Lincoln

The photography in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” often paints our country’s 16th President in stylized obscurity, the beautiful backlighting casting Honest Abe in shadows of his own history. It’s a movie that fully embraces our American virtues, and yet for all we thought we knew about Lincoln suggests there is more to the man than the icon.

The Lincoln we see here is not the towering man with the deep, resounding voice that can carry across a battlefield. This is a Lincoln suffering from nightmares, giving piggyback rides to his youngest son, wrapping himself in an old blanket, telling cute stories with his soothing, high-pitched whisper of a voice and furrowing his brow as he deals with the impasse of war and the effort to abolish slavery. This is perhaps not the man we imagined in preschool but the man that was and the man who still portrayed an immense presence.

When screenwriter Tony Kushner (“Munich,” “Angels in America”) approached Spielberg with an adaptation of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography, it was a sprawling 500-page script on Lincoln’s life. Spielberg focuses in on the short period between April of 1864 and January 1865 when the Civil War is coming to a close, the Senate has already approved the 13th Constitutional Amendment and the Democrats in the House threaten to vote it down.

Lincoln’s battle is a powerful paradox. End the war and readmit the Confederacy and they will certainly block the law to end slavery. Fail to pursue peace and the swing votes in Congress may turn against him. And yet if slavery is abolished and done so before fighting resumes in the spring, the war is over, as the South has nothing more to fight for.  Their fight to get it passed is a war of words, not of worlds, and “Lincoln” is approached as a stately performance piece, not a war epic.

It is more theatrical than cinematic, but Spielberg does the job of emblazoning these big ideas onto the silver screen. For all its talking, “Lincoln” is a movie of action. Their Congress gets more done in two and half hours than ours did in two and a half years, and the scenes of debate and voting are invigorating moments of politics, racism, boastfulness and insight.

And because all these historical figures are in their own way larger than life, Spielberg has assembled a cast that is just as impressive. Daniel Day-Lewis is remarkable as Lincoln. At times, Lincoln is calm and without words for all the harried politicians in his cabinet. Day-Lewis seems almost detached from the scene, but he slowly builds and shows why Lincoln was so arresting. Sometimes the end to his story is a punch line, like about how a man loathed the image of George Washington, and at others he unleashes philosophical truths of equality and common sense with the greatest of ease. Unlike some Day-Lewis performances, he melds into this role and never proclaims he is acting. Sometimes he finds the best notes when he’s just being a father, child on his knee in a rocking chair and revealing his deep humanity.

Then there’s Sally Field as Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd, a frazzled, fiery woman of great hidden power. Field above all is the one who sets the film’s stakes, heaping the burden of passing the amendment with the threat of the death of their oldest son (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and her admitting herself to a mental institution. Watch Field as she greets guests at their White House party, holding up a long line to speak more candidly with some of the key Congressmen. She appears at once absent minded and in full control, figuratively shaking hands with a powerful grip but really not exerting any pressure at all.

But best of all is perhaps Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican representative from Pennsylvania. In one pivotal Congressional scene, he goes against his belief that all men are literally created equal and proclaims that all men should be equal under the law, regardless of race or, as he says to his vocal Democratic opponent, character. The beauty of Jones’s performance is that although his dialogue is eloquent and verbose language of the times, Jones can still deliver such lines with the same blunt force he does in all of his roles.

Spielberg and Kushner have put a great deal of effort into recreating every period detail as historically accurate. We get a movie of remarkable production design in stunningly authentic and old-fashioned clarity. But “Lincoln” does still feel like a movie for the modern day. He jokingly asks, “Since when has the Republican Party unanimously supported anything,” and draws startling parallels between Obama and Lincoln by observing that many Democrats viewed Lincoln as something of a tyrant.

By ending on its bittersweet note, it leaves us with the idea that some ideas and possibilities must be withheld now to achieve prosperity in the future. There may be some wet eyes as the visage of Lincoln burns powerfully in a gas lamp during a closing shot.

“Lincoln” may not always be the rousingly patriotic portrait of Lincoln we imagined, but it’s the American vision we deserve.

4 stars

Early Look: Life of Pi

There are five movies right now that seem to have the legs to go the distance and win Best Picture. “Argo” feels very modern and in love with Hollywood despite being set in the ’70s, “Silver Linings Playbook” is a warm crowd pleaser that does so much more than the average romantic comedy, “Lincoln,” with its cast, director and subject, is bound to be an iconic legacy movie, and “Les Miserables” is expected to have the theatrical spectacle from a recent Oscar favorite that the Academy will eat up.

But then there’s “Life of Pi,” a movie that feels both big and small. It’s the one movie in the bunch that has only two characters, a teenage boy and a Bengali tiger, and yet feels as though it’s an epic journey. It’s a personal love story, and yet it also has spiritual stakes. Yann Martel’s novel considers our mutual bond with nature and the belief that there is some higher power in the universe that keeps us alive and moving. That force may be called God, but in this time when religion is in fact divisive and political, I couldn’t be more excited for a movie that considers these big ideas on simple terms.

Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” opens on November 21st for the Thanksgiving holiday, and it’s a serious contender for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, a likely sweep of the technical awards and, to make a bold claim right now, what I bet will be the Best Original Score winner.

It tells the story of a boy from India named Pi (Suraj Sharma) who travels with his family to relocate their zoo. On their voyage, their ship sinks and Pi gets trapped on a life boat with a handful of animals, including a Bengali tiger. Years later, an older Pi (Irrfan Kahn) tells his story to a version of the book’s real life author, Yann Martel (Rafe Spall).

Lee spent the last four years tinkering with the visual effects required to put a visual spin to Martel’s flowing prose, including one scene where flying fish leap from the water that alone took a full year to visualize and stage. In fact, up until last month when the movie premiered at the New York Film Festival, Lee was still putting finishing touches on at least 90 visual effects shots, according to an interview he conducted with Collider.

But Lee’s real desire with adapting the story was to advance the possibilities of 3-D, which he still says is in its infancy in live action films and needs time to develop as a medium. The idea behind Pi’s ocean journey was to create a realistic world but also something that felt as though it belonged on another plane of existence. While not trying to look like a sci-fi, the need for physical and figurative depth screams 3-D, and several critics are already claiming it advances the possibilities of the technology leaps and bounds. During an In Contention podcast, Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood called it a truly beautiful film, reaching for comparisons to films such as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Gone With the Wind” to try and describe its unprecedented beauty.

The question remains whether it will perform commercially. The book is well known and loved (even President Obama extended his praise to Martel), but like “Cloud Atlas,” it belongs in the “unfilmable novel” category, and it remains a philosophical, even cult novel, not a tentpole adaptation.

Hopefully it does find an audience. Lee needs another hit after the disappointing “Taking Woodstock,” and “Life of Pi” could just be one of the more remarkable cinematic experiences of the year.

This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

All photos courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.

The Deep Blue Sea

As “The Deep Blue Sea” opens, it shows the subtitle “London” basking in a glistening lamp light glow as oboe and strings seem to weep over the top of it. The movie fades in and out on a lonely woman as though it were dozing to the sound of the hissing furnace. Based on a play by Terence Rattigan, “The Deep Blue Sea” is about a woman who loves too deeply. And by the look of even the film’s overly maudlin and melodramatic opening, Terence Davies’s movie must be too in love with itself too.

In “around 1950” London, Hester (Rachel Weisz) is living a stuffy, unhappy marriage with an older British judge, Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale), when she starts an affair with a young, chipper air force pilot, Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston).

It would be impossible not to love Freddie based on how Britishy and “smashing” he is at all times, but it seems as if the two are drawn to each other based on the movie’s musical intensity or their own effervescent glow they seem to emanate from the screen. They are so in love that we see an aerial shot of their pale, naked bodies bathed in soft blue light interlocking and spiraling in an ungainly dreamlike reverie.

Hester begins living with Freddie after a troubling visit to William’s mother’s house. William’s mother is, to put it nicely, a catty bitch who hates Hester and scoffs in a dry, hoity toity way that Hester should replace her “passion” with simply “guarded enthusiasm.”

After a few months together, Hester tries to commit suicide when Freddie forgets her birthday. She says the problem for her extreme behavior is that she loves too much and knows he can never love her the same. Her real problem is that although he has nothing to offer her personally or financially, she seems to love unconditionally without reason or specifics, and it causes her to act irrationally.

The two get into a shouting match at an art museum over little more than a dumb joke, and the movie spends the rest of the time in lonely one-shots and pallid lighting to make Hester look plain insane. You’d like them to deal with their problems in a more civil, timely way, to sleep on it at least, but these people can’t even look at each other without feeling emotionally damaged.

“The Deep Blue Sea” indulges in these overwrought emotions. Its monumental theatricality is all glossy polish and no natural finesse or realism. One critic described it as a visual tone poem, but this tone is erratic. One minute Hester is plain giddy and the next moment she’s a ghost, as if the world has ended around her.

Weisz can turn on and off the intensity and emptiness like a light switch, making her a long shot contender for an Oscar, but she renders Hester a moody, over the top romantic without a shred of the womanly intuition that her landlady Mrs. Elton demonstrates in one late scene.

“The Deep Blue Sea” tries to be lovely, but it’s love is lofty and extreme, a love most normal people don’t want anything to do with.

1 ½ stars

Arbitrage

“What’s an Applebees?” Hedge fund CEO Robert Miller is so out of touch with the world and with himself that he can deliver a hilarious line like this and still be snidely condescending. He’s the anti-hero of “Arbitrage,” a character drama about a scummy guy with a lot of money and nothing to do with it.

Robert’s (Richard Gere) company Miller Capital is currently involved in a multi-million dollar fraud scheme as he tries to arrange a merger and avoid bankruptcy. It’s clear he has to get this merger, but the dialogue is strictly jargon, and at the end of the day, his need to get money and meet the bottom line seems self-serving.

But he’s also a fraud at home. Upon coming in late to his own birthday party, he grabs a stuffed animal and a package from a servant to hand to his grandkids as he walks in the door. When his family brings out the cake, he acts humble and surprised but has a speech in his back pocket.

And that’s not the worst of it. Robert is cheating on his wife Ellen (Susan Sarandon) with a young artist named Julie (Laetitia Casta). After missing her art show and upsetting her, he proposes the two of them drive off and vacation for a few days. But behind the wheel, Robert falls asleep and gets into a wreck that kills Julie. Fearing that he’ll be revealed for having an affair, he leaves the scene and peculiarly uses a payphone to call Jimmy (Nate Parker), a young black man from Harlem, to pick him up. The detective assigned to the accident (Tim Roth) then tries to pin obstruction of justice to Jimmy as a way of getting to Robert, and his resolve as a person is tested in his effort to stay clean.

The assumption would be that by the end of this mess, Robert will either be punished, learn the error of his ways or we as an audience will come away with more fodder for the class warfare argument. But writer/director Nicholas Jarecki has made a character drama first and a thriller second. “Arbitrage” is not a message movie. It observes how a man who for so long has been operating on earning more and more and staying that way can ultimately think no differently.

Gere is on fire in one scene where he talks about a copper mine that is such a sure thing that it is practically printing money. He comes across as so effortlessly indoctrinated by the idea that he can’t even begin to question the consequences. Gere is so cool and charming that he makes it hard for us to accept how heartless his character is. We want him to succeed, and we’re wrapped up in what will happen.

“Arbitrage” loses some points for not fully developing Robert’s wife as a tragic figure in this household, and it potentially has so much to say about these one percenters but holds its tongue beyond a few comments by Roth’s detective.

And yet there’s a beautiful shot where Robert steps into an elevator and lights flicker red like a devilish halo just above his head. “Arbitrage” distances itself from this besmirched man, but it’s riveting as if we’re drawn in at the sight of the Almighty Dollar.

3 stars

Off the Red Carpet: Week of 11/7 – 11/14

We’re at the point where there’s going to be a big movie opening every week until the end of the year now, so get excited.

“Skyfall” has biggest Bond opening ever

“Skyfall” earned $86.7 million at the Box Office this weekend, sending it on its way to trounce even the inflation added record of the fourth Bond, “Thunderball.” It’s popular appeal as well as its just plain awesome quality has lead some to speculate the possibility of nominating Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Roger Deakins for their respected Oscars, as well as a push for the movie itself for Best Picture. It’s a long shot, but I would be on board.

Best Animated Short shortlist revealed

Could we soon be saying, Oscar Winner Maggie Simpson? The shortlist for the Best Animated Short category was revealed last week, and it includes “The Simpsons” short “The Longest Daycare” and the lovey Disney short “Paperman.” The Pixar short film this year that screened before “Brave,” “La Luna,” was nominated and lost last year. But I can guarantee you now that the little underdog movie no one’s heard of and no one will see will almost definitely win this category. Here’s the full list: (via In Contention)

“Adam and Dog”

“Combustible”

“Dripped”

“The Eagleman Stag”

“The Fall of the House of Usher”

“Fresh Guacamole”

“Head over Heels”

“Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare'”

“Paperman”

“Tram”

Christoph Waltz in Best Actor race

I said last week that for some reason people already want to count “Django Unchained” out of the race before anyone’s even seen it. Why no one would consider Christoph Waltz owning “Django” just like he did “Inglourious Basterds” is beyond me, but the difference this year is that he’s being pushed for the Lead Actor race now rather than supporting. Yes, it’s a crowded field, but he was just that good before, and I don’t see why he can’t be again. This also means that Leonardo DiCaprio and even Samuel L. Jackson are people to keep an eye on in the Supporting race. (via In Contention)

Image Credit: The Hollywood Reporter

The Hollywood Reporter Airs Annual Actor Roundtable

Each year The Hollywood Reporter puts together an extended interview roundtable with a collection of actors, usually Oscar hopefuls for that year. Last year they interviewed George Clooney, Viola Davis, Christopher Plummer, Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, and this year they’ve interviewed Jamie Foxx, Matt Damon, Denzel Washington, Richard Gere, Alan Arkin and John Hawkes. All six are potential Oscar candidates for acting, three more likely than the others, but their discussion veered much more intellectual. They talked acting on stage, what they would do if they couldn’t act, family and whom they admired. It’s a stirring hour-long discussion between smart actors being very candid in a setting you won’t see anywhere else. (via The Hollywood Reporter)

Gurus ‘O Gold released

The Gurus ‘O Gold have been my go to barometer for Oscar predictions for the last few years. Collectively, they are probably better at anticipating the awards and forecasting changes than any one of them individually. This is their first time forecasting the major categories this year since Toronto. Things are bound to change as a few other movies set in and are seen by the public, but the universal consensus right now is unsurprisingly “Argo,” followed closely by TIFF winner “Silver Linings Playbook.” The surprise I see in the list is the inclusion of “Flight” in 10 spot and “Moonrise Kingdom” on the outs. 10 is probably a generous number for nominees anyway. Take a look at the full list if you’re like me and love charts and spreadsheets and stuff, and avoid it if you think it has the potential to suck all the fun out of the Oscars. (via Movie City News)

Will Best Picture match Screenplay?

A blogger at “Variety” observed that last year was a surprising anomaly in the trend for nominees for Best Picture and Best Original or Adapted Screenplay. The movie with the BP nod always gets the screenplay nod, with historically very few exceptions. Last year alone matched the last 10 years in terms of gaps between the two categories, and it’s worth noting that this year may go the same. “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Master,” “Amour,” “Django Unchained,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and “The Sessions” are all questionable nominees for Best Picture, and that’s just listing the front runners in the screenplay races. (via Variety)

Ben Affleck to receive “Modern Master Award”

For a guy gunning for an Oscar for Best Director with a film set in the ‘70s, it’s got to feel good to win an award called the “Modern Master Award” at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Ben Affleck will receive the award on January 26, conveniently not long before the Oscar ceremony itself. (via The Race)

Week 5 Predictions Continue reading “Off the Red Carpet: Week of 11/7 – 11/14”

Rapid Response: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

There are a lot of people who enjoy Studio Ghibli films, but a surprising number of them would probably say they don’t much care for Anime, if they can even claim to have really seen it, and I would likely be one of them.

Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” treads that line between Japanese Disney masterpiece and “Dragonball Z” territory more than any of his other films, mainly because it’s based on Miyazaki’s own seven volume manga of the same name. It’s Miyazaki’s second film and his first under the Studio Ghibli name, and although it has the hand-drawn visual splendor and establishes most of the dominant environmental themes that would carry through the rest of his films, it’s an action heavy movie most closely comparable to “Princess Mononoke” or “Howl’s Moving Castle,” lacking the sense of humor and whimsy that made me and so many others love him.

The story is a bit of an apocalyptic mess. For a thousand years since modern day, the human race has been threatened by toxins from the Sea of Decay, an ever growing ecology of monstrous bugs and poisonous pollens that threatens to engulf the whole planet. Nausicaa is the princess of a peaceful safe haven powered by windmills, and her gifts with animals teach of patience and resolve but also a love for nature. She moves about magically on a rocket glider, clinging to it in a pommel horse pose and emerging in and out of mountains and seas of clouds. She realizes that nature itself is not toxic, humans are, and the obvious metaphor that pops up is that when you attack one insect, a swarm of others become enraged and nature destroys you.

These naturalistic ideas are years ahead of their time for an ’80s film, as are of course the visuals. Some of the early images in one destroyed village or all those in the depths of the planet are so foreign from anything on Earth that to have come from one man’s pen and paper is astounding. Miyazaki makes images of towering scope and depth that would be virtually impossible in a live-action film, like the ravenous ohmus with golden feelers, glowing red eyeballs and enormous layers that make it look like a steampunk beetle.

Nausicaa herself is a wonderful heroine. She’s the one youthful, likeable and multi-dimensional figure in the movie, whereas most of the other humans are destructive forces driven to violence by ignorance. They’re not completely villainous in the way you see with most kids movies, but they’re part of an elaborate war of cataclysmic explosions and firefights. The film can get tiring, and you long for “Nausicaa’s” quieter moments that, although they would be beyond the kids, offer some adult magic.

Flight

“Flight” is a stirring, suspenseful and even hurtful portrait of alcoholism, but it is studio filmmaking that takes us for a ride, proving that some people need to embrace the edge to even stay upright.

“Flight” proves this so strongly in an early action scene that would befit “United 93.” Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) is a pilot who has just taken off into rocky, severe turbulence. He pushes the plane past its speed limits to break out of the storm into clear skies, but all the danger is necessary to stay safe. The twist is, he’s drunk as a skunk. He stayed awake the entire night in bed with one of his beautiful flight attendants and capped off the morning with some hits of cocaine, his way of instantly beating a hangover where an aspirin won’t do.

But nearing descent, the plane suffers a critical mechanical failure, and Whip executes a daring maneuver, turning the plane upside down to counter the rapid decline and carry into a glide. In the inevitable crash, only six of the 102 people onboard are killed, and Whip is hailed as a hero.

Whip’s dilemma is that if he were to embrace his heroic side by basking in the press, it would soon be revealed that he’s an addict and that he may have been responsible for the accident. It doesn’t matter that the plane was found to be faulty, and the news that no other pilot put through the same simulated conditions somehow hits a hollow note. What’s important is that we trust him and that he can trust himself.

Denzel Washington’s nuanced performance convinces us that Whip is a man in control and fully aware of his vices. He boldly asserts to his girlfriend Nicole (Kelly Reilly), another addict, that he chooses to drink and that he doesn’t need AA because he is the pilot charting his own course. We sympathize with Whip because few actors other than Washington could appear so effortlessly confident, and yet his actions remain questionable, his emotions remain guarded and his personality remains a mystery.

The movie is directed by Robert Zemeckis, making “Flight” the first live-action feature he’s directed since 2000’s “Cast Away.” Like that film, it’s about a man getting to know himself, isolated from the people he cares about, but it tells it all through moments of state of the art special effects and action. The flight scene in particular is done with a firm hand and clear eye, not the jumbled images of a man impaired. It provides the metaphor of being fully aware of our downward spiral and an inability to stop it.

In the same way Whip softens the blow of the crash, “Flight” succeeds brilliantly in telling this layered story with moments of levity and excitement. John Goodman is hilarious as an oafish drug dealer just as controlling of his reckless behavior as Whip. Rarely has a scene in which the hero of a drama hits rock bottom been this funny, but Goodman helps it hit just the right note.

Robert Zemeckis’s recent animated films have been a mixed bag to put it politely, but “Flight” is a wonderful return to form with a great story and performance at its core.

4 stars

Skyfall

After a 50 year run, “Skyfall” is the best James Bond movie in years, if not the best ever made. It is the first that has made us ask about Bond’s past and future and the first to make us realize the game has changed but that we’d be nowhere without him.

Sam Mendes picks up the franchise after the unfortunate hiccup that was “Quantum of Solace,” a movie that made Bond into a forgettable Jason Bourne. What he brings to the table is style mixed with the silly and substance mixed with the smarm. It’s a Bond movie as ludicrous and fun as the previous but going beyond the grittily realistic norm established by “Casino Royale.”

Its magnificent opening motorcycle chase along rooftops has Bond (Daniel Craig) pursuing a man who has stolen a hard drive containing the identities of all the MI6 operatives. The two leap onto a moving train upon which Bond tears off the back end of a trolley with a bulldozer and leaps aboard, adjusting his suit ever so justly as he does. As they fight, M (Judi Dench) orders her other agent Eve (Naomi Harris) to take a risky sniper shot that hits Bond instead of the target.

Presumed dead, Bond spends the next few years off the map “enjoying death,” going through the motions of a freewheeling lifestyle with cold detachment. It’s only when a cyber terrorist attack against MI6 hits that Bond decides to return. His new target is Silva (Javier Bardem), a former computer hacker for MI6 with a vendetta against M. His presence tests whether Bond or M are both fit for duty, allowing us to finally reach these characters on an emotional level without sacrificing Craig’s biting wit or Dench’s spitfire attitude.

If there’s one thing to notice about “Skyfall,” it’s that Bond has never looked better. Director of Photography Roger Deakins, a man with nine Oscar nominations and still no victory, is possibly the best cinematographer alive today. He’s made a recent shift from film to digital, and he has taken the dark shadows and sharp colors usually found in a David Fincher movie and applied it to the classical look of 007. In one early fight scene in Shanghai, he blends space, depth and color to create a beautiful battle of silhouettes that looks as good as anything I’ve seen this year. And later when the film takes us to a deserted villa on the Scottish countryside, the unreal lighting and deep focus of Javier Bardem illuminated in front of a burning building holds up as instantly iconic. It’s a drop-dead gorgeous movie that just makes the whole experience ignite.

This blending of aesthetics matches the high psychological stakes Mendes is imposing. If “Skyfall” had forgotten to be an action movie first, the super serious talk about whether the world still needs Bond might get as tiresome as a discussion about sending Grandma to a nursing home. But screenwriter John Logan establishes a high-tech cyber scheme that still finds ways for Bond to be practically and physically intuitive. The computer hacker one step ahead of the good guys is ground well tread by other recent action movies, but never Bond. Somehow he fits in as smoothly as though he were still at the poker table.

Much has already been said about Judi Dench finally giving a hefty performance as M that befits her talents, but I’m more interested in the juicy work by Bardem. Most Bond villains have a physical disability designed to distinguish them, but Bardem makes do on his snakelike sexuality that in a delicious scene briefly tests Bond’s own. His presumed homosexuality is in its own way another mixed bag of political incorrectness, but in screen villainy terms it’s the absolute tops.

Mendes takes great pains to treat such a terrific villain with stealthy patience. The moment in which Silva is introduced is a wonderful long take that watches Bardem slowly saunter up to Bond as he tells a story about how catch rats. In wide shots, striking composition and a steady hand, Mendes provides style and flair uncommon to the gritty realism of contemporary action pictures.

“Skyfall” really is Bond reinvented. It takes the uncouth, rugged James Bond newly discovered in “Casino Royale” and molds him into a man with depth and class. “Youth does not guarantee innovation,” as Bond says in one scene to Q, and as one of the finest movies of the year, it’s clear this 50 year old franchise feels as good as new.

4 stars

Take Shelter

The usual through line for family movies about mental or physical disabilities involves the struggle of the family to care and love for a disabled person. “Take Shelter” however considers that were a father to suffer a mental illness, he may lose his masculinity and his ability to care for his family. For all this to come in a riveting, often surreally brilliant psychological thriller shows the intense bravura filmmaking at play in Jeff Nichols’s film.

Like Nichols’s first film “Shotgun Stories,” “Take Shelter” finds depth and character in its vivid slice of Americana living. Michael Shannon plays Curtis, a construction worker living in rural Ohio with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their deaf daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart). They’re a happy family, and although they seek surgery to correct their daughter’s hearing, they do so not because they can’t manage but because she’s not playing with the other kids as much as she could be. Curtis and Samantha’s love for her is summed up in one beautiful moment as they watch her sleep. “I still take off my boots so I won’t wake her up,” Curtis says. “I still whisper,” Sam adds.

But Curtis feels his capacity to be the father he should be is in jeopardy. He starts having dreams in which a storm of biblical proportions is nearing, and it causes his loved ones to attack him. In one dream his dog ferociously bites his arm, and Curtis cages him outside. In another his best friend Dewart (Shannon’s “Boardwalk Empire” costar Shea Whigham) fights him, and Curtis gets him transferred to a different crew at work.

Nichols seamlessly weaves special effects into this simple landscape, blurring the lines between what Curtis perceives and what is really in front of him. For him, dark, rippling clouds are always looming, birds spiral in hypnotic patterns and the rain and lightning is so dense that it seems to engulf us.

The clever aspect of the screenplay is that the terrors don’t just surround Curtis figuratively. His daughter’s disability already gives him pause, but we learn before long that his mother too has spent years of her life in a nursing home suffering from schizophrenia. Is Curtis really suffering a spell, or is he causing his own distress? The movie’s lack of melodrama and careful ambiguity keep us rapt and guessing.

But the physical shelters Curtis builds to block out the imagined ones start to have an impact on his home life in ways he was precisely trying to prevent. When he takes out a loan and uses equipment from work to expand a tornado shelter in his backyard, “Take Shelter” wonderfully pits Curtis’s mentality against his way of life. It’s a powerful metaphor captured in a realistic story.

Chastain’s womanly realism and Shannon’s earthy substance elevate “Take Shelter” to that of an indie Americana masterpiece. Shannon plays much of the film in more reserved moments, but he shows as much intense, insane, outrageous and unbridled range as any actor today or ever. He has a solid, stoic face but eyes that show his mind quivering. His pensive gaze and late night conversations with his wife seem to ask that amidst the home he knows so well, he can’t really be alone, can he?

4 stars

Bond at 50: A look back at Sean Connery classics

The James Bond franchise turns 50 years old this year, but the thing about James Bond is that he never really ages, does he?

For 23 movies now, the 007 series has survived not on consistent quality but on consistent character. It’s a genre unto itself, one that branded itself from the beginning and never looked back.

Although Bond never aged, he became a mirror of the times as well as a look back at a simpler one. When “Star Wars” was the new hit, Bond went to space. When Japan championed Bond, Bond went overseas. When he needed a makeover, Bond started from scratch. When a new generation of video games was born, he became a First Person Shooter staple.

I first knew Bond as Pierce Brosnan. He came to the series after a six year gap in the franchise (the longest in its history). This Bond had to be reinvented to find his place after the Cold War. Because although the 007 movies were never political, they let us know who our enemies were and just how dangerous a nuclear threat could be. Bond put minds at ease in knowing that there was a hero this cool protecting the world.

You can first see these traces in “From Russia With Love,” a movie that very boldly asserts the presence of a secret shadow government named SPECTRE. Before Bond even shows up, we’re taken to an absurd training facility where they use “live targets too.” The Russian Adonis Grant was precisely the nonchalant face that could so easily be the enemy in disguise. What’s more, this film introduced the absolutely brilliant screen villainy that was SPECTRE’s Number One, a faceless entity who stroked a white cat with ominous delicacy.

As modern as these fears were, Bond first belonged to the classical age of Old Hollywood. Had “Dr. No,” “From Russia With Love” or “Goldfinger” come out after 1967, the campy violence and lack of R-rated sex might’ve made the Bond franchise irrelevant.

But here Sean Connery proved to be an update on the Cary Grant archetype. Connery became an instant star after “Dr. No” because although he had a cool demeanor and suave fashion sense, he also had a steely glare that let you know when he meant business. He wasn’t all camp the way Roger Moore or Brosnan was. He had the power to take who was essentially a blonde Hitchcock girl and turn her into a sex icon. Continue reading “Bond at 50: A look back at Sean Connery classics”