Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  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...

  Some festive cheer now, and despite watching this in September I was ready to be charmed by this small town tale of mischief and human kindness. Alas it’s not so much ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as it’s a big old piece of crap. The titular town of Pottersville is facing hard times. An opening drone shot shows the town to have a lot of failed businesses and repossessed properties. One business that is struggling on is the general store, run by Michael Shannon’s Maynard Greiger, which has to offer credit to its punters which Maynard logs in a large register. His shop assistant is the lovely Judy Greer and Stevie Wonder could see that the pair will end up as a couple by the movie’s end. For now though Maynard is married and after getting some elk steaks from Lovejoy’s mountain man character he heads home to surprise his wife. As anyone who has ever seen a film ever will know he of course stumbles onto the wife’s infidelity. She’s not shagging anyone but is partaking in a ‘furri...

  Here’s another film that I had previously watched for an earlier blog – in this case it was The Definite Article Movie Blog about 4 years ago. I did watch the film through again with a more Shannon focused eye, but I will recycle the plot summary here because, you know, the environment. This film has a clever title; it’s not just about someone being on the hunt for their quarry, but bits of it are set in a quarry too! A priest is driving along an empty Texas road, whilst hammering the communion wine, when he sees a body lying by side of the street. He helps the man into his car and we see that it’s familiar Shannon co-star Shea Whigham. The two don’t say much but the priest buys his new friend dinner whilst still swigging the wine. He stops at a quarry - huge mistake - to sober up before heading into town. The two argue and the priest gets killed after being bashed on the head with a bottle. Our drifter cuts his hand and bandages it with the dead man’s shirt be...

  If ever a film was less than the sum of its parts it would have to be ‘Amsterdam’. A stellar cast, big budget and some great locations can’t hide the fact that this is a dull and meandering mess. The film starts well with Christian Bale’s First World War veteran who is now a doctor being asked to carry out an autopsy. His former military commander has been found dead and foul play is suspected. Bale teams up with his friend and former service buddy Harold who is now a lawyer. They are joined by Morgot Robbie’s character Valerie who was a nurse who tended to the pair’s wounds during the war. We get a flashback to 1918 and see the men before they suffered their injuries and their periods of treatment and convalescence. Robbie is a bit strange in that she makes art out of the bloodied shrapnel that she digs out of her patients. Back to the present day (in 1933) and the autopsy reveals that the dead man died of poisoning. His daughter, Taylor Swift, is then pushed under ...

  This is another film that I had previously watched for another blog, obviously in this case it was the ‘W’ Movie Blog. Looking back at my review I see that this contained the first reference to the Michael Shannon Blog that you are now reading. Back in February of 2020 when the original review was written I noted I’d no time to pursue the dream of watching every Michael Shannon film – how times have changed! I’ve reused the summary from the previous blog below but having watched the film through again I think my initial interpretation was a bit off – of course the injury was deliberately inflicted! The ‘wolves’ of this film aren’t of the full moon variety, but the name of a high school basketball team. There's probably a metaphor in there too - 'wolves at the door', ' a pack of wolves', you get the idea. We follow the fortunes of their star player, Anthony, who dreams of a scholarship at Cornell University, where Andy out of ‘The Office’ went. His Dad, M...

  I’ve cobbled this review from my earlier definite article blog review as there’s no point in rewriting my plot summary when it’s still the same 4 years later. New Shannon notes added for this re-watch! It’s a brave choice to have a convicted paedophile as your protagonist especially when it’s a self confessed one like Walter, who still has the urge. Walter has zero degrees of Kevin Bacon and we meet him as he’s discharged from prison from a 12 year stretch for child molestation. He picks up his old job at a woodworking factory with his former boss’s son letting him know he needs to keep it zipped up. Walter also checks in with his therapist, our favourite Michael Shannon, and gets visited by slow talking cop Mos Def, who doesn’t believe that Walter, or indeed any kiddie fiddler, is capable of being reformed. The woodworking shop seems a great place to work, as the creepy Walter quickly gets two ladies coming onto him. He rebuffs the first’s offer of a chi...

   The IMDb page for this film records that I had awarded this film a 6/10 rating. To be honest I don’t recall having seen it and having now seen it a second time that rating is maybe a point too high. It’s a pity as it has a great cast, but the film is just a bit lazy and self knowing to be fully enjoyed. Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd star as a couple having dinner with Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper. They share stories of how they met each other with the film dissolving to show the genesis of the Poehler / Rudd relationship. The film revisits the couples at the table periodically as some of the plot points are discussed and explained. Poehler runs a New York sweet shop and Rudd works for a large corporate candy firm. There is mild peril as the big company looks to drive Poehler out of business, but this aspect isn’t really explored. It is stated from the off that the relationship is like a romantic comedy movie and as such lots of cliches and tropes of that genre are trotte...

  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...

  This film lands right in the middle of the Shannon oeuvre and it’s a decent effort with a significant role for the big man. The film follows the highs and mainly lows of Kelli, who is a military reservist returning home following a tour of duty. She tells friends that she didn’t have it too bad but she clearly has more baggage than an airport carousel. She has two cute daughters and is married to Shannon, whose character name is helpfully ‘Mike’. Mike is a plumber and a simple man who gets great joy out of blooper videos and in finding a particularly good plumbing job. Kelli initially gets back into the swing of her mundane life including at her factory job where she works with Mickey off of ‘Boardwalk Empire’. She goes out drinking with her pals and later gets pulled over for drink driving. To avoid jail she attends an AA meeting where she meets fellow drunk and veteran, John Slattery off ‘Mad Men’. Things crumble further when it turns out that Mike is pumping t...

  In the future there will be a whole genre of films that were made during lock down restrictions. Some are less obvious than other but this one is your poster boy for COVID. It’s more ‘crappy corona’ than ‘pumping pandemic’ however, and even at 80 odd minutes it was a struggle to get through it. If you have filming limitations what better central character to have than a recluse who never leaves his flat? We meet our protagonist Ken as he goes through his daily routine. He has identical bottles of drink and all his food is unlabelled apart from a tag noting what it is. He’s clearly OCD and also has a hobby of stuffing dead birds, which he receives through the post, strangely enough. He is a fledgling content creator too and we see him make several videos that give us an insight into his life, not least that he’s a divorced Dad. He’s not getting the hits however, but during a web chat with a friend he’s told that one of his dead birds fell off his shelf during a video. It’...

  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...

  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...