Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  When this film came up on my list I thought it was a stoner comedy so wasn’t too jazzed about watching it. It is in fact a military legal drama and although that sounds somewhat dry it was decent albeit with a dubious ending. The film opens with news footage of some dead El Salvadorians. We then cut to Ashley Judd and Jim Caviezel having some quality time. They are keen to have a child and Judd manages to find time for some foo-foo before heading off to court to win a big case. Their happy times are interrupted however when following a break in at their home Jim is arrested. It turns out he’s living under an assumed name and the finger prints taken by the cops have flagged him up as an AWOL soldier, and one who has been tagged for those El Salvadorian deaths we saw at the start. Despite this being a military case Judd takes up JC’s defence, assisted by Adam Scott’s young military lawyer character. To complete the team, and why not, they also get onboard with Morgan F...

  For our second look at a Michael Shannon film I’ve booted up his second appearance in the risible 1996 conspiracy action thriller ‘Chain Reaction’. I hadn’t seen this film before as it looked rubbish and having now watched it and confirmed this to be the case I’ll never have to watch it again. Unless I do a Brian Cox retrospective which is unlikely. Hmm ‘Rushmore’ though… Going forward I will pick a random Shannon film from my spreadsheet using Random.org. If I don’t have the file in my library I’ll go for the one above it and if it’s a Boardwalk Empire entry I’ll go to the last block that I haven’t seen. More fun doing a random film than plodding though in consecutive order. I’ll note the file number from my list (1-93) so you’ll know where it falls in the oeuvre. Anyway, I wanted to watch this next given that Shannon’s ‘Groundhog Day’ debut was a meagre two scenes and I wanted to see how he had progressed in his second credit, which took three years to appear. Guess wh...