The current cinema, can't stop what's coming edition

9 Comments

• warren oates says:

  September 27, 2011 at 12:26 am

  Really liked the pre­vi­ous col­lab­or­a­tion between Shannon and this same dir­ect­or Jeff Nichols’ SHOTGUN STORIES. Very much look­ing for­ward to this one, even more so after your pos­it­ive review.

• PaulJBis says:

  September 27, 2011 at 7:37 am

  Hadn’t heard of this one. Judging from the descrip­tion, it sounds sim­il­ar to Peter Weir’s “The last wave” (except the abori­gin­al ele­ments). Is that the case, or I am on the wrong track?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  September 27, 2011 at 7:46 am

  @Paul: I’d say there are them­at­ic affin­it­ies, but the con­text and per­spect­ive are such that I did­n’t really think of the Weir film until you men­tioned it. But yes, it’s cer­tainly In The Tradition, if you will.

• YND says:

  September 27, 2011 at 12:15 pm

  Really dug this one as well. The mood stuck to me long after I left the theat­er. (I even hold it respons­ible for a rest­less night of sleep.) I felt like it stumbled a little as it approached the final stretch – my only gripe – but recovered in time for a strong end­ing. Terrific work all around.

• DeafEars says:

  September 27, 2011 at 1:31 pm

  In The Tradition of THE LAST WAVE is a good thing. The TRAILER for THE LAST WAVE scared the crap out of me and haunted me until I caught up with the actu­al movie. This one is high on my list.

• JC says:

  September 27, 2011 at 7:09 pm

  Apparently not good enough to topple the migh­ti­er Glee 3D Experience. 😉

• Mr. Ziffel says:

  September 29, 2011 at 12:04 am

  Looking for­ward to this. Shannon has been con­sist­ently good in everything the past few years. Who knew there were so many vari­et­ies of creepiness?

• Nathan Duke says:

  October 1, 2011 at 12:00 am

  This was one ser­i­ously unset­tling movie. I really liked SHOTGUN STORIES, but thought TAKE SHELTER was even bet­ter. I’m curi­ous to see how people read the end­ing, which has already been much dis­cussed. It seems that a num­ber of reviews have viewed it lit­er­ally. I’m not sure it’s even neces­sary to take one side or the oth­er on that front. One of the year’s bet­ter films, so far. I’m hop­ing “Melancholia” will make for a great apo­ca­lyptic double feature.

• warren oates says:

  October 9, 2011 at 1:38 am

  Saw this today and really liked it. Echoes of THE LAST WAVE for sure. Agree with Glenn’s review cita­tions of Polanski and Tarkovsky, all of the influ­ences organ­ic­ally integ­rated into the whole. Can’t wait to see what Jeff Nichols does next.
  As for the read­ing the end­ing lit­er­ally, I do. It’s simply more inter­est­ing that way. That the tragedy of the film isn’t mad­ness so much as the way that vis­ions don’t always come with instruc­tions. Seeing what he saw and being right about it (too late) ulti­mately was worse than being crazy – because he could­n’t do a damn thing to save him­self or his fam­ily any­way. Surprising and chilling as hell. If it’s just a final wish ful­fill­ment fantasy, then the film has two too many endings.