Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  I saw this film as ‘Pressure Point’ on Netflix but its title on release was ‘Heart of Champions'. Both titles are somewhat generic but I prefer the later – ‘Pressure Point’ sounds like a web app fused with a cookery show. We open with a university rowing team in the middle of a race. They head into the lead but are soon overtaken and finish last. A man watches from the side with binoculars – he’s going to be their new coach and is ably played by Mr Shannon. He meets the team and comes across as a right pain in the ass by asking lots of questions – ‘Why are you here?’ ‘What is your purpose?’ ‘When does the canteen close?’. The team are already fractured with Alex having aspirations of making the US Olympic team. His Dad is a rich benefactor of the university and it was he who employed Shannon to get the team into shape so that his son’s dreams can be realised. There are other issues in the team of course, with orphan Chris reluctantly rowing to meet his scholarship re...

  I had avoided this film when it came out, and even when it appeared on Netflix, as it looked like a dull Brad Pitt vehicle set on a train which was somewhat unappealing to me. Having watched it for this project I’m glad that I did as it was good fun with plenty of action. Brad stars as a hitman codenamed ‘Ladybird’ who is on a mission as a substitute for another killer. Brad is getting out of the murder game and took this job as it was a property snatch only. His breathy voiced handler (later revealed to be Sandra Bullock) keeps him on track as he navigates through the streets of Tokyo and on to the eponymous Choo-Choo. The film is flashy and a neon blaze with each character introduced with a caption and some backstory. Brad picks up a few items from a locker but leaves behind the offered gun – this is a straightforward baggage pick up after all – huge mistake! He quickly finds the briefcase he’s after but getting off the train is another matter. We soon learn that the t...

  Here’s a small oddity, a 22 minute short film that was produced for the Sundance Film Festival. I say 22 minutes but it’s only about 19 if you take the credits off. This film lands quite early in Shannon’s oeuvre but it did follow some big screen credits, and came after ‘Tigerland’ and just before ‘Pearl Harbour’ for the actor. He clearly didn’t let his ascending stardom get in the way of taking part in this low budget effort that sees him play a character called ‘Phil Kunz’ and has him in his pants covered in cake. The main character is Earl, who is Shannon’s flatmate. The two are down on their luck with Shannon wearing only a cardboard box to hide his modesty. Their landlord is generous about the overdue rent and gives them a whole day to find the cash or face eviction. Earl decides to cash in some of his comic based wealth but the seedy comic shop owner isn’t interested in Earl’s box of Spider-Man comics. What an idiot – there might be an ASM 129 in there! He says...

  Sadly this offering doesn’t include Neil, Rik, Mike or Vyvyan – not even Cliff Richard! It is instead a sci-fi western, with a lot to like but a bit thin on plot. The film is set in a future America which has been decimated by drought. The settings look Australian but the film was shot in South Africa. Shannon plays Ernest Holm, a homesteader with a young family and a disabled wife. There is a suggestion that his wife’s injuries came from a drink involved accident for which Ernest was at fault. She stays in a care facility and can only walk via a high tech mechanical apparatus. Throughout the film there are well realised examples of technology that is just a bit more advanced than we have, such as a fan like mobile phone and a paper video card that you can watch funerals, and presumably other events, on. When we fist encounter Shannon he is dealing with two men who are trying to break into his hut. Both go for their guns but are cut down by Ernest’s nifty shotgun. We...

  This is a big budget and star studded affair in which Shannon merits 9 th billing, but barely gets a look in. He has a character name of ‘Aaron’ but has very little to do and says even less. I’m guessing a larger part was trimmed back somewhat but it must have been nice to be part of such a big production early in his career. This one came before ‘8 Mile’ and although I’ve yet to see all of his earlier films this must be his biggest to date, save maybe ‘Pearl Harbour’. Tom Cruise stars as a playboy magazine publisher in New York. He has a swanky apartment and a nice Ferrari. He was handed everything when his parents died, and apart from some boardroom issues, he’s living the high life. He has a buddy in ‘My Name Is Earl’s Jason Lee and a part-time lover in Cameron Diaz. Nice work if you can get it. The fun times are intercut with Tom being in prison accused of murder. He’s being interviewed by prison psychologist Kurt Russell and is being guarded by our man Shannon who ...

  When you click on Michael Shannon's IMDb page the first thing listed under his ‘Known for’ bio is this film. It also has a photo from this film as the first image, so it’s clearly a big outing for the actor. It came out during his run on ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and it’s one of the first pictures on his CV where he’s the leading man and basically carries the film. It’s one of his many collaborations with director/writer Mike Nicholls, with the two reuniting recently in ‘The Bikeriders’ which we’ve already had a peek at. In the film Shannon plays Curtis, a hard working family man whose young daughter has become deaf. The family are learning sign language and looking to get surgery for her to restore her hearing. Curtis works for an engineering company drilling holes and is partnered with Shea Whigham, a pairing we see reprised later in ‘Boardwalk Empire’. The first sense of things being somewhat awry is when he stands out in the rain and finds it to be a thick, syrupy substanc...

  Here’s a film that will leave you scratching both your head and your skin after 100 minutes of disturbing viewing. Ashley Judd stars as Agnes, a barmaid in a lesbian bar who has struggled in the ten years since her son disappeared during a supermarket visit. She lives in a grotty motel room and offers little resistance when her lesbian friend sets her up with a quiet man at the bar. This chap, Peter, played by our friend Mr Shannon is polite and says he doesn’t want sex as he’s off that kind of thing. Agnes lets him stay the night, on the sofa, and the next morning Peter witnesses a domestic as Agnes’ recently freed husband shows up to take her money and punch her in the gut. Peter doesn’t intervene but gets some loving anyway. The night of passion soon gives way to some disturbing moments as Peter feels a bite from a bug. He determines it to be an aphid and the room to be infested with them. The next day he’s invested in a load of bug spray and fly papers, but they do ...

  I was aware of this film but hadn’t seen it before it popped up on my next to watch list. Gerard Butler is of course Paisley’s (well Ralston’s) finest but his movies aren’t normally my kind of thing. I assumed that this would be about a preacher with a machine gun, a bit like ‘Hobo With a Shotgun’, but it is in fact a bio-pic of Sam Childers a worthy man who looks out for kids in Southern Sudan. The film needs to set Sam up for a road to Damascus type conversion, so the first 20 minutes see him get out of prison and be a general scumbag. He yells at his wife for stopping being a stripper and he goes out on a bender with his old pal Donnie, played by our man Shannon. Shannon has a low rent role here, wearing a denim vest to show his lower status to Butler’s leather offering. Butler scoffs at his wife finding God but after some mildly tragic events he gets the message too. He finds a righteous path and the good Lord sends down a tornado so that he can get lots of construct...

  A bit of an oddity now with a mafia hit movie that has a taking, rapping CGI kangaroo in it. The backstory to the film is that it was initially a violent film filled with nudity and swearing but the test audiences only liked the kangaroo. Showing the usual Hollywood integrity, the producers re-cut the film to put the kangaroo to the front and to market it as a kid’s film. Wise move – the CGI kangaroo can’t demand a trailer and a percentage of the box office. The film follows Charlie and Louis, played by Jerry O’Connell and Anthony Anderson. Think of them as a poor man’s Jason Bateman and Martin Lawrence and you won’t be far off. The lads are childhood friends since Louis saved Charlie from drowning at the beach. Years later Charlie is a hairdresser and Louis, the black character, is a hapless criminal. No affirmative action here! Charlie is related to Christopher Walken’s mob boss character who phones in his ‘one day on set’ performance with lots of stereotype Italian/Ame...

  Despite being a fan of the superhero genre I hadn’t seen this film before. I think Superman had been done so often that I had little interest in this reboot. Having watched the film I have to say that I enjoyed it, but it didn’t offer anything that was a lot different from that which had gone before. I think that’s because the Superman mythos is so well established and creators are loathed to get too far away from the core values. This effort came a few years after the Brandon Routh remake that featured Kevin Spacey and I remember that being rank rotten with an endless finale on an iceberg or something. I think that this one had a better reputation and I like director Zach Snyder’s take on ‘Watchmen’. Of course it also has our man Michael Shannon as the villain, so that’s me sold! That said, the two and a half hour run time was a but daunting and I ended up watching the film in two sittings. Anyway, we open on Krypton with the planet blowing up and being in the midst of ...

  The second half of season 3 really ratchets up the action with a lot of long running storylines reaching a satisfying conclusion. Shannon however is reduced to a virtual bit part with his George Mueller trying to make an honest living but failing miserably. His job at the steam iron company ended when the practical jokes at his expense caused him to use the company’s product on a colleague’s face. He finds work with gangster O’Bannion but he finds the practical jokes with him even worse. His Norwegian wife Sigrid is clearly a social climber expecting Mueller to build her a house that will be furnished on tick. To pay off some gangsters they are provided with a still and a demand that they produce 24 bottles a week. Sigrid sees the chance to plug a gap in the market with her Norwegian Aqua-vita but inevitably, Mueller’s attempts to peddle her wares only leads to more trouble. The Gyp Rossetti storyline gathers apace when he blows up Nucky’s nightclub and his girlfrien...

  Season 3 of Boardwalk Empire starts 18 months after Season 2 ended. All the characters have moved on as you’d expect, with Nucky still without his land that the ever problematic Margaret has gifted to the church. He has other problems too in the shape of Bobby Carnivale’s terrifying Gyp Rosetti who we meet as he rewards a helpful motorist who foolishly offers the incendiary Italian some of his oil. Soon Gyp has control of the road between New Jersey and New York and there are plenty of violent scenes as he maintains control and beats off all comers. Shannon’s Van Arlen is now set up as George Mueller and has married his Scandinavian nanny and has had a child by her. Thankfully she is as nutty as he is and when they aren’t having hot naked sex they are clubbing to death house guests. Takes all sorts, I guess. Mueller has a job selling steam irons door to door and is giving it his best. His corrupt boss and asshole co-workers make it difficult for him to make a living, and...

  This film is essentially ‘The Big Short’ but at ground level. Shannon plays Rick Carver a real estate agent who buys up foreclosed houses and flips them for a profit. The system is gamed in his favour and he has local cops and judges in his pocket. The film centres on his relationship with Dennis Nash, played by Andrew Garfield, who is a hard working single dad who lives with his son and his Mom, the implausibly lovely Laura Dern. Nash hasn’t paid his mortgage for a couple of months and is soon booted out of his family home by Carver and his gang of hired muscle. The Nash family is forced to decant to a motel and things get worse when he realises Carver’s men have stolen his tools. Nash goes to confront Carver but fate steps in when a sewage leak threatens a property and Nash saves the day. Carver is impressed and takes Nash under his wing, showing him the various ways he works the system to get what he wants. Initially Nash is on board with a ‘can’t beat ‘em so joi...

  As my loyal reader is doubtlessly aware I reviewed this film under its alternative title of ‘The Harvest’ in my definite Article movie blog. I said in that that the title and poster, as shown below, were massive spoilers. What things can you harvest? Well there’s crops and… - and this film isn’t about agriculture! The film opens with surgeon Samantha Morton saving a young boy who suffered an injury whilst playing baseball. We initially think she’s a good sort, but her cold manner and chunky knit sweaters suggest otherwise. At home she has a bed bound son and a husband in Michael Shannon whom she’s not shy in putting down. She is always the doctor and he the nurse in all aspects of their relationship. Michael has one outlet in his miserable existence, as he’s sleeping with the pharma rep who provides him with the drugs needed to sustain his son. The film develops when orphan Maryann moves in with her grandparents across the woods from the Shannons. She’s a nosey girl...

  If ever a film grabbed your attention from the first moment it has to be this one. Of course overweight and elderly naked majorettes may not be your thing but you can’t say it’s not different. The titles roll over these dancing ladies and we soon learn that we are in a gallery and witnessing an art installation. Gallery owner Amy Adams is unhappy with her husband’s non- appearance and with his barely disguised philandering. Things perk up however when she receives a manuscript from her first love and former husband Edward, who is played by Jake Gyllenhaal. She is flattered that the book is dedicated to her and looks forward to his proposed dinner date the following week. As she reads the book the film dissolves into the book’s narrative that sees Jake and Amy on a road trip with their daughter. The character names are changed, but as we experience the book from Amy’s viewpoint she clearly sees the characters as herself and her former beau. The book is as dark as pitc...

  If ever a film was less than the sum of its parts it would have to be Jonah Hex. There is clearly a decent budget in play and a veritable galaxy of stars on show – for your money you get Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Michaels Fassbender and Shannon, Megan Fox, Gob Bluth, Lance Reddick and even one of the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’, yet you end up with this complete turd of a movie. It had ‘troubled production’ written all over it, with go nowhere scenes and a voice over to cut through some of the narrative blocks. Even with what appears to be brutal editing and a short 72 minute run time you still end up with something that makes little or no sense, no characterisation and a plot with more holes than a colander factory. Brolin plays Hex, a DC comics character who is coming out of the Civil War having fought for the South. “You never believed in slavery” someone says, apropos of nothing, to let us know he’s a good guy really. He had an unfortunate tangle with Malkovich’s baddie wh...