Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  Nuremberg at the IMDb Up to date Shannon once again and I have to confess that I gave up the chance to see this in the cinema in favour of ‘The Running Man’. My choice wasn’t great, but it wasn’t 148 minutes either! Three hours including trailers is too much and I think this film was better served over three sittings on streaming. The film is a historical drama which closely follows the events in Nuremberg following the war when a group of Nazis were tried for war crimes. This was a new idea with the victors previously just killing all of the vanquished on the quiet. This time the Allies plan to send a message that war crimes will be tried and punished in all conflicts going forward. Whether that has done any good is up for debate, and some of the shady dealings on show suggest that the victors weren’t that virtuous in any event. Shannon has one of the three main roles in the film and shines as Justice Robert H Jackson. He has the job of prosecuting the Nazis alongside his Br...

  I always disliked the punny title of this film – oh it’s a current war and also about electric currents! Maybe raisins are involved too? I’m sure a better title would have helped, but I did enjoy this film despite some eccentric direction and some miscasting.   The film opens on some figures surrounded by mist. It’s not clear what’s happening but we soon dissolve into 1880 where electricity is starting to be developed. In the lead is Thomas Edison whose direct current is the market leader. It does however require a lot of wire and substations, but he is fixated on making it work. He’s assisted by Tom Holland who looks about 14 with a stick-on moustache. The pair later team up to greater effect as Dr Strange and Spider-Man in the MCU.   Edison’s rival is George Westinghouse , played by our Mr Shannon with a slightly more believable moustache, and he’s all about alternating current. He made his fortune in train brakes and sees electricity as the way to light up th...

  This is another film that I’d previously reviewed for my Definite Article Movie Blog. I’ve adapted my summary below and added some additional Shannon thoughts based on my re-watch. I enjoyed it more the second time around with my IMDb rating soaring from a 6 to a 7! ‘ The Iceman’ isn’t a spin off from ‘Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends’ instead it’s a bio-pic of mob hit man Richard Kuklinski, splayed by this blog’s subject Mr Shannon. It has a ‘Based on a true story’ caption at the start so it’s certain that some things have been added to the tale we’re being told. The film opens with an aged and beardy Shannon being asked if he has any regrets. Before he can answer the film morphs back to 1964, with a younger Shannon on his first date with soon to be wife, Winona Ryder. She admires his tattoos and slow drawl, and even believes his story of being employed as a voice actor for Walt Disney. In fact he has a slightly seedier job copying porno films. He later plays pool for ...

  I have vague memories of the 1993 Waco siege and had it down as some religious nutters killing themselves when the government lost patience with them following a long stand-off. This six part TV series covered a lot of ground and looked at both sides of the confrontation. The result was that the government forces came out of it looking worse, but the cultists could have been smarter too. The series opens with Michael Shannon’s character Gary trying to end another hostage incident. This one doesn’t end well and hopefully lessons will be learnt. They aren’t! Meanwhile in Waco Texas, David Koresh is living the high life of a cult leader. Someone does correct us in the show saying that no one in a cult thinks they are in a cult but it all looks a bit cultish to me. Koresh and his right hand man Steve, the ever reliable Paul Sparks, are running a large compound full of families who believe David to be the next coming of Christ. We see him recruit one of the Culkin clan and he...

  Here’s tough watch if ever there was one – James Franco’s mostly black and white film school project about an obscure (to me at any rate) gay American poet in the 1930s. I quite like Franco with stuff like ‘Why Him’, ‘This is the End’ and the TV show ‘The Deuce’ all excellent pieces of work. He also made ‘The Disaster Artist’ in which he had a laugh at Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’. Funny, as it was you never saw the bold Tommy giving a blow job to a (probably) fake male phallus! The film charts the troubled life of poet Harold ‘Call me Hart’ Crane. Told in 12 chapters or ‘Voyages’ the film is a pretentious collection of poetry readings and self indulgent scenes that go on forever and go nowhere. Hart struggles for his craft and has to beg money to survive. He works in advertising and gets his kicks down at the docks with sailors. One of his lovers is Mr Shannon with whom Franco has a minute long snogging session with before they get down to the real action. Shannon is t...

  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...