[post_author_posts_link] [post_date] [post_comments] [post_edit]

Auteur cinema is alive and well in America. Jeff Nichols has written and directed a Sony Pictures Classics release which is due for release in October. In it, disturbed by end-of-the-world visions a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself. Michael Shannon, who plays Curtis LaForche, is back playing an unstable character. Shannon, who was recently seen in “The Runaways” plays your run-of-the-mill loony dead on. He’s joined by Jessica Chastain, whose character Samantha is a homemaker. Curtis and Samantha are very much in love but his increasingly alarming behavior and terrifying dreams will test their marriage. This gradual descent into hell is reminiscent of Shannon’s performance “Bug,” (2006; directed by Michael Friedkin) for which he played a hallucinations-prone war vet. The Lexington, Kentucky actor was previously nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award for his role in “Revolutionary Road.”

(“Take Shelter”; written and directed by Jeff Nichols and starring Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, and Kathy Baker)