Michael Shannon Movies Blog

  If you look up ‘nice’ in the dictionary you wouldn’t find this film as that’s not how dictionaries work, but you would get a definition that would aptly describe this gentle and slightly affecting comedy drama. Kate Hudson plays an English professor who is organising a literary festival for her small university. The festival is in trouble as the lack of a star guest has threatened their funding. In desperation she invites reclusive writer CP Shriver, who wrote one book and disappeared from sight. No one has a picture of the writer who is talked about in similar tones to JD Salinger. The invite letter lands in the mailbox of a lonely handyman also named Shriver. He lives alone with his lovely orange cat and as he has a whisky with his dinner we know he’s a total drunk. He takes the invite to show a friend at the pub and, despite realising it’s a case of mistaken identity, Shriver allows his friend to accept the invite on his behalf. Soon Shriver is on the plane to the...

  A Euro murder mystery now that doesn’t deliver any twists or interesting characters. It was actually a bit of a chore to see this one to the end because even though it looked nice and had an attractive cast, it just didn’t have any substance. The film opens with a man being shot twice in the head. The camera angles aren’t conclusive but the death is recorded by the police as a s*icide. It turns out the dead man is an up and coming Belgian actor who has just accepted a role in a high profile TV show. The TV news bulletins, which serve mainly as exposition, tells us that the actor had been seen out with a mysterious woman and had assaulted a paparazzi who took the incriminating photos. His estranged wife returns to their apartment in the company of her own brash American mother. The flat is in a state, so much so that the mother has a stroke and although she initially recovers she soon has a second and ends up in intensive care. The wife finds a couple of problems ...

  I was about an hour into this film when I realised that I had no idea whatsoever about what was going on. I did stay the course to the end but it’s certainly not a film that I would recommend or contemplate watching again. The film opens promisingly with our Man Shannon dressed up as a rodeo clown. His narration makes some pompous and flowery statements before we meet up with the two main protagonists – Poor Boy and Prickface. Poor Boy, who looks like a refugee from ‘Right Said Fred’, gets most of the screen time and the title, but I guess calling your film’ Prickface’ would be a hard sell. The time frame for the film is undermined but it seems to be a round 2000 as the two lads struggle with an early internet connection and ancient phones. They have various hustles on the go, such as fixing teenage girls’ volleyball matches but it's clear that we are dealing with a couple of red neck losers. They do however have aspirations and there is a moderately funny sequence w...

  This is Shannon’s 4 th of 6 collaborations with the writer and director Jeff Nichols. We have previously looked at the pair’s work on ‘Shotgun Stories’ and ‘Take Shelter’, both of which offered some appeal. This effort came after those previous two, but before ‘The Bikeriders’ which we also enjoyed. In this one we open in a cheap motel with a news alert about an abducted 8 year old child. The suspect is named as Roy Tomlin and a picture of Shannon pops up. We then see that Roy is watching the TV in the company of the abducted boy and with another man. The hotel room has cardboard taped over the windows and it is clear that something odd is going on, but it’s not clear what. Elsewhere two cult members are on the hunt for the boy, just as their service gets raided by the FBI. The Feds have been tracking the cult as they’ve been buying a lot of guns and some of their sermons contain embedded government secrets. It turns out that Shannon is the boy’s father and he and a...

  This season ended up, as most have so far, with some stories resolved and others just hatching. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the three previous seasons and I got the impression that the writers had painted themselves into a corner somewhat. Nucky keeps doing his deals and looking somewhat constipated, whilst once again his brother Eli plots against him. I think they are going for a Kane and Abel dynamic here but it doesn’t make sense that a savvy business man like Nucky would allow himself to be betrayed once again. To be fair Eli was motivated by helping his son who was being threatened with the jail, quite correctly, by FBI man Knox. Nucky seems a bit asleep at the wheel having been enchanted by the busty Patricia Arquette who is now running his Florida interests. Nucky is keen to get out but keeps getting drawn back in due to his many commitments and previous actions. The main thread throughout the season concerns Chalky and Narcisse. Chalky now runs the main nightclu...

  Season 4 of Boardwalk Empire has a more cinematic feel and it’s environs expand south to Florida, where Nucky looks to seal a land deal which will enable him to import his booze with impunity. With Margaret out of the picture, apart from a fleeting appearance in Episode 6, a new love interest in the shape of backwater bar manager Patricia Arquette comes into Nucky’s life. With a few main characters departing from last season, they are replaced with Ron Livingston’s hapless businessman who falls into the orbit of the manipulative Gillian, and Jeffrey Wright’s enigmatic preacher Narcisse who is a foil for Chalky. There is also a storyline for one of Eli’s kids who clearly has inherited the family’s traits for recklessness and misfortune, when he needs Nucky’s help after poisoning a room-mate when his prank goes wrong. Most of the plot thread are somewhat light with Nucky’s especially being somewhat derivative. He is again batting politicians and making shady deals. I guess...

  If you crossed ‘Training Day’ and ‘The Grifters’ you’d get something similar to this film. John C Reilly plays Richard, a small time con man who makes a few bucks by carrying out confidence tricks and other scams. We meet him in a casino as he observes a young Mexican man, Rodrigo, attempt to scam some waitresses using the familiar ‘I gave you $100, and you give me $30 and I’ll give you $50’ type con. He’s quickly rumbled and only escapes arrest when Richard steps in pretending to be a cop to get Rodrigo off the premises. Richard lets Rodrigo know he’s a trickster and offers to show him some scams by way of an audition. Richard has recently parted ways with his partner ‘The Jew’ and is looking for a new henchman. The two work some low level scams which involve conning old ladies and restaurants out of a few bucks. Rodrigo, who Richard renames ‘Brian’ as Anglo names are more trusted, needs some money for his father’s medical bills. Richard meanwhile has some expensive legal b...