Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  Watching this film was probably going beyond the call of duty as Shannon’s Wikipedia page states that he did not shoot any scenes for it, with a body replica used for his appearance as the corpse of General Zod. To compound the unnecessaryness I watched the full 3 hour Extended edition. In truth it was OK entertainment but they could have lost an hour with no complaints from me. The film opens with the 374 th depiction of Batman’s origin. Mrs Wayne’s pearls drop more often than Katie Price’s knickers. We get he’s tormented and driven but they could really just take that as read. Ben Affleck is Bruce Wayne / Batman with Jeremy Irons as his butler Alfred. They are both decent but are definitely a downgrade from Bale / Caine. Henry Cavill’s Superman is under some scrutiny as his fight with General Zod in ‘Man of Steel’ caused the death of thousands of citizens and we get a fun scene of Bruce Wayne driving through the carnage as it happens. Bruce loses lots of friends and e...

  Some more early Shannon now, in what must be his first decent screen role – I’ve yet to dig up ‘Chicago Cab’ at the time of writing. He did get a couple of words in ‘Groundhog Day’ and in ‘Chain Reaction’ but here he gets a couple of lines and a character name – even an on-screen caption! The film has an ensemble of familiar faces from Billy Crudup off ‘Almost Famous’ in the lead to Holly Hunter, Jack Black and Shannon’s future on screen wife in ‘Can’t Come Out To Play’ Samantha Morton. The list of notable names doesn’t however add up to a great film and, although there are some good bits, the whole thing seems a bit insubstantial. Crudup plays the memorably named ‘Fuckhead’ who also provides the film’s narration. It opens with a car crash and then the familiar, ‘Wait I’m getting ahead of myself’ before we go into flashback for an hour or so before we make it back to the start. I never like this format and always think we’re getting a lot of padding before the inter...

  There are some films you don’t like because they are poorly made or have a confusing narrative. Others you dislike because the characters don’t work for you or the film doesn’t go anywhere. This film I really disliked because it was difficult and annoying and a real effort to get through. The main reason for that could be explained by the constant subtitle ‘Liam Cries’. Man, that popped up every two minutes and if crying babies aren’t your thing I’d suggest that you give this picture a wide berth. The film open with activity in a remote farmhouse. We see gunshots and then flashes of light– I’d have thought given the relative speeds of light and sound we’d get the flash first, but it’s not a science lesson so we can let that go. A ‘40 years later’ caption appears and we are at the same house with a young couple and their crying baby. The baby screams non stop for about two minutes and I was close to turning the film off there and then. The house has been on the market for yea...

  This Werner Herzog film is unrelated to the Harvey Keitel offering, apart from the same title, sans the New Orleans suffix. I don’t know if there was a plan to do films about various bad lieutenants in different jurisdictions but it was a strange title choice if not – I’m guessing they were hoping for some brand recognition.  Nicholas Cage stars as the titular flatfoot who, when the film opens, is a sergeant in the New Orleans police department. It’s 2005 and Hurricane Katrina has just hit. Cage rifles through a colleague’s locker with his partner Val Kilmer and, after pocketing some saucy Polaroids, finds some arrest papers that suggest someone may still be in the flooded cells. They go to check, and find the prisoner struggling with rising water in his cell. After debating whether to save the soon to be drowning perp and ruining his good pants, Cage jumps in to save him. This good deed does indeed ruin his fancy underwear and hurts his back, but at least he gets promoted t...

  The ‘echo boomers’ of the title are a gang of disillusioned youth who go about stealing stuff and smashing up houses because they have student loans. They are never referred to as ‘echo boomers’ as such, but a coda at the end suggests this generation isn’t an echo of others, with them having lower drink and smoking addictions and more likely to be racially tolerant. That’s all very nice but it would be harder to find a less likeable group of people than this outfit. The film is told in retrospect with the main character Lance being interviewed in prison. It’s a strange narrative choice as it takes away a lot of the element of surprise. He’s in the jail at the end, so the only story to be told is how he gets there. Lance, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, (how did he land this role?!) is a plank of wood who can’t get a job after graduation. He has paid $60k for his tuition but is either too inexperienced or over qualified for the jobs he applies for. This point is reinfor...

  I wasn’t expecting to enjoy ‘The Flash’ due to its troubled production and so-so reviews but I really did. It was a bit long and possibly confusing (I’m not totally sure) but it was good fun with plenty of surprises and some decent action, albeit mostly CGI. I bailed out on the Justice League film and haven’t watched The Flash TV series, apart from that 90’s one, so I went into this somewhat cold. I do have a good idea of the comics but the Flash was never really a character I liked. Initially he could run fast but once he could travel through stuff and time it seemed a bit far fetched. I know! We meet Barry – the Flash’s alter ego - as he’s helping the Ben Affleck Batman sort out some Gotham based hassles. Gotham, which looks a lot like Glasgow, is under attack and whilst Batman does the heavy lifting the Flash saves some babies in a hospital in a funny sequence. Wonder Woman shows up too in a largely pointless cameo but she does generate a few laughs with her golde...

  Season 5 of ‘Boardwalk Empire’ was truncated at 8 episodes so I’ll cover the whole thing here. Shannon bows out after 6 of them so it’s pretty much a half season anyway. I get the sense that the producers were told to wrap things up as quickly as possible and there seems an undue haste about the proceedings here. The narrative jumps forward 7 years to 1931, two years before the end of Prohibition. The changes in the booze landscape is reflected in the stories told in this series, most of which have an introspective feel. It’s clearly the end of days for the bootleggers, and for the series too, as the writers scramble to have effective endings for each of their well honed characters. In the 7 years that have passed since season 4 most of the characters have found themselves in altered circumstances. Disappointingly Arnold Rothstein has died in the interim. I appreciate the writers are beholden to real world events and they couldn’t ignore Rothstein’s real life deal during th...

  Jack and Rose off ‘Titanic’ are reunited in 1950’s America and spend a lot of time yelling at each other in this somewhat dull slice of domestic life. The film opens with Leonardo DiCaprio eyeing up Kate Winslet at a party. The pair hit it off and start a relationship. Leo is somewhat rudderless and doesn’t know what he wants to do with himself and ends up selling business machines at the same firm that employed his father. Winslet has aspirations to be an actress but a local production shows that she doesn’t have the talent required. Kate gets pregnant and the two buy a home on the titular road from relator Kathy Bates. The house would probably be worth millions today but Leo can afford it with his office job. Different times I guess! The pair soon have two kids and have stayed friendly with Bates and with other neighbours who include David Harbour off ‘Stranger Things’. Domestic bliss doesn’t come easily for the couple and soon Leo is boffing a secretary at his wor...

  I had always avoided Pearl Harbor as it looked like a bloated three hour piece of banality and Hollywood’s attempt at history, akin to the Comic’s Strip’s ‘Strike’. Still it’s on the list, so let’s have a look. Well, you know what they say about making assumptions? Yes, they are often correct. This was a terrible film that I had to watch in three sittings as the slo-mo, dialogue and patriotism keep me reaching for the ‘off’ button. The main event is of course a pivotal event in history and more than deserving of a large scale movie examination. Of course the director Michael Bay isn’t known for his documentaries so instead he goes for a convoluted love triangle to document the events of the ‘Date that lives in infamy’. The film opens with two boys playing at a farm and then taking a crop duster plane for a joyride. These two scamps soon evolve in to Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett and they have enlisted into the air force. The Americans are not yet in World War 2 so Be...

  This film opens with the dreaded ‘based on true story’ caption with some scenes and characters invented. I hate that – they may as well just make up the whole thing if you have no idea what elements are real and what are not. That said it is not billed as a documentary and having looked at the infallible Wikipedia page it looks like the story told by the film largely followed the facts. Set in 1973 the film opens with the drug induced death of country singer Gram Parsons. Johnny Knoxville shows up as his road manager and takes away all the drug related paraphernalia from the rock star’s room. He looks to take ownership of the body but Christiana Applegate shows up with a handwritten will bequeathing her all of the star’s possessions. Also in the frame is the singer’s father, played by Robert Forster, who is looking to take the body back home. With the body already at the hospital morgue Knoxville makes plans to steal it so that he can arrange to cremate it in the Joshua ...

Here’s another early, and brief, Shannon entry, coming just after his sterling work on ‘Kangaroo Jack’. It’s a massive production and having seen the film years ago I couldn’t have told you that he was in it. He is though, and does OK trying to get noticed amongst the explosions and body mutilations. Despite being nearly 2.5 hours in length there is not a lot of plot to speak of and the film is essentially a load of action sequences taped together with the flimsiest of stories. Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are the titular Bad (at acting) Boys who were childhood friends and are now cops in Miami. Smith has a trust fund which means he can drive around in a Ferrari and wear loads of bling. Lawrence is a family man and although meant to be hard up he has a pretty sweet crib on the seafront. He has a demanding family including a horny sister who is banging Smith on the side. We open with a drugs boat coming in with loads of ecstasy. We see the drugs being manufactured in Holland before go...

  This film opens with a red car and a blue car having a race – for a minute I thought I was watching a dramatization of that old Milky Way advert! The film is in fact about a landmark legal case that allowed interracial marriage in the state of Virginia. That may not sound too exciting, and it isn’t, but it’s a likeable film about a pivotal case. The ‘Loving’ of the title is two fold – we have a loving couple but the main character is called ‘Richard Loving’ lucky his name wasn’t ‘Bastard’ or something similar. It’s the late 1950’s in the Deep South and Richard is dating Mildred who falls pregnant. The two decide to marry and do so in Washington seeing as interracial marriage isn’t allowed in their home state of Virginia. They set up home together but are soon slung in jail. The agree a plea deal which sees their one year sentences suspended for 25 years if they leave the state. They do so but are back five minutes later as Richard’s mother is a midwife and they have need...

  Poker films are always a tough sell for me – they either treat their audience like idiots and say ‘five is more than four’ or they get too complex and it’s difficult to follow the action. ‘Lucky You’ is a decent effort but it definitely falls more into the former category than the latter. Eric Bana (what happened to him?!) plays a Las Vegas poker pro. He’s seemingly not a very good one as the film opens with him hocking a camera (later revealed to be stolen from a friend) in a pawnshop along with his late mother’s wedding ring for a few hundred bucks. He takes the cash to a low stakes game and quickly runs it up to a few thousand bucks. He’s keen to raise the stake to enter the World Series of Poker main event which requires a $10k buy in. He gets the money and then loses it. He then wins a seat at a satellite tournament but it is taken off him when it’s revealed the ancient dealer made an arse of it. In between these antics he meets Drew Barrymore and sponges some cas...

  This is another Jeff Nichols effort that features Michael Shannon, as all his features do. This one came after ‘Take Shelter’ but before ‘Midnight Special’ and features Shannon only in what could be seen as an extended cameo. It's an excellent film though and well worth the 130 minutes it asks of you. The film starts out a bit like ‘Stand By Me’ with two 14 year old Arkansas lads on a quest to find a boat rumoured to be stuck up a tree on a remote island. The boat, presumably left by a tornado, is quickly found and as a bonus contains a stash of nudey mags. The boys see some food and realise that the boat is occupied and beat a retreat. When they get back to their skiff they encounter a strange man named Mud, played by Matthew McConaughey, who asks that they bring him some food. He explains he’s waiting for someone and offers the boys the boat if they help him. One of the boys, Ellis, is keen to help but his friend Neckbone is more cynical and thinks Mud is just a bum. T...