Michael Shannon

BUG: the “paranoid” in paranoid thriller

by
Photo caption: Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. We’ve examined the neo-noir thriller To Live and to Die in L.A., and today’s choice is the psychological horror movie Bug. We could also describe Bug as a psychotic horror movie.

Ashley Judd plays Agnes, a woman who seems well-balanced but has been made vulnerable by circumstance. She has been shattered by the most profound family tragedy. She’s justifiably terrified of her monstrous estranged husband Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.), and she’s unsettled by being on the run from him and in an unfamiliar environment; there are signs that Jerry is closing in on finding her. She’s found herself living so far from a regular, stable life that’s she’s become profoundly alienated.

Ashley Judd and Lynn Collins in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

Agnes is street-wise and, in normal times, she could handle herself, but she’s just being overwhelmed by too much shit. She needs some comfort and acceptance, some of which she finds in a new pal R.C. (Lynn Collins), although R.C. enables Agnes’ tendency to get too wasted.

But Agnes could also use some male companionship and physical security and protection. She meets Peter, who, in contrast with Jerry, is civil, kind and not abusive. He’s socially awkward, but he seems really safe and non-threatening.

As soon as they bond and start sharing the same motel room, Peter believes that he has found, first one aphid, and then a slew of them. More alarmingly, Peter is attaching the bugs to a conspiracy theory. Is Peter paranoid, delusional, hallucinating, or is it really a conspiracy? Friedkin and the Tracy Letts screenplay start to play with movie genre conventions.

Agnes is in a place where she is inclined to join Team Peter, and she starts seeing thing Peter’s way. Unfortunately, the two become ever more unhinged, begin deploying vast quantities of aluminum foil and, finally, go to EXTREME LENGTHS.

Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

Friedkin’s final shot messes with us one last time. Memorably.

What happens in this story is a real thing, called folie à deux, shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder. The person whose delusions become shared by the second person is called the inducer, which gives a new, chilling meaning to the phrase “he drove her crazy“.

Michael Shannon is an actor with an uncommon gift for projecting creepiness. He shot Bug just a year before he broke through in Jeff Nichols’ brilliant indie Shotgun Stories and five years before Nichols’ Take Shelter. Writing about Take Shelter, I described Shannon’s character’s behavior “which starts out quirky, becomes troublesome and spirals down to GET ME OUT OF HERE.”

Ashley Judd in BUG. Courtesy of Lionsgate.

But Bug really depends on Ashley Judd’s performance as Agnes. After all, we can accept that Shannon’s Peter is just balls-out wacko, but Judd has to make us believe that an absolutely sane person can become completely insane on 48 hours. She’s dazzling here. I also recommend Mick LaSalle’s fine review of Bug, focusing on Ashley Judd’s performance

Bug can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube.

Stream of the Week: MUD – a big dose of realism about love

by
MUD

In the brilliant drama Mud, two Arkansas boys venture onto a river island and discover a man named Mud (Michael McConaughey) hiding from the authorities. Ellis (Tye Sheridan of The Tree of Life) is a hopeless romantic, consumed by an ideal view of love. His more hard-eyed buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) is on the outlook for cool stuff. Both are ready for the excitement of a secret adventure.

Mud is another triumph for writer-director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter). The story has aspects of a boyhood adventure and of an escape thriller which hook the audience. But Mud is, at its heart, a coming of age story in which Ellis (primarily) gets a big dose of realism about love and human constancy.

Neckbone doesn’t have many illusions about human nature. His parents aren’t in the picture, and he lives with his wacky uncle Galen (Michael Shannon) in a trailer. Neckbone has a knack for immediately getting to the core of situation by bargaining an errand for a pistol or asking “Didja feel her titties?”.

A step down from Neckbone’s trailer lifestyle, Ellis lives on a floating shack tied to the riverbank. His parents are together, but, it seems, not for long. Somehow, Ellis believes in an ideal and forever love. There are many relationships for Ellis to observe: his parents’ troubled journey, the sacrifices Mud makes for his lover (Reese Witherspoon), the mysterious relationship between Mud and another houseboat dweller (Sam Shepherd), a rich man’s (Joe Don Baker) own obsession with his sons, his partnership with Neckbone and Ellis’ own first foray into dating. It’s all a bigger mouthful than Ellis was expecting.

The two kid actors are great. So are McConaughey, Shepherd, Witherspoon, Baker and Nichol’s favorite actor, Shannon. Mud primarily succeeds because Nichols has created compelling characters and woven a top-rate story, both gripping and thoughtful. I listed Mud as one of the best movies of 2013. You can stream Mud on Amazon (free on Prime), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; it’s also available on DVD from Netflix.

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

by

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA.
Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of the 2016 festival. The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016.  Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

WHAT THEY HAD: caring for Mom and a resisting Dad

by

WHAT THEY HAD
Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank star as Ruth and Bridget Keller in WHAT THEY HAD, a Bleecker Street release. Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street

In the family drama What They Had, two siblings (Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon) face their mom (Blythe Danner) sinking into Alzheimer’s, and their father (Robert Forster) refusing to take action. To heighten the pressure, the out-of-town daughter wants to give the old folks more slack than does the local son. He’s been dealing with this situation up close, and he’s fed up. The dad is used to always being in charge, and he doesn’t cope well with needing help.

Despite the subject, What They Had is not a depressing movie, mostly because of the sunniness of Danner’s character. This is a character-driven story that benefits from this stellar cast. This is the first feature for writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, and she delivers an authentic and well-crafted story.

I saw What They Had at Cinequest. Here’s a clip.

Cinequest: WHAT THEY HAD

by

WHAT THEY HAD
Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank star as Ruth and Bridget Keller in WHAT THEY HAD, a Bleecker Street release.  Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street

In the family drama What They Had, two siblings (Hilary Swank and Michael Shannon) face their mom (Blythe Danner) sinking into Alzheimer’s, and their father (Robert Forster) refusing to take action.  To heighten the pressure, the out-of-town daughter wants to give the old folks more slack than does the local son.  He’s been dealing with this situation up close, and he’s fed up.  The dad is used to always being in charge, and he doesn’t cope well with needing help.

Despite the subject, What They Had is not a depressing movie, mostly because of the sunniness of Danner’s character.  This is a character-driven story that benefits from this stellar cast.  This is the first feature for writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, and she delivers an authentic and well-crafted story.

I saw What They Had at Cinequest.  An October 18, 2018 release is planned.  Here’s a clip.

Movies to See Right Now

by

Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell in THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI

Don’t forget to plan to attend Cinequest in San Jose and Redwood City from February 17 through March 11. My festival preview will be online this weekend.

I just watched the splendid Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri again, this time with The Wife.  Before the Oscars, you’re going to want to see Three Billboards and The Shape of Water.   (I’ve also written If I Picked the Oscars – before the nominations were announced.)  Here are the best movie choices in theaters this week:

  • The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro’s imaginative, operatic inter-species romance may become the most-remembered film of 2017.
  • Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a powerful combination of raw emotion and dark hilarity with an acting tour de force from Frances McDormand and a slew of great actors.
  • Steven Spielberg’s docudrama on the Pentagon Papers, The Post, is both a riveting thriller and an astonishingly insightful portrait of Katharine Graham by Meryl Streep. It’s one of the best movies of the year – and one of the most important. Also see my notes on historical figures in The Post.
  • Pixar’s Coco is a moving and authentic dive into Mexican culture, and it’s visually spectacular.
  • Lady Bird , an entirely fresh coming of age comedy that explores the mother-daughter relationship – an impressive debut for Greta Gerwig as a writer and director.
  • I, Tonya is a marvelously entertaining movie, filled with wicked wit and sympathetic social comment.

Here’s the rest of my Best Movies of 2017 – So Far. Most of the ones from earlier this year are available on video. Here’s another current (and Oscar-nominated) choice:

  • Call Me By Your Name is an extraordinarily beautiful story of sexual awakening set in a luscious Italian summer, but I didn’t buy the impossibly cool parents or the two pop ballad musical interludes.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the actor Michael Shannon’s breakthrough film, Shotgun Stories. The first of director Jeff Nichols’ “Arkansas Trilogy”,  Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating 31 Days of Oscars, so we have many good choices of movies that often play on TCM. My choice this week is one of the great American political movies – Network playing on February 24. Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar winning original screenplay is both bitingly satirical and frighteningly prescient. Its leads, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway both also won Oscars, as did Beatrice Straight for Supporting Actress. Director Sidney Lumet and five others from the cast and crew were nominated.

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

Peter Finch’s iconic monologue in NETWORK

DVD/Stream of the Week: SHOTGUN STORIES – Michael Shannon’s breakthrough movie

by

SHOTGUN STORIES

I am celebrating the great Michael Shannon this week by recommending writer-director Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories. Nichols followed Shotgun Stories with Take Shelter and Mud, which together constitute his “Arkansas Trilogy”.  Shotgun Stories was also the breakout film for Nichols’ favorite leading man, Shannon, who has since gone on to Boardwalk Empire, The Ice Man, 99 Homes, Frank & Lola, Nocturnal Animals (Shannon is brilliant but the movie sucks) and, of course, the current Oscar favorite, The Shape of Water.

Shotgun Stories opens with three brothers learning about the death of their no good father. He had abandoned them and their mother in poverty – and was such an indifferent father that he named his children Son, Boy and Kid. After walking away from his family, he found religion and started another, more prosperous, family with another set of three sons. The three older sons crash the funeral to express their bitterness, and it becomes clear that the two sets of brothers are headed for a clash.

Shannon plays the oldest brother, who has been forged into stony strength and determination by deprivation and long-smoldering resentment. Nichols uses that resentment to light a fuse that burns fitfully but inexorably for most of Shotgun Stories’ 92 minutes.

Shotgun Stories ranked #7 on my Best Movies of 2007.  Shotgun Stories is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix and iTunes.

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

by

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA.
Photo courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, so this week’s video pick comes from the program of last year’s festival.  The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is. Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl. Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef. He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out. Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far. She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled? A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement. Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional. There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth. Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies. I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity. But, at its heart, it’s a romance. Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either? We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in May 2016 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. After a brief and tiny theatrical release in December which did not reach the Bay Area, Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

DVD/Stream of the Week: LOVING – the love story that made history

by

LOVING Credit: Ben Rothstein/Focus Features
Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in LOVING. Credit: Ben Rothstein/Focus Features

The landmark 1967 US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia overturned state laws that banned interracial marriage. Loving is the story of the real couple behind that ruling, and it’s a satisfying love story of two modest people who would rather not have been forced to make history.

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton convincingly bring the lead characters to life. As the more vibrant character, Negga is especially winning. Edgerton is just as good as he plays the stolid and far less demonstrative husband.

Marton Csokas, with his pitiless, piercing eyes, is remarkably effective as the Virginia sheriff dead set on enforcing Virginia’s racist statute in the most personally intrusive way. Too often, actors seem to be impersonating Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night when they play racist Southern sheriffs, but Csokas brings some originality to his performance.

Loving is directed by one of my favorites, Jeff Nichols of Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud (which he calls his “Arkansas Trilogy”). Nichols specializes in leisurely paced dramas that evoke their settings in the rural South. Nichols’ languid style works well in telling stories that have moments of shock and violence. However, there is no dramatic courtroom face off or thrilling high point as we watch these people live their workaday lives, so Loving drags a bit in places. Nevertheless, Nichols does an excellent job of depicting the ongoing dread of racist terror that these people lived under.

Michael Shannon, who owes his career breakthrough to Nichols’ Shotgun Stories and stars in his Take Shelter and Mud, shows up in a sparkling cameo as a LIFE magazine photographer. If you perform a Google image search for “Richard Mildred Loving”, you’ll find the real LIFE photos, which make it clear that Nichols went to great lengths to make the characters and the settings look very, very much like the Lovings and their environment. I don’t need “lookalikes” in a historical movie, but the makeup and wardrobe on Edgerton and Negga (and especially Richard Loving’s mother) are remarkably close to the real people. And the scenes at the drag race and on the Loving’s sofa are recreated in almost chilling accuracy.

I studied Loving v. Virginia, along with other major civil rights and individual rights cases, in law school in the mid-1970s . Then, the idea that a government could outlaw a marriage between people of different races (and even the word “anti-miscegenation”) already seemed ridiculously obsolete and perversely quaint. But I hadn’t realized that the ruling in Loving v Virginia was only 8 years old at the time I studied it. California had such a law, too, which wasn’t repealed until 1948, and I have a friend whose Filipino and Mexican-American parents were kept from marrying by that statute.

History is made by real people. Loving is both good history and a watchable personal story. You can watch on DVD from Netflix and Redbox or stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: FRANK & LOLA – Bad Girl or Troubled Girl?

by

Imogen Poots with Michael Shannon in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots in FRANK & LOLA. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

The absorbing neo-noir romance Frank & Lola opens with a couple lovemaking for the first time – and right away there’s a glimmer that he’s more invested than she is.  Soon we’re spirited from Vegas to Paris and back again in a deadly web of jealousy.

Lola (Imogen Poots) is young and beautiful, a lively and sparkly kind of girl.  Frank (the great Michael Shannon) is older but “cool” – a talented chef.  He is loyal and steadfast but given to possessiveness, and he says things like, “who’s the mook?”.

In a superb debut feature, writer director Matthew Ross has invented a Lola that we (and Frank) spend the entire movie trying to figure out.  Imogen Poots is brilliant in her most complex role so far.  She’s an unreliable girlfriend – but the roots of her unreliability are a mystery – is she Bad or Troubled?  A character describes her with “She can be very convincing”, and that’s NOT a complement.  Poots keeps us on edge throughout the film, right up to her stunning final monologue.

Shannon, of course, is superb, and the entire cast is exceptional.  There’s a memorable turn by Emmanuelle Devos, the off-beat French beauty with the cruel mouth.  Rosanna Arquette is wonderful, as is Michael Nyqvist from the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies.  I especially liked Justin Long as Keith Winkleman (is he a namedropping ass or something more?).

Frank & Lola has more than its share of food porn and, as befits a neo-noir, lots of depravity.  But, at its heart, it’s a romance.  Is Lola a Bad Girl or a Troubled Girl? If she’s bad, then love ain’t gonna prevail. But if she’s damaged, can love survive THAT either?  We’re lucky enough to go along for the ride.

I saw Frank & Lola in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival.  I liked it more than most and put it on my Best Movies of 2016. After a brief and tiny theatrical release in December which did not reach the Bay Area, Frank & Lola is now available to stream on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.