57 replies to this topic

[Overstreet]

Great news.

Jeff Nichols has directed another film starring Michael Shannon called Take Shelter, and it'll be at Sundance. It co-stars Tree of Life's Jessica Chastain.

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Sony Pictures Classics has made a preemptive acquisition of North American, Australian and Latin American, Australian and New Zealand rights to Take Shelter, a drama that stars Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. It's directed by Jeff Nichols, who previously worked with Shannon on Shotgun Stories. The film debuts in the dramatic competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

The drama chronicles a man's descent into madness. He fears an apocalyptic cloud he believes will engulf his town, and builds a storm shelter in his yard. It has the paranoia and delusional elements of Black Swan, where it's unclear what is real and imagined.

Well, I hope it's better than Black Swan. If Nichols' storytelling in Shotgun Stories is any indication of what to expect, it will be.

Edited by Overstreet, 18 January 2011 - 11:20 AM.

[Tyler]

Sounds a bit like another recent Shannon film. Does the guy ever get to play normal characters?

Edited by Tyler, 18 January 2011 - 11:36 AM.

[Overstreet]

What the heck is up with Jessica Chastain? Is it possible to go from "Rookie of the Year" to Overexposure in one year? She has seven movies coming up, most of them slated for release this year. I can't think of an actress who has "arrived" with that kind of force in one year, attached to so many noteworthy projects.

[Overstreet]

Some spooky-looking stills are up here.

[Tyler]

The cloud in the pictures looks kind of like the cloud from A Serious Man. If it is, it might just win the award for Best Crossover Ever.

[Thom Wade]

The address of the link looks official...the posts read like a fan (oh boy...looks intense!)...

But Shannon is seriously never going to be playing the kindly neighbor...just to intense looking.

[Overstreet]

A Sundance review at /film.

[Jason Panella]

The AV Club's Noel Murray, via Twitter:

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TAKE SHELTER (B+) Too deliberate and falling-dominoes-y, but this moody drama about man prepping for storm is moving and unnerving.

[Overstreet]

The plot thickens:

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While the big Cannes Film Festival awards get handed out this weekend, Take Shelter, the Jeff Nichols-directed Michael Shannon-Jessica Chastain drama, took the Grand Prix Nespresso, the top prize at Cannes Critics Week. Sony Pictures Classics bought the film before it screened at Sundance, and based on the Cannes buzz, they were smart to pounce before everybody saw the finished product.

[Tyler]

[old wave]

I'm quite excited.

[Overstreet]

The bird cloud of terror! The bird cloud! It's chasing Jessica Chastain from The Tree of Life to Take Shelter!

Edited by Overstreet, 29 August 2011 - 04:26 PM.

[Overstreet]

Kristopher Tapley:

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Not to overstate things, but it’s time to talk about Michael Shannon and the fact that it’ll be amazing if there is a better, more refined, more electrifying performance this year than his work in Jeff Nichols’s “Take Shelter.” This is his best work to date and it deserves a huge swell of awards support.

I got to know Shannon a few years ago when he was on the campaign trail for “Revolutionary Road” (which yielded him a surprise Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor at the end of the year). When you know the softhearted guy behind the work, it’s all the more impressive. And in “Take Shelter,” he covers so much performance terrain with such controlled ease that it’s just awe-inspiring. He is one of the best of his generation, hands down.

Oh, and that the performance comes in the midst of one of the year’s standout films, surrounded by equally confident portrayals of all shades, well… How many good things can you say about something before it’s just embarrassing? Let me try.

[Darren H]

Robert Koehler has a nice interview with Nichols in Cinema Scope Online. I'm not a big fan of Shotgun Stories but am curious about this one.

[Overstreet]

Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York) gives it 5/5 stars.

[kenmorefield]

About 1/2 way through this film I turned to Russ and said:

Spoiler

"I sure am glad this is not an M. Night Shyamalan film."

then at the end I added:

Spoiler

"Guess I was wrong about that."

[Russ]

Yeah, I didn't see the same movie that Keith did. The one I saw has grown smaller in my estimation over the last week-and-change, while most of the rest of what I saw up there has grown larger. Nichols tapped well into the vibe this year of apocalypse/death wish/debt wish films, but there are some things you just shouldn't Macguffin.

[Christian]

The praise for this film has grown deafening, and my interest in seeing it, which was also rising, reached fever pitch when I read this comparison from Ann Hornaday:

Indeed, if its surrealism places “Take Shelter” in the ranks of those films — along with “Another Earth” and “Melancholia” — its realism puts it more in league with a movie that, on its face at least, couldn’t be more different. Earlier this year, writer-director Tom McCarthy explored middle-class desperation in “Win Win,” a comedy with plenty of heartwarming laughs, but one that was just as alert as “Take Shelter” to the world around it. In that film, Paul Giamatti played an elder-care lawyer driven to (comically) criminal behavior out of worry that he can’t provide adequately for his family; Curtis LaForche takes similarly extreme, albeit more psychologically fraught, measures to protect his wife and child. The movies may be wildly different in temperament and tone, but they occupy the same psychic space, deftly examining questions of security, responsibility and what it means to be a man.

[Attica]

Saw this tonight and really liked it.

possible spoilers.


I kind of expected the ending, or something similar, and was surprised by the false ending with the smaller storm. This was mainly because there were several times that the film quietly implied that the little girl was seeing something as well. I thought they handled that nicely, she might have seen it.... but then again maybe not. It was subtle enough. So with this in mind the real ending was satisfying, and the shot of the mother looking towards the water, with what was happening being reflected in the window beside her, was great.

For me at least the film handled his confusion about what was going on, and the possibility of his mental illness well. It didn't play this just as a plot device but was very sympathetic to what was happening to him, and I think therefore, the emotions people in the real world could possibly go through in similar mental troubles.

There were many great shots in the film. Also the kind of scenes that were shot in a way where one could sink into and connect with the characters. They moved at a nice pace, being that it was a slow film that becomes more true to life but never boring, which I think says a lot. A lot of modern films move to fast, possibly because they are scared that their story will get boring...... and it often does. This film seemed to be confident enough in its story to take its time.

It was nice to see how they handled the little family unit and had her stand behind him, being that she was good but not outside of the bounds of belief, in her reactions to the situation. I expect lesser films would have handled her differently in a poor attempt to heighten the drama. Her character stood out because she was so stable and thoughtful.

I've noticed that the film got an 8 out of 10 on the IMDB. That seems about right.

Edited by Attica, 18 December 2011 - 01:45 PM.

[Persona]

Really enjoyed this film, and I think it is the kind of film that you can sink your teeth into, until the ending. All the comparisons here are good, but I found myself thinking, as I'm sure others here will too, about Ordet.

This could possibly make my Top Ten for 2011, which I'll be finishing up after I see La Havre next week.

As mentioned above, I think the film could have ended a bit earlier on a similar note with what Attica called a "false ending." I kinda agree with that.

But the moments of sheer impending doom here, whether psychological or not, are on full force, and are captured in a much more meaningful way than in Melancholia.

Spoiler

The wife - her willingness to enter into the storm with him, and later prompt him at the right time to turn the key and come out of it, and even later, to be there with him for the real, approaching storm - I found her endearing, a great symbol of love, deeply loyal to a man that is most likely losing his mind. (Or maybe not.)

This is a film I'd see on the big screen twice.

Edited by Persona, 22 January 2012 - 02:46 AM.