Berlin: "Midnight Special" with Michael Shannon & Kirsten Dunst

Amir Soltani is covering the Berlin International Film Festival for The Film Experience this year, our first time at Berlinale!. Tonight Jeff Nichol's follow up to Mud.

With Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter and Mud, Jeff Nichols has become one of the most intriguing, and divisive, American directors working today. His latest film, the unclassifiable Midnight Special, will no doubt continue the same trajectory. Starring his favourite actor Michael Shannon, along with Joel Edgerton and Kirsten Dunst, this religious fable in the mold of science fiction is a crowd-pleaser that, despite a crucial directorial misstep, delivers a thoroughly riveting experience.

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Black Mass and Acting Beats

If there's a surprise SAG Best Ensemble nominee this year on December 9th, you should fully expect it to be Black Mass. Not that something can be a surprise when you fully expect it but let's not split hairs. Especially not hairs carefully threaded through bald caps.

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Podcast: Room, Brooklyn, Spotlight

Nathaniel and Nick are back, after an unexpected podcast hiatus, to catch up before the Thanksgiving holiday. 

43 minutes 
00:01 Intros, Carol's opening, Hateful 8 gossip
04:30 Split feeling on Room
11:19 Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn
20:06 Complicated platform releases, audience confusion, and dismissed "flops" of October including Truth
32:25 Delayed reaction to Black Mass
34:40 Spotlight's conflicts, arc, quality

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments won't you?

Brooklyn, Spotlight, Room

Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in Loving

Murtada here. The first picture from Jeff Nichols’ (Take Shelter, Mud) new movie Loving was released. Currently shooting, the film tells the story of Mildred and Richard Loving and the landmark 1967 civil rights supreme court decision that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Joel Edgerton plays Richard Loving in his second collaboration with Nichols after the still unreleased Midnight Special. Edgerton is riding on a bit of Oscar buzz right now for his supporting role alongside Johnny Depp in Black Mass. Mildred is played by Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D) in her first major film role. Did you know Negga played Dame Shirley Bassey for the BBC in 2011? After watching that clip I’m really excited to see her lead a movie. Negga had a varied theater and TV career in the U.K. and Ireland so fans of S.H.I.E.L.D or those more familiar with her other work, please tell us if this is the beginnings of a new actressey obsession!

One of the many photos of the Lovings shot by Grey Villet

Michael Shannon, who’s been in every single movie directed by Nichols, has a supporting part as Grey Villet, the LIFE Magazine photographer who shot the famous photos of the Lovings in 1965. The photo from the film is evocative of those Villet images. The resemblance to the actors is uncanny, no?

As for Midnight Special, which also stars Kirsten Dunst and Adam Driver, it was revealed recently by Dunst that it may premiere at SXSW next March. For a while Midnight Special had a premium November release date that prompted some to peg it as an Oscar movie. Of course once it was pushed back, many speculated that all is not well. Hopefuly a spring festival premiere in Nichols’ hometown will turn around the buzz. 

Possibly two movies from Nichols in 2016. Are you excited to see either or both movies?

Review: The Gift

Jose here. In between making appearances in what seems to be every single movie being made, Joel Edgerton has been doing his homework and studying the creepy thrillers of Michael Haneke and Roman Polanski, since he emulates both auteurs’ styles in his directorial debut The Gift. The film stars Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall as Simon and Robyn, a married couple who have just moved into their new home in Los Angeles when they run into Gordo (played by multitasker Edgerton who also wrote the screenplay), a former high school classmate of Simon’s who wishes to befriend them, but lacks the social skills to figure out that Simon isn’t interested in welcoming into his life.

We learn that back in high school, Gordon went by the nickname Weirdo and was the constant target of pranks made by Simon and his friends. Suggesting that we never really leave our high school roles behind, we see how Gordo turned into a self-loathing underachiever, while Simon became a successful executive who married the most beautiful girl in town - a former bookworm - and made a career for himself by bullying people in the corporate world. As strange things begin to happen in Simon and Robyn’s home, we are led to believe that maybe Gordon is seeking payback for the psychological torture he endured at Simon’s hands, and yet there is also a more perverse feeling of karmic retribution that at times makes us root for the sociopathic underdog. If he is a sociopath to begin with…

Edgerton’s film is filled with so many nuances that we are never truly sure of who is playing who. He manipulates the very same genre conventions he’s borrowing from, and instead of presenting Gordo as the perpetrator, he makes us wonder if by assuming the “odd dude” is the villain, we’re not becoming bullies ourselves. Combining elements from Gaslight, Funny Games, Repulsion and Caché, Edgerton weaves a stylish thriller that poses complex questions about human behavior without ever taking itself too seriously. There are scares galore, countless steamy shower scenes with damsels in distress, and more asshole-y behavior from Bateman’s character than you can imagine, and yet the movie feels fresh in its delivery. Like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle if Keyser Soze had been the babysitter, The Gift playfully evokes some of the most beloved contemporary thrillers, not all of which are great films, but most of which prove to become irresistible on repeat viewings. Who knew Edgerton had this in him?