Chicago's Michael Shannon shines in 'Shelter'
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Take Shelter'</b>
"Take Shelter," Jeff Nichols' art house take on the Hollywood disaster movie, features an intricately subtle, brilliantly nuanced performance by Chicago actor Michael Shannon as a blue-collar family man who doesn't know if his visions of an apocalyptical storm are the result of precognition or mental illness.
He plays Curtis LaForche, who manages a construction drilling rig in Ohio. His wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and deaf, 6-year-daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart) live with him in relative bliss and happiness.
Until dreams of an approaching storm torment his nights and convince him to take out a loan he can't afford to build and stock an underground shelter without his wife's knowledge or approval. Talk about storms.
Shannon, who starred in Nichols' earlier film "Shotgun Stories," clearly shows us a man of action taking steps to protect his family; yet we see the doubt in his eyes that he might have inherited his mother's schizophrenia, and that could be at the core of his anxieties.
"Take Shelter" is not a movie for viewers who like things explained and spoon-fed. Some critics have suggested the story is a metaphor for America's families threatened by an unstable world about to destroy them, physically or economically.
The real question remains: Are the dreams a portent or the manifestation of a malfunctioning mind? Cleverly, Nichols wants it both ways, and makes it work.
<b>"Take Shelter" opens at the Chicago Century Centre, Highland Park Renaissance Place and the Evanston Cinearts 6. Rated R for language. 120 minutes.</b> ★ ★ ★
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Tucker and Dale vs. Evil'</b>
At least half the reviews for Eli Craig's wacked-out "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" should include the phrase "comedy of terrors," because that's the perfect description for this cleverly conceived inversion of a classic predatory hillbilly horror film.
A group of none-too-bright college students runs across scruffy Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and scruffier Dale (Tyler Labine) during a road trip through Appalachia, and they become convinced the two are homicidal maniacs out to eat them or skin them or both.
But we know the truth: Tucker and Dale are just a couple of good ol' boys trying to get by, and poor Dale just wants to meet a girl, but he gets tongue-tied easily.
Every time the misguided, scared students attack Tucker and Dale, they wind up killing themselves in comically gruesome, R-rated ways.
"It's a suicide pact!" Tucker says. "These kids are coming out here and killing themselves all over the woods!"
"Oh, my God! That makes so much sense!" Dale replies.
Yes, Craig's zany tale of misunderstandings is a one-note movie, but it's a gloriously funny note and both Tudyk and Labine (a hillbilly's Jack Black) sustain it for a full 86 minutes of black and red humor that has fun with every cliché in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" canon.
<b>"Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" opens at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. Rated R for language, sex and violence. 86 minutes.</b> ★ ★ ★ ½
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Puncture'</b>
In the fact-based drama "Puncture," the attorneys are straight-laced partner Paul Danziger (Mark Kassen) and wild, drug-addict partner Mike Weiss (Chris Evans). They take on a case involving a Texas nurse (Vinessa Shaw) who contracts AIDS through an accidental needle prick, something that could have been prevented if the Texas hospitals used a "Safety Tip" syringe that eliminates accidental pricks and can't be reused to spread germs.
But the big, bad, greedy hospital supply industry has barred the more expensive Safety Tips, so Paul and Mike (mostly Mike) set out to help health industry frontliners.
We've seen this story of crusading attorneys out to save lives from corporate villainy before in such films as "The Verdict" and "Erin Brockovich." This one, directed by Adam Kassen and Mark Kassen, never grabs us by the lapels despite an explosive story tailor-made for exploiting our cries of justice.
"Puncture" buries its moral outrage under so much formula and convention that not even Evans' manic performance as the self-destructive Mike (one of the most interesting protagonists in the crusading attorney genre) can get our pulses racing here.
<b>"Puncture" opens at the Century Centre Cinema in Chicago. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity. 99 minutes.</b> ★ ★
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'The Way'</b>
An adult "Breakfast Club" walks the road to enlightenment in Emilio Estevez's drama of self-discovery in "The Way," a well-intentioned, spiritual travelogue undermined by heavy-handed direction and way too much Emilio.
Martin Sheen, Estevez's dad, stars as Tom, an American eye doctor and widower informed that his only son Daniel (Estevez) has been killed during a storm while in France to walk the Camino de Santiago, or the Way of St. James.
A nonpracticing Catholic, Tom arrives in France to retrieve Daniel's body, and decides to finish his son's pilgrimage into Spain. Along the way, he spreads Daniel's ashes at key stopping points.
The moody Tom picks up three companions he doesn't really want: a hostile divorcee named Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger); a gregarious Irish author (James Nesbitt) with writer's block; and Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a dope-smoking Dutch extrovert with a big appetite.
"The Way" shows how these four strangers become de facto kindred spirits, as we might expect, but there's not much ping in the dialogue or pizazz in the communal energy they don't quite generate.
Instead of Daniel only appearing to Dad at the journey's end as a triumphant celebration, Estevez (who also wrote the screenplay) has Daniel pop up a zillion times along the trail, suggesting a ghostly haunting out of sync with the joy this drama clearly intends to project.
<b>"The Way" opens at the Yorktown in Lombard, Village Crossing in Skokie and 600 N. Michigan Avenue in Chicago. (PG-13) for drug use, smoking. 115 minutes. </b> ★ ★ ½
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence'</b>
To be unnecessarily charitable, Tom Six's vile orgy of suffering, cruelty and perversion could be a test to determine if its viewers are really human or Dr. Mengele larvae.
Six's original 2009 "Human Centipede: First Sequence" hit all the exploitation buttons when Dieter Laser's over-the-top mad scientist, Dr. Heiter, created the title character by surgically connecting three people in an incredibly sick way. (That's about as graphic as I wanna get.)
"Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence" makes the "First Sequence" look like a Walt Disney family comedy. A mentally deranged parking garage manager named Martin (a sweaty, mousy Laurence R. Harvey) becomes obsessed with watching Tom Six's 2009 movie and decides to create his own 10-person human centipede.
Lacking any surgical skill or equipment, Martin goes to the hardware store for his operational needs. He whacks his victims in the head with a crow bar, ties them up and dumps them naked in a grimy, unsanitary warehouse.
Shot in dingy black-and-white, "Full Sequence" aspires to be an artistically bankrupt, morally repugnant celebration of torment as entertainment. It succeeds.
<b>"The Human Centipede 2" opens as a midnight showing only at the Music Box Theatre, Chicago. Not rated. 88 minutes. Zero stars.</b>
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Dream House'</b>
It's easy to see why Universal Pictures refused to press screen Jim Sheridan's haunted house thriller "Dream House" before it opened last weekend. The intriguing plot throws us a nifty curveball halfway through, but this is one of the sloggiest, murkiest, least scary ghost tales I've seen, a surprise given that Sheridan - director of "My Left Foot" and "In America" - is otherwise a master storyteller.
Daniel Craig supplies a subtle, controlled performance as a father who moves into a new house without knowing its bloody history.
<b>"Dream House" should have been "The Shining," but it barely cobbles together elements of "Shutter Island" and "The Others" before sliding into a rushed, silly finale. (PG-13) language, sexual situations and violence. 91 minutes.</b> ★ ½
<b>Reel Life mini-review: 'Drive'</b>
I just caught up with Nicolas Winding Refn's excellent neo-noir crime drama "Drive" (rated R, 100 minutes) originally reviewed by Associated Press critic Christy Lemire, and wow!
This qualifies as a sly and stylish update of George Stevens' classic 1953 western "Shane" with Ryan Gosling's laconic getaway driver subbing for Alan Ladd's quietly noble gunslinger. The ambiguous endings of both films are the same. Both heroes risk their lives for another man's wife and son.
Moreover, "Drive" boasts the best cinematography of the year so far from Newton Thomas Sigel, accompanied by Cliff Martinez's subtle, moody score. The emotions are slow-burning and the realistic violence shocks us, as it should.
Note: If you see "Drive," watch for Ron Perlman's chauffeur. He's stunt driver Joe Bucaro from Wheaton and Park Ridge.
Lemire gave "Drive" ★ ★ ★ .
But it deserves ★ ★ ★ ★ .
<b>The great war movies</b>
Join me and 007 novelist Raymond Benson when Dann & Raymond's Movie Club presents "We Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning: The Great War Movies," at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Heights. (847) 392-0100 or ahml.info. Clips from "Patton," "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Apocalypse Now" and 12 others. Free admission!
<i>Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time out!</i>