keep in mind that I see over 50 movies a year in the movie theater). A movie that likely will get snubbed by all Oscar nominations, What They Had is real, brutally honest, and feels like it could be a true story about the family down the street from you, if not your family together.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Guillermo del Toro’s (Nightmare Alley, Crimson Peak) adult fairytale The Shape of Water is a movie we’ve seen so many different times in so many different forms that it’s a wonder that we’d even be willing to see it again. Starcrossed lovers find themselves in a forbidden love situation while fighting off some catastrophe or at least societal pressures. Think Titanic, a nearly perfect movie showcasing this, will always be remembered by everyone who watches it. So, how does del Toro pull off this story in a wholly original yet equally compelling way? He does it in a way that only del Toro can do. And in doing so, he creates the most unparalleled and (with no disrespect to Call Me By Your Name) the most romantic movie of 2017. This movie certainly is not for everyone. If Thor: Ragnarok or Justice League is more your thing, then I’m not even sure I’d consider The Shape of Water. It is the ultimate independent movie, and if you go into this movie with the mindset that you’ll be able to enjoy the ride and not have to think, you’ll be in for two long hours. In a year where the movies have been the worst since I began my blog in 2010, the uniqueness of the films (rather than their quality) has defined this year.
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).