Reel Time

By: Ty Landis

It’s rather appropriate to call Take Shelter a zeitgeist film, something that encapsulates the current state of society today. Using film as a medium, Jeff Nichols has taken that idea and crafted it into a disturbing domestic drama about the fracturing and reconciliation of the family unit. Nichols’s last film Shotgun Stories was a realistic portrait of violence among families in a small southern town; Take Shelter gives you way more to chew on, as its take on our national anxiety disorder is both frightening and concise.

The story revolves around Michael Shannon’s Curtis, a blue collar construction worker living in a small Ohio town with his wife and daughter played by Jessica Chastain and Tova Stewart. As the film opens, Curtis starts to have horrific nightmares that plague him throughout the rest of the film. Most are congruent with one another, startling apocalyptic visions harshly detailing an oncoming storm. Nichols brings a high shock intensity to these scenes, usually leaving Curtis reeling after he wakes up.

Take Shelter generally moves along at the pace and mood one would think. Nichols eventually frames Curtis’s mental state as the film’s backbone, but it takes some time getting there.  As it unravels, it becomes less about man vs nature, and more about this uniquely observant portrait of mental illness. Shannon is the kind of actor who could handle this role in his sleep, he embodies that small town look about himself that is deftly authentic. Shannon hasn’t really been undervalued as an actor, but probably hasn’t gotten the recognition he’s deserved, his portrait of Curtis is effortlessly lived in, a catalyst for our deepest fears and reservations.

The best segments of Take Shelter take place when Nichols juxtaposes Curtis against the harsh and unforgiving skies. We’re supplied with many wide-shots throughout the film, reminding us that Curtis is never safe from his plagued visions. The script is occasionally bogged down by standard domestic melodrama, but Chastain does far more with her role than others may have. Take Shelter’s “slow burn” approach is always justified and agreeable, giving the script time to flesh itself out and gradually reveal its layers. We come to learn that Curtis’s family has some history with schizophrenia, a detail that is given just enough notice, as to not make Curtis’s mental state feel clumsy. At first glance, I was hesitant on whether there would be enough depth here , but Nichols’s script slowly rewards and offers resonance.

As Take Shelter builds towards its bleak climax, Nichols is smart enough to not show all of his cards, ending the film on a rather ambiguous and haunting note. I was instantly reminded of the final scene of A Serious Man, but Take Shelter is suggesting something entirely different, not so much a heads or tails dissection of the scene, but a communal understanding and acceptance of Curtis’s paranoia.

Grade: 4/5

By: Ty Landis

Despite its manipulated sepia tone look and indulgently hip swagger, Bellflower is a bit of a mess, albeit, one with enough raw energy to fuel a handful of  films. Its uber-overt themes of getting your heart broken equating to the apocalypse are heavy handed and perhaps too “in your face,” to amount to anything substantial. Director Evan Glodell is trying his best to mix style with substance, but the latter is far too under-cooked, serving as a hindrance to what already feels novel from the outset. Bellflower’s carefree and mildly nihilistic nature will reveal itself as nothing new to the viewer, as this type of “moodiness,” and state of mind that Glodell is striving for has been executed better by many before him. The film’s commentary on aimless and detached youth is toothless, as we routinely watch the film’s protagonist struggle with women, masculinity, etc.  Bellflower goes to some pretty dark places and projects some fierce imagery, but it’s all mistakenly stripped away. Instead of going for the gusto, Glodell plays it safe, holding back the mixture of sensitivity and rage that had been successfully prevalent throughout.

Grade: 3/5

By Tom Stoup

It’s easy to poke fun at top-of-the-world A-lister Johnny Depp for constantly taking roles involving silly hats and/or wigs and excessive makeup. He’s kind of been proving lately, however, that he requires as much to be worth the while. Even then, while his recent several years of films have certainly made money and even shattered box office records, only so very few have been of true merit. Dare I say the last great role he took on (outside reprises – two worthy, one sour – of Captain Jack Sparrow) was that of the Earl of Rochester in 2004′s “The Libertine”, incidentally a part he’d been attached to via John Malkovich for nigh a decade. So when hatless star power is really the sole draw to a picture, and the picture – though inspired by the seemingly infallible and Depp-impassioning Dr. Hunter S. Thompson – appears reliant on that star power alone, what’s left when the project is dead on arrival?

It’s not that Depp turns in a poor mark for his résumé as Thompson-circa-1960 proxy Paul Kemp, or that he doesn’t appear to be trying, for that matter. It’s more that writer/director Bruce Robinson’s adaptation is so vanilla there’s hardly any flavor for the actor to work with. There are no pitted cherries, or crushed almonds, or gummi bears! It’s not even remotely neapolitan! All that’s left for Depp to chew on are some reactionary expressions of sprightly bewilderment and a sexily assured money shot or two. As for the others, Michael Rispoli puts forth another fine supporting show and Giovanni Ribisi adds a further shade to his color wheel while the remainder of the cast, including the reliable Richard Jenkins, do little more than earn their paychecks.

But why does this movie exist? Is it “Fear & Loathing” for wimps? For the most part I think it’s trying to be shocking – and some “Loathing”-isms feel so obligatorily wedged in they can’t be intended as anything more – but who will it actually shock? Nuns? The San Juan cultures of heavy drinking, odd hallucinogenics, voodoo and cockfighting are tiredly strung out through breathless exposition, wringing them of any potential intrigue. Of course it doesn’t help that simply knowing the proceedings are based upon a Thompson work causes one to go in expecting the would-be wild subject matter. It’s a pity, since the more overt message concerns the importance of being more than fluffy filler simply designed to entertain a boring audience, yet fluffy filler is precisely what “The Rum Diary” is. And as a relevant side request, Hollywood, can we please quit using the screenwriting device of a seemingly random addition in act one “surprisingly” resurfacing to save the day in the end? Do I need to quote Robert Downey Jr.’s cook bit from “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” again?

Perhaps the most interesting point comes when an inebriated U.S. Armed Forces major at an entrepreneurial  playboy’s expensive party rattles on about the evils of Communism, his belief that “60% of negroes are controlled out of Moscow” and how he feels Cuba “needs to be bombed off the face of the planet to allow its people to live in peace.” It becomes clear to me here that Kemp’s battle between sobriety and intoxication is very much like the one between Communism and Capitalism. The tagline mentality “absolutely nothing in moderation” shows that at one extreme or another, one is apt to go off the deep end, if you will, and that moderation is quite possibly the answer. Lenin understood this. Kennedy understood this. Kemp… is learning it.

Though his voice feels widely absent, at the core of the film’s spirit is Thompson’s unique sense of journalistic integrity. To him – and this is coming from a Thompson novice, mind you – journalism means explicitly experiencing all corners of this life and bringing them to the masses free of pretense. One of the best examples I can think of fulfilling this ideal is “The People Can” by Chuck Palahniuk, for which the author descended for weeks – maybe months, maybe half a year for all I recall – beneath the waves with the crew of a submarine. It’s a hell of an article. That’s what it – yes, that “it” – is all about, yet “Diary” fails to share the experience, merely going through the motions until a dissatisfactory finale.

Like watching Clark Gregg’s “Choke” with David Fincher’s “Fight Club” in the back of your mind (y’know, speaking of Palahniuk and all), “The Rum Diary” is more a dull homage to Terry Gilliam’s “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” that happens to also star Johnny Depp. It tidily makes its points and lingers like a bad hangover. At one juncture, in reference to the innocuous pieces he’s forced to print in his doomed paper, Jenkins’ editor-in-chief advises, “There’s a thin veneer between the dream and the reality. You wake the people up, and they’re not gonna be happy.” I want to be woken up.