In one of the biggest, baddest episodes of the Way Too Indiecast yet, we welcome two of the best directors in the game as we hear from Richard Linklater about his ’80s college hangout movie Everybody Wants Some!! and are joined by Jeff Nichols, whose sci-fi thriller Midnight Special hits theaters this weekend as well.

WTI’s very own Ananda Dillon chats with Bernard about what she saw of AMC’s new Preacher series at WonderCon this past weekend, and if that wasn’t enough, the Dastardly Dissenter himself, CJ Prince, chimes in to talk about the recent controversy surrounding the Tribeca Film Festival and share his Indie Pick of the Week. Whew! What are you waiting for? Dive into the deep end of this week’s pool of ooey gooey Indiecast goodness!

And if that last sentence grosses you out…um…just hit play and enjoy.

Topics

• Indie Picks (5:18)
• Richard Linklater (18:42)
• Preacher Preview (32:17)
• Tribeca Vaxxed Controversy (51:13)
• Jeff Nichols (1:06:32)

Articles Referenced

• City of Gold Interview
• Fireworks Wednesday Review
• Everybody Wants Some!! Interview
• Midnight Special Interview
• Preacher Preview

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Like his 2011 film Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols‘ Midnight Special was born out of fear, specifically the fear of losing his son.

“I think, really, we’re terrified of losing them, so we’re going to try to figure out who they are to try to help them. Help them become the ones who manifest their own destiny,” the director told me during an interview I conducted a couple of weeks back. That fatherly fear is at the core of the film, though the story blossoms into something much bigger, touching on themes of friendship, homeland security, science, and religion, all in the mode of a sci-fi thriller.

Michael Shannon stars as a man escorting his supernaturally gifted son to a secret location, all while evading an armed religious sect and U.S. military forces. Aiding them on their journey is an old friend (Joel Edgerton) and the boy’s mother (Kirsten Dunst); a government scientist (Adam Driver), meanwhile, tries to understand the family’s plight as he tracks their location.

Terrifically thrilling and deeply affecting, Midnight Special is yet another showcase by one of this generation’s very best visual storytellers and opens in theaters this weekend.

Some people consider your movies to be vague or overly ambiguous. That’s maybe the biggest criticism levied against you.
It’s funny how everybody wants to be polite. Obviously, I made the film with an open ending on purpose. It’s like, let’s talk about it! If you don’t like it…maybe, rather than just being entrenched in your position, if we talk about it, you might be illuminated on something. It was funny, I had a good conversation with a lady in Berlin about [the movie]. She had a very specific place where she thought I should end the movie. She was very specific about not liking the end of the movie, and I said, “That’s cool. Where would you end the movie?” She told me, and I thought, that would be a terrible ending! She was like, “Well, it’s right. That’s where you should have ended it.” I was like, I really don’t think you’re right! I didn’t convince her, but it was at least fun to have a conversation.

So you do enjoy those conversations.
I do, yeah.

I do, too. If I meet a filmmaker and I didn’t like their movie, maybe, and I get illuminated by their insight…I love that.
The reality is, making movies is really complex. It’s a strange algebra. There are so many variables that go into them. I would be shocked if you met a filmmaker who said, “My film’s perfect,” you know? I don’t know if I want to be friends with that person.

Tommy Wiseau.
[laughs] It goes beyond ego. I want these films to be conversation starters, so of course it makes sense that I would want to have conversations about them. As long as people don’t ask me too many specifics about things. It’s cool to see how people’s minds work on them and work on the problems I created. It’s cool to hear how people interpret things, sometimes random, sometimes spot-on, sometimes differently. It’s fun.

In some ways, this movie is like the Superman movie I always wanted in terms of tone and taste, do you know what I mean?
I do.

The existential crisis of Superman is something that’s seldom handled well.
That’s very interesting. I think Zack Snyder scratched the surface of it. I think someone—maybe it was JJ Abrams—was talking about [doing] a Superman film and he was like, “I just wonder how he didn’t kill anybody as a baby.” I know that there are other people who have takes on it. I never saw this character as a superhero—I just saw him as a boy. His illnesses I just thought of as being organic, even though they’re supernatural. The same thing happened with

The same thing happened with Take Shelter. To your comment, specifically—wanting to see a certain version of a kind of movie…This is going to sound ridiculous, but Take Shelter was kind of my zombie movie. Take Shelter was my take on all those cool feelings in a zombie film where people are preparing for a disaster or preparing for the zombie stuff. I just wanted to make a movie that lived in that part. Then you start to make it deeper and more meaningful and relate it to your life, but that was very much the case with Take Shelter and here [with Midnight Special] too. I really liked those movies of the ’80s and sci-fi movies from that period. I kind of wanted to live in that world for a little bit, which doesn’t negate, though, my approach to the story or how I broaden its veins into my own life. It doesn’t discount that feeling, that sense you get after having seen stuff like that. I felt that way with Mud, too. I had this notion of what a classic American film was. I couldn’t tell you one specifically, but I can tell you a combination of several. Cool Hand Luke, The Getaway…I kind of wanted it to feel like some of the things I felt during those movies.

Midnight Special applies to that. So many people try to make these one-to-one analogies with these films, especially with the endings and other things. Those are kind of lost on me. That’s not how I thought about them. I just thought about the essence of those films.

Hitchcock’s movies were driven by his personal fears. Would you say you’re the same?
Absolutely. One hundred percent. The interesting thing about Hitchcock is that he chose fear as a predominant format to work in, which makes sense because that’s best for directors.

How so?
The feeling of fear is most directly linked to the toolbox that a director has to work with. This shot plus this shot equals this feeling. This music here, this framing here. I’m not going to give you much lead space in front of your eyes, and that’s going to freak people out. It’s different in comedy or drama…they’re not really genres. They’re these feelings. Fear most directly relates most to what a director does. I approach it a little differently. Definitely in Take Shelter, there are some scary moments, and they’re intended to be scary. I was getting to use that toolbox. I approach fear more from the standpoint of a writer. I use fear as a catalyst. Fear makes for a scary scene—“This is going to be a scary moment”—that’s what I’m talking about with Hitchcock. What I’m talking about as a writer…fear is a catalyst for a bigger idea. It’s a catalyst for the thought that you’re trying to convey to the audience, which for me is always an emotion—it’s not a story. It’s not plot. It’s not, “I’m going to tell you a story about what happened to a guy.” It’s, “I’m going to tell you a story about how a guy feels.”

Fear is a great place to start from. Fear is what motivates us as humans to get out and gather the food and build the shelter. It’s like a foundational element of humanity. But fear is only a catalyst. For instance, this film is about the fear of losing my son. That brings up a lot of emotions and other things, but that’s not a thought in and of itself. I can’t just make a movie about a guy afraid of losing his son. What does he do with that? What’s he trying to do with that fear? I think that forced me to think about the actual nature of parenthood. What are we trying to do? We’re trying to, I think, define for ourselves who our children are, in the purest way we possibly can. Sometimes, our own point of view gets in the way and we project that onto our kids. But I think, really, we’re terrified of losing them, so we’re going to try to figure out who they are to try to help them. Help them become the ones who manifest their own destiny. We have no control over that destiny. We have no control over who they become. At best, we can try to help them realize who they are and help them become that.

That became a thought. Fear produced that thought, which became the backbone for this movie. In Take Shelter, I was afraid of the world falling apart. I was afraid of not being a good provider for my family, or an adult, or a good husband. I was afraid of all those things, and there was a bunch of anxiety that came from that. But that’s not what that movie’s about—that movie’s about communicating in marriage. That movie’s about the foundational principles of marriage, which I think is communication. That’s why I made the daughter deaf. I think, in order to get that, I needed to have fear. Shotgun Stories is about the fear of losing one of my brothers. But ultimately that’s not what the movie’s about. It’s about the fruitlessness of revenge, a revenge that was born out of that fear.

I think there’s a huge misunderstanding among moviegoers in this country. People are obsessed with plot. That’s how they critique movies—solely on the plot! From the stunning opening of this movie, it’s clear you’re not interested in exposition. This is cinema, that’s it. We’re dealing with emotions, images, and sound. I wish more people appreciated that. I think maybe they do, subconsciously.
Maybe they do, you know? It depends on what people want out of a film. At different times you want different things. A lot of people—and I’m this audience sometimes—want escapism. Look at the way people use score. Score, even more than expositional dialogue, is the way to telegraph a pass, like in basketball. You never telegraph a pass—you never want the defense to know where you’re looking, because they’ll know where you’re going to throw the ball and then they’ll steal it. You can telegraph so much by having two characters speak, and then you put this music underneath it. Everybody knows they’re supposed to be scared, or they’re supposed to be happy, or they’re supposed to be sad. When you remove score, which I mostly did in Shotgun Stories, it’s very offputting to people. All of a sudden, they’re having to judge a scene on its own merits, not on this feeling that you’re giving them. They actually have to start listening. That’s just an example of my broader approach: If you remove certain things, people have to listen.

Some people don’t want that experience when they go to the theater, and that’s okay. I’ll catch you the next time, or maybe I’ll catch you on a Sunday night, when you’ve got a little more free time. It’s my job, though, to try and understand the nature of how people receive stories. It’s natural to search for plot. That’s how our brains work. I don’t hold it against anybody, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to challenge them through a new type of organization of information. Because that’s all it is—you’re just organizing information in a certain way so that it lands at certain times. My movies have plot. I just don’t think it’s the going concern. I think writers are so concerned sometimes with just making things clear.

I know that studios are. They test these things to make sure that no stone is unturned and that people are getting what they want. But what people want isn’t always what they need. I’m fascinated by story dynamics. I’m fascinated by what works for an audience and what doesn’t, what keeps them engaged and what doesn’t. If you’re not working on the edge of all that, you’re never going to have a situation where someone says, “My nails were dug into the edge of my chair,” and one person writes, “This movie is boring as hell.” I have to be okay with both of those responses. I don’t think I could get either if I was just trying to walk down the middle of the road.

About the opening, again, which I love so much…
I think it’s the best opening I’ll ever do.

Some people might consider it disorienting, but I think, for this story, you get exactly the amount of information you need.
What’s funny for me is, I think it’s so obvious. I’m wondering, like, will people just know that, once he picks the boy up into his arms in the hotel room, that obviously he’s not a kidnapper? Yes, they do, but since it hasn’t been so specifically told to them, they feel it, but they don’t know it yet. That’s a really great place to be. To me, it’s just so obvious. “That mystery’s solved.” But it’s not yet. It’s not totally solved. I have this line of Sam Shepard revealing, “The birth father, Roy Tomlin.” I wrote that scene specifically to be a surprise to the FBI, because they haven’t had the ranch under surveillance long enough to know that he was the birth father. The thing I’m wondering is, is it a surprise to the audience? That’s what I [mean] when I talk about narrative mechanics. I’m just so fascinated. When did you know? Here’s when I tell you, or here’s where I specifically don’t tell you.

Obviously, Joel Edgerton’s profession in the film—that was really specific. I remember giving [the script] to this young girl who was going to be a PA on our film. I gave her the script, and maybe she wasn’t the sharpest tack in the drawer, but she read it and just so clearly was like, “You have to tell us sooner that he’s a state trooper. We need to know that because I was really turned off when he did what he did at the end of the film. If I had known that, I’d have felt a lot better about his character a lot sooner.” She was so earnest in her argument. But it’s like, don’t you understand that you having all these emotions is part of the process? It’s part of the story. It just made me smile, and she probably thought I was a dickhead.

Joel gives you so much.
He’s a great actor.

In that scene in particular, he tells you what you need to know in how he behaves.
There you go! I thought it was pretty obvious. He walks over to the fallen state trooper and speaks in a way that no normal person would speak on the police radio. I was like, well, I’m just letting people know there. That’s what his character would do. A bad version of that writing would be [for him] to go over and say, “Hey, hey, there’s a police officer shot.” That wouldn’t be honest to him either. He wants that guy to get help. That’s why he goes and does it. He did not want to go shoot that guy. You could have Jeff Nichols the writer brain go, “If I have him speak that way, I’ll show my cards too soon.” But that’s as dishonest as having him explain that he’s a state trooper. Both of those things are dishonest. My fear for this movie…any shortcoming is when I might have been to purposefully ambiguous in a scene. I’ve read that critique, and I’ve gone back in and I’ve looked at it, and I don’t know. I’ve been able to reason out why they would behave that way. Point being, character behavior trumps all narrative desire.

I paint myself into corners all the time. It’s like, okay, I have this very strict rule about character behavior and dialogue, but I need this piece of information in the movie. It’s my job to craft a scene that allows that piece of information to come through, or we don’t get it. Then I deal with that consequence. It’s like an austerity to the writing you have to apply. You really have to stick to it. You really do.

Kirsten Dunst’s character is one of my favorite motherly characters in a while. You don’t see this stuff often. Without spoiling anything, the things she does, the way she reacts to things—it feels authentic, it feels real.
I think she’s the strongest character in the film. I think she’s able to do something the male characters can’t, specifically Michael Shannon’s. I’m not just saying this to gain the pro-women’s lib lobby. Watching my son be born and what my wife did and then what she did the year that followed…there’s no doubt in my mind that women are the stronger sex in terms of fortitude and emotions. I was very struck in high school when I read A Doll’s House by Ibsen. It’s about a mother that leaves her children. I came from a home where that would not be possible. But it is possible. That’s why the mother in Shotgun Stories hates her children. She blames them for her place in life. Their existence lowered her, in her mind. I was fascinated by the idea that there could be a mother character that would come to the conclusion first of what the inevitability of parenthood is. It made sense to me that a mother would be the one to understand the cycle of parenthood before the father, who has undeniably committed his entire life to the safety of his boy. It takes the mother to realize the cycle that they’re a part of.

I don’t think Michael’s character understands it fully or is willing to accept it fully until the boy gets out of the car. I think it’s important, but it’s also a big narrative risk. You’ve built this father-son story, the mother doesn’t come in for the first thirty minutes, and she’s tangential. Then you do this physical handoff where she’s the one who physically represents their position to their child at the end of the film. I had no idea if it would work, and for some people, I’m sure it doesn’t. I reason out, character-wise, why it would work out that way. Like I said, she’s the stronger of the two. I’m glad to hear you say you like her…because I like her.

That moment you mention where the boy gets out of the car broke my heart.
Good! That’s the one. David Fincher talks about how every movie should have an emotional punch in the gut. That was mine. I have one in each of my films. I’m glad you liked it.

Sevier (Adam Driver) is great, too.
Adam Driver is, in my opinion, going to be one of the most important actors of our generation, irrelevant of Star Wars. I think he’s that good. He’s that interesting. I want to make a detective movie with him really badly.

Why a detective movie?
Because I want to make a detective movie.

[laughs]
Because I’m a huge fan of Fletch. I just want to make a private eye movie.

There’s no away around it, and it pains me to believe it considering how big a fan I am of his previous films, but Jeff Nichols‘ much-anticipated Midnight Special is a disappointment. How a film that packs so much promise with its director, cast, and synopsis can leave such a flat impression is something that I’ll be mulling over during Berlinale and beyond. A story of a close-knit family with a boy who’s got special powers, on the run from a religious cult and the government, pulsates with potential. But not even the commanding Michael Shannon can save this film from being Nichols’ first major misfire.

As most disappointments often do, things start off so well. With zero exposition, we’re thrust into the action of Ray (Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton, at his understated best here) on-the-run with 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) and before the brilliant title sequence even comes up, we’ve already got a hundred questions. Why is the young lad wearing goggles? Who are these men? Why is the government, who is making this national news, after them? The mystery is instantly gripping, and even more so once the Ranch—a cult that believes Alton’s words are gospel—gets involved. They want him because they believe he’s their savior, the FBI and the NSA are after him because they think he’s a weapon, and all Roy wants to do is bring him back to his mother (Kirsten Dunst) and make sure he’s where he’s got to be on Friday, March 6th, a.k.a. Judgement Day. Oh, and the boy speaks in tongues, has telepathic connections with radio signals, and shoots blue light from his eyes.

Basically, you’d have to check your pulse if you weren’t totally sucked in by the halfway mark. But as the mystery begins to unravel further, delusions of grandeur set in. The big mystery, all those gripping question marks, amount to one big “OK, that’s it?” shrug by the end. Adam Stone’s cinematography is excellent, the performances are predictably stellar, Nichols expertly directs a couple of stand-out sequences, but the story gets lost in a vague haze of questionable decisions and a final climax utterly deflated of the emotional oomph it’s supposed to have. It has its grand familial Spielbergian flourishes, but Midnight Special ends up being disappointingly ordinary and surprisingly forgettable.

Rating:
6.5/10

If you could change your identity and start over as someone else, would you? That’s the main proposition in director Joshua Marston’s (Maria Full of Grace) third feature film, Complete Unknown. The film begins as a mystery, following a woman pretending to be someone that she’s not, with Marston taking a big gamble and revealing this information early on. After that, the film suddenly shifts from cryptic thriller to slow conversation piece, a change that might frustrate viewers if it were Complete Unknown’s only issue. It’s one thing to stop asking compelling questions, but it’s another to stop providing compelling answers. After the reveal, Complete Unknown is supposed to be about why she changes her identity, and I’m not sure if the film gives a convincing answer.

Rachel Weisz plays Alice, the mysterious woman who attends a birthday party for Tom (Michael Shannon) on a date for a newly befriended colleague. She’s the life of the party, fascinating everyone with her tales of traveling to Tanzania for 18 months where people started calling her by a different name. The only person not fascinated is Tom, who seems to recognize her as someone named Jenny from years ago.

Once he confronts her about this privately, Complete Unknown transitions into a lengthy heart-to-heart discussion that many are comparing to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. But the conversation that follows between them never gets close to as introspective as the comparison suggests.

Rating:
6/10

Directed by Peter Sollett and written by Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, Freeheld follows the true story of Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore), a New Jersey police officer diagnosed with cancer, who’s blocked by county officials from passing on her pension benefits to her partner, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page). Aiding the couple in their battle against the county is Hester’s longtime NJPD partner, Dane Wells (Michael Shannon) and a group of vocal gay rights activists. Following in the footsteps of Cynthia Wade’s 2007 documentary of the same name, Freeheld tells Laurel and Stacie’s story not as one of activism, but of love.

In a roundtable interview, I spoke to Moore and Page during their visit to San Francisco to promote the film. Freeheld is out in wide release tomorrow, October 16th.

The script has been around for a while and the film’s finally been made. What sort of changes did it undergo over that period of time?

Julianne: This time last fall, we were shooting it. There wasn’t a whole lot of time between when I received the script and when we started shooting it. For me it was all fairly recent. That being said, it came to Ellen considerably earlier. She was attached right after the documentary won the Academy Award in 2008.

Ellen, you were attached from the beginning as a producer. Did you always see yourself playing Stacie?

Ellen: Oh, yeah. My first entrance to this was to play Stacie. Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher sent me the documentary and I wept. It’s amazing. I was moved by [Laurel and Stacie’s] story. I was moved by their love, their dedication to one another. I thought what they went through was just cruel. I just feel honored to be a part of telling their story.

Julianne, you said in an interview that movies aren’t necessarily meant to change things, but to reflect changes.

Julianne: What I said was that movies don’t necessarily change culture. I don’t know if we know for sure if movies change culture but we know for sure that they reflect culture. People will sometimes say, “This movie broke totally new ground.” You know what? The ground was actually already broken, and we made a movie about it. Sometimes something will be happening in pop culture and a movie will be right there, so you’ll have this perception that maybe the movie got there first. But in reality, culture gets there first. It’s like the Supreme Court. I feel like the Supreme Court usually makes a decision on something once popular opinion has actually swung. They very rarely lead with an opinion—they’re usually following the opinion of the American people. I feel like movies are like that, too.

The Kids Are All Right came out in a time when a lot of people wanted gay marriage to be passed. It showed a relationship that was very much a marriage to many people who hadn’t seen something like that. What do you want Freeheld to reflect back?

Julianne: One of the things that’s interesting about The Kids Are All Right is that they were living in a different place, a major American urban center, living in Los Angeles. They were wealthy. One of the partners was a doctor. They didn’t have a whole lot of political strife within the world they were living in due to their socioeconomic status. That story is also fiction. Freeheld‘s story is true, so when you see Laurel and Stacie, they’re living in a much different world, the most politically conservative county in New Jersey. They’re living in a time before domestic partnership was even passed, and when it was passed, it came with this loophole that allowed the county officials to determine the benefits package. You see a personal story being told within a very different political world and the ramifications of those political decisions on that relationship. It’s ultimately about how the personal is political. What does inequality mean? It means you can’t keep your house. It means you’re not recognized as a partner.

You’ve both expressed how deeply moved you were by this story, as is anyone who’s familiar with it. Were there times during filming when you actually had to stop yourself from crying in scenes when you weren’t supposed to?

Ellen: I had those experiences, more when we finished takes. I felt like it could keep going, like the stuff at the hospital and when Stacie gets the notice that they’re no longer looking to cure Laurel. Obviously, I cannot even begin to understand or have any concept of what that experience is like, but out of care for these people and what they went through there were those moments. I hadn’t had that experience shooting a film before.

Julianne: I think a lot of people on set [had that experience] too. We’d look around and our first AD would be crying, our wardrobe supervisor. People were invested very personally in the story and moved by it, even when they were making it.

Ellen: I think too for gay people in particular, even the smaller things that other people might not notice, like the nuances of being in a closeted relationship, are emotional.

What sorts of things did you do for levity on-set?

Julianne: What didn’t we do? [laughs]

Ellen: She is always singing and dancing. It’ll blow your mind, honestly. She’s literally, up until action, singing and dancing. And then it’s like, “Action!” JULIANNE MOORE. “Action!” OSCAR-WINNING PERFORMANCE. We had instant chemistry.

Julianne: It’s hard to say it because it’s a true story and it’s obviously devastating, but we just got along so well and had a special time together. It was great to have somebody who was my partner on-screen and my partner off-screen. We both had the same goals, the same desires, and the same relationship to the story. [We wanted] to make it feel alive and illuminate Laurel and Stacie’s partnership. That was exciting for me because you don’t always know if you’re going to have the same goals with the actor you’re working with, and we certainly did.

Michael Shannon’s also a notorious prankster on-set.

Julianne: He would turn over Ellen’s chair! [laughs]

Ellen: There was a scene where every time I’d come back my chair was turned over. We call him “Shanny.” We never call him Michael.

Julianne, you’re coming off of a lengthy awards season where you were called upon to speak about Alzheimer’s quite frequently. Now you’re on a press tour talking about marriage equality and struggles for LGBT people. Is that daunting to be a spokesperson for these major issues?

Julianne: Hell yeah. It is daunting, and one of the things I keep saying to people is that I’m not an expert on either one of these subjects. I’m speaking as an actor and a person. You learn as much as you can. The great thing about being an actor is that it does expose you to things that you maybe wouldn’t have been exposed to. You have the opportunity to learn and do research to really figure it out and speak to what it means to you as a person. I always stress that neither one of these situations has been my experience. Like Ellen was saying earlier, you can’t presume to have been through something like this personally. But you do try to give voice to something that you have an opportunity to learn about.

You’re an icon to lesbian women worldwide.

Julianne: Right on. [To Ellen] See? I told you! [laughs]

You said you’d spoken to Ellen about playing a closeted gay woman. What have you learned about lesbian women and yourself in playing these roles?

Julianne: When Ellen was talking to me about her experience as a young woman coming out in Hollywood I was really flabbergasted, really stunned. This guy was like, “Come on. You know all these gay people.” But I said, “They’re old!” They all came out a long time ago. To talk to someone who had recently gone through it [was different]. When Ellen told me that she felt uncomfortable having to dress a certain way, I was like, “Really?” There’s always something else to learn. It’s worth it to hear about someone’s personal experience being discriminated against. You learn more by being told.

What was it like watching the movie with Stacie?

Ellen: I felt kind of concerned for her. I have an emotional experience watching the film. Usually, when you’re in a movie, you’re disconnected from it. You’re never going to feel what you felt when you made it. This movie totally effects me emotionally. It was special to have made it and after all these years be at the Toronto International Film Festival showing it. It’s really special to share the story. But my main thing was concern. I think we all feel concern and care for Stacie and just want her to be protected.

Julianne: She’s super sensitive too. One of the things that’s so interesting about Dane is that he still protects Stacie. In the beginning stages of our research he’d be on the phone saying, “Listen—she’s a very special girl. I love this girl very much and I want to make sure that she’ll be okay through all of this.” I was so touched that, here was this guy, standing sentry over Stacie still.

There’s no surer sign that awards season has begun than the arrival of a tearjerker like Freeheld. Based on a true story, the film depicts the final years of New Jersey police detective Laurel Hester’s life (she’s played by Julianne Moore), in which she falls in love with Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), is diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and is prohibited by the Ocean County, New Jersey county court to pass along her earned pension to Stacie, her legal domestic partner. Laurel’s battle for equal rights made national news, but she and Stacie remained each others’ top priority until the end.

More than anything, what Freeheld gets right is that it’s a love story from beginning to end. It’s about a remarkable relationship that held strong in the face of death and injustice, not the injustice itself. The movie is very romantic and more adorable than you’d expect. Its primary goal is to pay tribute to Laurel and Stacie rather than galvanize people to make change (though it does that too).

One criticism the film can’t avoid is that its structure is formulaic, which it absolutely is. The script, written by Philadelphia screenwriter Ron Nyswaner, doesn’t take any chances and presents the story without stylistic inflection. Director Peter Sollett doesn’t get very inventive with his visuals either, but that doesn’t mean the film is artless. The filmmaking and plot do just enough to support the performances of Moore and Page, both of which are monumental and powerful enough to make the movie a solid success.

The lead actors’ chemistry takes off immediately when Laurel and Stacie meet at a friendly volleyball game. Their attraction is obvious though Laurel is still in the closet as her high-standing position at the police station would surely be under threat should her narrow-minded brethren learn about her sex life (this all takes place in 2005, a much less LGBT-friendly time than 2015). Laurel and Stacie fall hard for one another despite the difficult, secretive nature of their romance and decide to apply for domestic partnership.

They move into a fixer-upper and are immediately visited by Laurel’s longtime police partner, Dane Wells (Michael Shannon), who sees Stacie working in the front yard and takes her for the gardener. Too much of the movie spends time using Shannon as a proxy for the LGBT uninformed though Wells’ arc is nevertheless true to life. With Laurel on the verge of getting the promotion of her life and the handy Stacie landing the perfect gig at an autoshop, life couldn’t be grander.

Tragedy strikes when Laurel gets cancer and is told she doesn’t have much time left. Naturally, she wants to arrange for her pension to be rightfully passed on to Stacie so that she won’t lose their dream house. Her wishes aren’t granted, however, by the county’s Board of Freeholders, who deny Laurel’s request. A courtroom battle turns into a gay rights demonstration when a loudmouth gay rights activist (Steve Carell) stages a takeover, filling the courtroom with fellow activists, essentially hijacking Laurel’s case in the name of gay marriage (Laurel’s compliant, but would rather the fight be in the name of equality). Dane valiantly protects the couple as well, but Stacie is laser focused on Laurel throughout, as their time left together is slim.

The movie, smartly, feels in the spirit of Stacie and her struggle to stay single-minded. This could have been an underdog courtroom drama or a plasticky prestige piece, and it does veer into those territories several times. But ultimately Freeheld is a soul-stirring romance. Page and Moore don’t just look madly in love with one another; they look super-duper cute together, and that’s the difference-maker that makes this story feel genuine. Stacie is a soft-spoken, repressed person, so when she learns that a full recovery for Laurel is an impossibility, she sinks deep into hopelessness. Page is a heartbreaker, crying in helpless disbelief rather than wailing at the top of her lungs. Moore’s tasteful as well, and she and Page ebb and flow nicely as Laurel and Stacie support each other.

Unlike the atrocious Stonewall from a few weeks back (which took a big ol’ ignorant dump on one of the biggest moments in gay rights history), Freeheld plays to both gay and straight audiences. Moore and Page are given free reign to act their asses off and do the true story justice, and while Sollett and Nyswaner won’t win any awards for their contributions, their two leads are shoe-ins for Oscar noms.

Ramin Bahrani makes a loud return with 99 Homes, his follow-up to the disappointingly received At Any Price. Taking his aim at the U.S. housing crisis, Bahrani tells a gripping story that extends out to a damning statement on American capitalism and the exceedingly wealthy one percent. It’s a big step towards the mainstream for Bahrani, boasting a terrific cast and a relevant, necessary subject. And even with a problematic final act, one threatening to sink the entire film, its dramatic strengths end up winning out.

From the first frames, Bahrani blatantly expresses his intentions to generate ire from viewers. Real estate shark Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) looks at a bathroom covered in blood with a body on the toilet. Carver came to evict the homeowner for defaulting on his mortgage, and the owner decided to take his own life rather than vacate. Carver doesn’t care; he tells police the man’s suicide is a selfish act, one that leaves the homeowner’s family to fend for themselves. Within minutes, Bahrani establishes the cruel, emotionless world of his film.

Carver’s next person to evict is Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield), a construction worker down on his luck. With the housing market crashing, no one has any interest in building homes, meaning little to no construction work. Due to issues with the bank, Nash loses the family home, leaving his mother Lynn (Laura Dern) and son Connor (Noah Lomax) with nowhere to go. Eventually Rick and Dennis’ paths cross again, and Rick ends up hiring Dennis to help clean out vacated homes for him. Dennis resists the idea of working for the man who kicked him out of his home at first, but the high paychecks prove to be too tempting.

Bahrani’s point, along with co-writer Amir Naderi (taken from a story by Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi), is to show the way capitalism has morphed into something monstrous. Nash represents the average hard-working American earning their own success, while Carver symbolizes the way success now defines itself as profiting off the suffering of the less fortunate. Carver’s philosophy on life leaves no room for sentiment or emotions. Dennis continually finds ways to get his family home back, something Carver finds ridiculous. “They’re just boxes,” Carver says to Nash. Bahrani uses Nash and his family to keep the human story elements at the forefront, making Carver’s soulless statements look all the more horrifying.

Garfield does a great job as Nash, giving a believable and emotional performance, but the real highlight is Michael Shannon. Playing a character written as a total villain, Shannon exudes a level of charisma that, combined with having to say most of the film’s more memorable lines, actually makes Carver enjoyable to watch. And even though he’s a cruel, unsympathetic character, his motivations and back story are fleshed out to make his behavior understandable. Carver, like Nash, simply does what he can to survive and prosper, except one of them is willing to go much further than the other to ensure their security.

Sadly, Bahrani feels the need to up the ante of his dramatic stakes, using a major plot point in the latter half to shift things into thriller territory. As the intensity builds, or at least tries to, so does the unsubtle political commentary. It’s an unfortunate move because the last thing the film needs is more emphasis. For that reason the climax falls flat, a stale effort to go out strong turning into poorly misguided melodrama.

Bahrani’s 99 Homes is still a success, even if it’s a small one. Its great cast and effective drama, at least for the majority of the film, are undeniably compelling. If At Any Price is Bahrani’s failed attempt to break into the major leagues, 99 Homes corrects that mistake.

Originally published as part of our coverage for the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.

The tag team of Bernard and CJ run wild on this episode as they talk about Denis Villeneuve’s new film, Sicario, as well as make sense of a blood-boiling argument Bernard had with a friend about the plausibility of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. Also, highlights from the roundtable interview Bernard had with Andrew Garfield, the star of Ramin Bahrani’s housing crisis drama 99 Homes. All that, plus our Indie Picks of the Week on this week’s exciting installment of the Indiecast!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:34)
• Plausibility For Dummies (10:02)
• Sicario (29:22)
• Andrew Garfield (48:03)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

99 Homes TIFF Review
Sicario Review
Victoria TIFF Review
Jafar Panahi’s Taxi Review

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With Star Wars: The Force Awakens just on the horizon, Bernard, CJ, Dustin, and special guest (and giant Star Wars fanboy) Justin Boo go in-depth about the mass anticipation of the new film as well as the feverish passion of the millions of fans of the legendary franchise. Why is there such excitement for the new trilogy when the last one was such an abomination? Also, film critic Rob Trench joins CJ and Bernard to recap the Toronto International Film Festival, from the best to the worst to the fantastic films flying just under the radar. Plus, the return of our Indie Picks of the Week!

Topics

• Indie Picks (2:13)
• Star Wars Hype (15:00)
• TIFF Wrap-Up (45:12)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

The Fool Review
Me and Earl Review
TIFF Coverage

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The styles of post-apocalyptic sci-fi and dustbowl Western collide in Jake Paltrow’s Young Ones, a tragic, imaginative story of a family struggling to survive in a dry world where water is as hard to find as virtue. Michael Shannon stars as Earnest Holm, a survivor and a farmer doing his best to raise his children Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mary (Elle Fanning) the right way, though a handsome scoundrel named Flem (Nicholas Hoult) threatens to take everything Earnest has left.

In our chat with Jake we discuss the myriad inspirations he took for the film, bringing robot dogs to life, how the film isn’t technically post-apocalyptic, the great Michael Shannon, and much more.

How long has the idea for this film been in your head? It’s pretty unique.
Jake: Oh gosh, a long time. It’s been, like, five years from beginning to now. Initially, it really started with the father-son love story and wanting to explore that. There’s a lot of my dad in the Earnest character. He died young, and I hadn’t written anything about him. I wanted to see what that would feel like. It felt sort of sweet and nice, but also dark and tragic. It started there. I reread the S.E. Hinton books–The Outsiders, Rumble Fish–and I really wanted to do a story about kids in an environment like this, sort of imagining what a science fiction book written like her would be like. I approached it like an adaptation of an S.E. Hinton science fiction story. Those don’t exist, but I was imagining that. I wanted to keep those literary devices in the movie so that it wouldn’t feel realistic, in a funny way. I feel like I was trying to find the fine line between making it naturalistic but not realistic.

There’s a fun mixture of sci-fi post-apocalypse and Western in the film that works very well.
Jake: To me, the film isn’t post-apocalyptic at all. It’s an environmental disaster, a man-made thing. It’s an extrapolation of something we’re dealing with right now in California. When you bring the politics of how we got here into it, it’s not that implausible that we could end up in a situation like that. It’s not like the entire world is in drought, it’s just this area. In the urban cities in this movie, people are falling in love with their operating systems and have perfectly functioning lives. But the people who don’t have a lot of money and are suffering the worst of these environmental calamities are the people we’re focusing on in this movie.

I love independent sci-fi movies because it forces filmmakers to be disciplined about their special effects. I love the way you implemented yours.
Jake: Thank you. We really had to prepare to ensure we could get this finished with a very low budget. At the same time, I wanted to have ILM-level visual effects, which I think we achieved.

Talk about that robot. It’s an incredibly convincing creation.
Jake: It was inspired by the Boston Dynamics robot Big Dog. When I first got the idea for the movie, I saw that video, and it had such an emotional quality without being alive. There was something about it…I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was very emotional. I got really excited about putting it in the movie, and I spent time with people at Boston Dynamics. We really did try to make it work so that Big Dog was in the movie, but they had a lot going on, so it wasn’t really possible at the time. The way we did it was, it was part puppetry and part CGI. The thing that I really wanted to achieve most was the effect where the actors could really put their hands on it and it wouldn’t all feel like it was just an animated foreground effect. We were able to do that.

It was bugging me. I kept trying to figure out whether what I was seeing was practical or CG, and it was pretty much impossible.
Jake: Thank you.

Michael Shannon and Kodi Smit-McPhee are great together.
Jake: My favorite scene is when they’re taking apart the defunct water well and they start play fighting, which is sort of very rough. That’s something that comes from my dad, and I really liked that. It’s a personal thing, and they did it so perfectly. Kodi shows how scrappy that character is, and Mike is so good at playing this compassionate tough guy. That’s probably my favorite moment between them.

I was impressed with Nicholas Hoult because he’s such a likable guy when you see him, but he plays a great villain in your film.
Jake: The character is so complex, and I think that’s a great testament to Nick. I think he made Flem infinitely more complex than he was on the page. Flem was written as a more traditional bad guy, and as we tailored it to him, he brought a complexity to it that made it much better.

You said that this film is a very personal one, a lot of it inspired by your late father. Is that a comfortable thing to do?
Jake: There’s a difference between personal and autobiographical. There’s nothing in the movie that’s autobiographical at all. But there are moments and emotions that I feel close to. When you’re making a movie, there is an element that should be personal and should be confessional. I’ve always gravitated toward those kinds of films as a fan. I just do that intuitively as a filmmaker I guess.

Young Ones is for fans of…what? Who would you recommend it to?
Jake: I like lots of different things. I wouldn’t limit it to film fans. A big part of what I built this movie from is my love of anime and manga comics. Neon Genesis Evangelion was one that always meant a lot to me. A lot of inspiration for Jerome and Ears, the girl across the border is His and Her Circumstances, which is a great anime that I really like. There are a lot of people out there that like sci-fi movies, but also find themselves surprised by these character-based things. I think our film falls into this place where you can have the experience of a genre picture, but at its core, it deals with some larger, interpersonal family issues, and not in a pandering or sentimental way at all.

Speaking of not pandering, you leave a lot to the imagination and make us work a bit as an audience.
Jake: I feel like there are certain things we rely on in certain kinds of movies that move away from authenticity. For me, as an audience member, when I see those things, it loses me on the things I do love about it. An example in this movie would be that the end of the movie isn’t Jerome and Ears getting together. That romantic experience of going across the border and meeting the girl that his father mentioned…that’s enough. It always makes me think of Citizen Kane. At the beginning, he says, “I saw a woman through the window of a subway 50 years ago, and not a month in my life goes by that I don’t think about her.” Those moments in our lives are so monumental that it doesn’t need to culminate in marriage or sex. It can just be a meeting or flirtation that stays with you for the rest of your life. For me, that has an emotional relevance that means something to me. In most movies, the reward for this boy going through all this hardship would be for him to get the girl. That’s stuff that I don’t really gravitate toward.

There’s a great visual arc to the film. At first, we’re in a dry, sun-drenched desert, but later in the movie we see an urban environment that feels like a new world.
Jake: Yes, that urban environment is to show that there’s this commercial prosperity in the state next door, that they’re not suffering the way the Holm family is. We talked about the stages of hydration within the environment. Obviously everybody is really suffering at the beginning of the film and sort of dehydrated, and that adds to this heightened emotional state. The idea is, the first stage of the water pumping is this artificial stage where one of these aqueducts has been run toward the farm, so there’s water to irrigate a small portion of the land. There’s water to bathe and water to drink, so we start to see a vibrancy in the skin and in the land they live on. But when the rain starts falling, we can start brining reed clothes into it. We follow an organic way to bring a lushness into the film.

I look forward to your next feature, but I hope we don’t have to wait so long in between!
Jake: Me too. This one took much too long. I definitely won’t be letting that happen again. I’m working on my next project now, and it’s in this same vein, but in a more urban environment. It’s around a similar time frame and has a science fiction element to it. It’s maybe in some ways even more ambitious. I hope to have it finished as soon as possible.

A tragic tale of a farmer, his children, a swindler, and a robot donkey…thing, Jake Paltrow’s Young Ones is a unique film that’ll make you smile with its inventive mixture of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and western milieus, though its characters and their melodramatic lives aren’t quite as compelling. You get the sense that Paltrow really opened his creative floodgates and poured all of the things he geeks out about onto the screen, from anime to Bergman to John Ford, a beautiful approach more filmmakers would be smart to adopt, quite frankly. Had there just been a little more discipline in the writing, the film would have been a more noteworthy work, though cult status could very well be in Young Ones‘ future.

The film is set sometime in the near future where the earth has balanced our leaps forward in technology with a crippling drought that’s rendered much of the world a veritable wasteland where starving nomads kill for jugs of water. Though the setting isn’t technically post-apocalyptic (there are thriving, lit-up cities dotting the arid landscape) our story (mostly) operates within the post-apocalyptic rubric. Top-billed star Michael Shannon plays Earnest Holm, who raises his children Jerome (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Mary (Elle Fanning) on a farm that’s barely fit to keep them alive and fed, let alone turn a profit. Their mouths and wallets are parched, and the’ve just lost the family donkey, which they used to transport bottles of booze Earnest brews and sells to keep the family afloat.

It’s dark days for the Holm family, not just because they’re scraping by, but because they’re a house divided. Earnest has a strong bond with Jerome, who soaks up his dad’s life lessons like a sponge, but Mary is staunchly defiant, her disdain for her father stemming from his sordid past. Years ago, Earnest got drunk and crashed his car, paralyzing Mary and Jerome’s mother (Aimee Mullins), who can now only walk with the assistance of a bionic spine and lives at a rehabilitation center. Though Earnest has a reputation as a good man, all Mary sees is the drunk who tore their family apart. To Earnest’s chagrin, Mary dates a handsome, motorcycle-riding scoundrel named Flem (Nicholas Hoult), who through small deceptions weasels his way into the Holm family and threatens to take everything Earnest has worked so hard to protect.

Had the film been made to stand solely on its narrative legs it would topple over in a quick minute. Though the backstabbing, secrets, and underhanded maneuvering harkens back to old-school Western melodramas, the story feels more rudimentary than classic. What gives Young Ones its real value is its style, which has cinematographer Giles Nuttgens capturing the cruel beauty of the outstretched, dry landscapes. Special effects are used sparingly and tastefully, with the Holms’ replacement for their donkey, a load-carrying robot with four long metal legs, being the most pervading visual flourish. It’s genuinely difficult to discern shot to shot whether the robot is physically there or rendered by computers (when you think it’s CGI, someone will place their hand on it), which is makes it the best kind of visual trick.

The four-legged hunk of metal is also surprisingly one of the film’s key characters. It plays an important role in the film’s most pivotal scene, but there’s more to it than that. Much like the titular donkey in Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, the robot has no inner thoughts to speak of, and is there only as an innocent, silent witness to the evils of human nature. There’s an inherent sympathy that comes with its dog-like appearance and mannerisms, especially as we see its legs buckle as it’s kicked and beaten by its owners. But unlike Balthazar, the robot gets a measure of revenge on its prime abuser (its built-in, always-on camera comes into play), though to say a thoughtless work-bot is capable of vengeance is a bit of a stretch. We may project the revenge storyline ourselves, but it’s no less satisfying.

The performances are generally very good, with Shannon anchoring the film with his stripped-down, nuanced turn as the Holms’ patriarch. He plays the gun-toting former drunk like a dormant volcano that could erupt at any moment, and while he isn’t afraid to take a life for his family (a toughness we see on full display in the film’s grisly opening moments), he also has a tender rapport with the scrappy Jerome. Smit-Mcphee, who’s subtle yet deceptively emotive, has great chemistry with Hoult, who’s a great villain despite being known to play more likable characters very well. Fanning is a fine young actress, but she isn’t done justice with the role of Mary, who feels one-dimensional and slightly objectified.

What’s most enjoyable and impressive about Paltrow’s sophomore effort is how well he blends his homages to other films into a cohesive vision. From on-screen titles dividing the film into three chapters; to the actors posing in front of a curtain and looking straight into the camera for the closing credits; to the brief glimpse of a futuristic city that recalls the kookier side of mainstream sci-fi, we see countless influences, old-fashioned and contemporary, and they’re all a treat for the eyes and ears. If the characters’ journeys were as innovative as the aesthetics, Paltrow would have had a career-defining masterpiece on his hands.

Young Ones trailer

It’s a concept we’re all familiar with: a soldier comes home from war and finds it difficult to readjust to normal life. So what is it that makes Return something we’ve never seen on screens before? In her debut feature film, Liza Johnson interestingly subverts the typically expected gender roles of this genre, giving us a strong female lead in Kelli (Linda Cardellini). With so many soldiers being women these days, it seems about time.

Clearly displaying that she appreciates just how much this topic has been dealt with, Johnson makes a point of avoiding many of the cliches we’re used to. There are no flashbacks to the war, no moments of hysterical crying or yelling – and in perhaps the bravest move of the film, no drama. Kelli is rather against talking about her time in the Middle East, a trait that we come to see as fairly unhealthy. Her girlfriends are full of questions, eager for her to open up in the belief that it will be a cathartic experience for her, but Kelli refuses to be the victim. “There were a lot of people who had it a lot worse than me,” she repeats, as though it’s something she has programmed into herself in order to get by. But when she casually says “I wasn’t raped, assaulted, or bullied, like a lot of women; I had it good,” one of the most poignant lines of the film comes almost in the form of a throwaway. Her matter-of-fact tone and the sheer lack of gravitas it’s given mean it rings with truth – this isn’t something she says for the attention, but something that is so genuine it’s barely worth mentioning. Here, in the understated simplicity and the chilling honesty, lies the beauty of Johnson’s film.

Everything about Cardellini’s performance screams muted power, and it’s done with great effect, conveying all of her emotions through a filter: a chronic detachment to the world around her. But her supporting cast are frustratingly underused, particularly Michael Shannon in the role of her husband Mike. While it’s nice to not simply see an age old story from a different perspective, the focus on Kelli becomes a little dull, making it harder to feel an emotional connection to any of the other characters. We can sympathize when Kelli seems to go through the motions of daily life in a robotic manner, but even her husband seems really quite humdrum. He’s neither great nor awful at anything, but instead entirely average. Her friends seem shallow and obsessed with trivialities to the point of irritation. Her job, and the characters that come along with it, are also tedious – but would stapling various pieces of metal to each other have been interesting before the war? It’s not really a surprise that she’s bored when she comes back; she should have been bored before she left.

It doesn’t help that Johnson’s fallback events are alcohol issues, marriage troubles and custody battles. Among well written lines, such quintessential events in a returning soldier’s life make the script seem disjointed and lacking in depth; they take something vital away from the truly moving moments, such as when Kelli spontaneously sleeps on the floor of her children’s room. There are so many of these silent, tender scenes that convey Kelli’s internal struggle far more effectively than something as predictable as her getting a DUI, but Johnson tries to force a basic progressive plot on what is otherwise an interesting dilemma. Her saving grace is the unexpected yet surprisingly believable twist in the second half, making it so much clearer to see just how hopeless Kelli’s situation is. I won’t reveal too much about it, but it’s an interesting way to bring home the despair felt by this woman – it removes the distance of her reality by making her seem more vulnerable.

Kelli is transformed by her time away – that much is clear. But we as an audience never see what life was like before she left, instead having to guess at it from her current interactions. This, paired with the two-dimensional nature of the other characters, makes it difficult to feel emotionally involved in the film; we’re often left wanting to feel more but just unable to. Return may have its flaws, but it is nevertheless a refreshing take on a sensitive topic. The problem is that no matter how powerful Cardellini’s performance is, a silent sufferer taking so much of the screen-time just doesn’t do enough to pull on our heartstrings.

Jeff Nichols’ latest film is now finally hitting the theaters after nearly a full year since its warm receptive premiere at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Mud centers on two teenage boys who end up befriending a fugitive that is looking to dodge the men who are out looking for him. Nichols elects to bring back the lead from his previous thriller (Take Shelter) Michael Shannon, but gives him a much smaller role in this film. The lead in Mud is given to Matthew McConaughey, who has been on an amazing ride of films as of late, and dominates the screen the moment he appears. This film just solidifies the fact that Jeff Nichols is a director to keep an eye out for in the future.

Mud (Matthew McConaughey) just can’t seem to catch a break. Just as he is getting settled into his new home in a boat that is stuck in a tree, the appropriately named Mud’s world is invaded by two young boys. The developing friendship is less than ideal, but both groups are sincere and honest with each other, and both have much to learn from the situation. Jeff Nichols finds a nice niche yet again with his original take on the coming of age story. Mud pulls many elements together nicely to mark a solid third film for the young director.

Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are young, poor, and best friends. The spend most of their free time working odd jobs with family members and dreaming of an easier life. They live on a river in the backwoods of Arkansas and despite their outcast appearance are intelligent and well meaning. While exploring one day, they stumble across Mud, a dirty, mysterious figure living in an unusual circumstance. The two groups decide to form a loose business relationship and the boys soon learn there might be a more dangerous side to their new friend.

Mud‘s screenplay blends a lot of nice dramatic elements and, despite some slow pacing, really hooks the viewer in. The acting is phenomenal on a lot of levels. Matthew McConaughey takes over the film the second he appears on screen. Mud looks like a cartoon character, but is portrayed with a nice subtlety that makes the audience instantly finds themselves sympathetic to his cause. He has made mistakes, but deep down is a good man. The two young friends are portrayed well, they are well meaning, but generally don’t understand the world around them. Their relationship with Mud becomes the most straight forward aspect of their life as they struggle through the tough life lessons of adolescence.

Mud suffers from uneven pacing and while the climax is thrilling and well executed, the final few minutes seem out of place compared with the themes and mood of the rest of the film. Despite some flaws, Mud is a clever film that really hits on a lot of positive notes. Jeff Nichols is steadily developing his craft, and definitely looks to be a big time director in the near future.

Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter is a gripping thriller about a man who is convinced that his dreams of an earth ending storm are a warning signs of impending doom. In almost every scene it is storming out which blend his dreams and reality together making it harder from him to tell what is real. The film has the right amount of unsettling suspense with such a genuine tone that makes it exceptionally eerie.

The opening shot of Take Shelter is of Curtis (Michael Shannon) staring up at dark clouds with yellowish rain splashing down on him. There is a storm coming or at least there is until Curtis wakes up from his dream. He is a caring father to his hearing-impaired daughter (Tova Stewart) and a loving husband to his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain).

Curtis has a vivid dream about a tornado coming toward him while his dog is barking furiously at him. After a few moments the dog snaps the chain it was tied up to and attacks Curtis, viciously biting his forearm. Curtis wakes up terrified and is sweating profusely. The rest of the day he clutches his arm now and then as if he was actually bitten.

Following that nightmare he starts acting more paranoid. He builds a fence in the backyard for his dog (who is normally an inside dog). After putting up the fence he moves on to cleaning up the old storm shelter that may not have been used for many years. He stocks the shelves of the shelter with canned soup; he is beginning to take shelter.

His dreams continue to get more frequent and start involving his daughter. In two consecutive dreams he is trying to protect his daughter from zombie-like people trying to steal her away. Each time he wakes up from these dreams his reactions get worse. First he was just sweating, then he was wetting the bed, and finally he bleeds and nearly has a seizure before waking up.

Realizing that he may have a problem, he checks out a book from the library on mental illness. But he does not stop there; he visits the doctor to try to get help. After the doctor prescribes him with some sleeping pills, he asks Curtis if he has been up to see his mother lately. It seems like an irrelevant question at first but we come to find out that his mother suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

Having just a simple shelter is not enough for Curtis. He becomes obsessed with the shelter. So much so that he takes out a bank loan in order to build an expansion to it, even hooking up running water and sewage. He borrows large tools for the project from his construction job which ends up getting him fired for doing so. His paranoia may not only cost him his job but also his family.

Michael Shannon has a breakdown scene that may be the best emotional scene of the year. His anxiety, obsession and paranoia increases with each passing scene which is played to near perfection by Shannon. His performance earned him well deserved recognition at the Independent Spirit Awards this year for Best Male Lead.

The role of Samantha must have come pretty natural to Jessica Chastain as she played a similar role as the wife and mother in the magnificent film The Tree of Life. However, this film is her role is centered on her dealing with her husband more so than her being a mother like The Tree of Life did. Overall she had an incredible year in films as she was also in The Help and Coriolanus.

Given the synopsis of Take Shelter, a man that envisions storms of apocalyptic magnitude, it took have easily took the path of laying it on thick with over the top science fiction ploys but thankfully instead it remained very conceivable. The plot may have been a little too thin for the 2 hour runtime. Take Shelter has a slow moving narrative in which the build-up surpasses the outcome. The final scene is quite satisfying though.