Video review: "Midnight Special"

“Midnight Special” is a little science fiction indie that you probably haven’t heard of. It got talked up a lot among film geeks, turned heads on the festival circuit, but then was dumped into theaters without fanfare – or even bothering to screen it for critics.

It quickly disappeared, earning about $6 million against an $18 million budget.

Hopefully it’ll find the audience it deserves on video. While the movie has some flaws, it’s an engaging and offbeat supernatural mystery/thriller featuring some fine actors. The pacing is a little off -- the filmmakers hold onto their secrets too tightly and for too long, then overwhelm us with sudden revelations. But it’s got a verve of originality so often missing from this genre.

Michael Shannon plays Roy, a determined man on the run with is son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), who is 8 years old and… peculiar. He wears dark glasses all the time, never goes out in the sunlight and is regarded by others with a mix of fear and awe. Tagging along is Lucas (Joel Edgerton), a former cop who acts as their knight-errant protector.

I won’t get into all the convolutions of the plot, but suffice to say they are both running away from something and running toward something. Men from The Ranch, an end-times cult that Roy and Alton used to belong to, are in pursuit along with the law.

Kirsten Dunst turns up later as Alton’s mother, who’s been in hiding. Adam Driver plays a sympathetic scientist trying to puzzle out Alton’s mystery. Sam Shephard plays the eerily charismatic Ranch leader.

Strange portents are all around, and there’s a giddy feeling like the movie could slip off in any number of directions.

Writer/director Jeff Nichols (“Mud,” “Take Shelter”) is an original voice who deserves to be heard. Though “Take Shelter” doesn’t quite have the emotional punch of his earlier movies, here is a filmmaker who thinks outside the lines.

Bonus features are… interesting. Instead of the usual making-of documentary or commentary track, both the DVD and Blu-ray versions have five “Origins” featurettes on each of the five main characters. There’s also another featurette, “The Unseen World,” on the film’s metaphysical musings.

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Review: "Midnight Special"

"Midnight Special" has that Spielbergian element of wonderment but not the emotional connection. Writer/director Jeff Nichols' fourth feature film, all of which feature Michael Shannon, fills the mind but not the heart. It's a mystery that reveals too little of itself, as if afraid to lay down its big cards and see how the audience reacts.

It's still a worthy film. But compared to the unnerving appeal of "Take Shelter" or the twangy, Twain-esque charm of "Mud," it feels like a bit of a letdown.

Two men are on the run, having kidnapped a curious young boy. Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), 8, sits in the back of the car, content and unafraid, reading comic books while wearing dark goggles as they flee in an old muscle car -- even though it's night. Alton never goes anywhere during the day, never goes out at all in the light.

Answers are few, and drip out at a sometimes frustratingly slow pace.

Roy (Shannon) says he's the boy's father, but we're not entirely certain. He's a little distant, giving instructions in a harsh tone. He seems to regard Alton as an obligation rather than someone to be loved. The other guy is Lucas (Joel Edgerton); we know even less about him than the other two. But he handles himself well in tight corners, and we get the sense that's why he's there.

They clearly care about Alton, revere him even; but it's the sort of care you might have for a pet tiger.

Clearly Alton is special. We know this because a (too) long expository sequence introduces us to The Ranch, a religious cult run by Calvin (Sam Shepard), who is Alton's adoptive father. They've got a Branch Davidian feel -- pastoral, patriarchal, well-armed and expecting a reckoning any day now. The FBI has been watching them for some time, and when Alton is kidnapped they search the place and question everybody.

Adam Driver plays Paul Sevier, a bookish type from the NSA who's brought in because some of the Ranch's scripture includes data that could only come from top-secret satellite communications. Calvin patiently explains that the boy sometimes speaks in tongues, and they write down what he says and regard it as holy text.

There are also reports of supernatural powers, light coming from Alton's eyes, and those who commune with this illumination feel a sense of peace and fulfilmment.

After the feds have left, Calvin dispatches some of his own men (Bill Camp, Scott Haze) with guns to track Roy down and bring Alton back.

We eventually meet up with Alton's mother (Kirsten Dunst), who is eager to be reunited with her son. We get the sense Alton was taken away from her and Roy without their entire willing consent. Both used to be part of the cult, and broke away at some point, or were thrown out.

"We get the sense" is largely the way the audience experiences this movie. Too many filmmakers feel compelled to spell everything out for us, to the point there are no surprises. Nichols goes too far the other way, raising tantalizing question and possibilities and then... just leaving them out there, unexplored.

Since the Ranch folks seem to regard Alton as their resident savior, did the cult exist before he came into their midst? Or did they adjust their beliefs to accommodate his supernatural abilities?

Eventually we learn more about Alton, what he can do, what his purpose is. But the information arrives so late in the going it doesn't have time to register with a lot of visceral impact. There's too much chase-chase and not enough questioning why they're running, and why others are chasing.

Despite all this, I liked the movie. It's in some ways a spiritual successor to "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial." Alton is the intriguing Other whose mystery must be puzzled out, but doing so means certain loss for those who join the quest. Dangerous people join in the hunt, some with benevolent intentions, others selfish, but either way their interference just serves to prevent Alton from fulfilling his destiny.

There's been a lot of buzz about "Midnight Special," but the studio decided to dump it into theaters without any fanfare or screenings. (They even moved up its limited release by a week on short notice.) It's a shame. It's a flawed but worthwhile film that bespeaks of better things to come.

Review: "On the Road"

I'm not quite sure how to judge "On the Road." If it existed on its own as a film, separated from any notion of the seminal Jack Kerouac book, I'd probably dismiss it as rambling and unfocused. But since the Bible of the Beats is defined by its poetic embrace of chaos -- both in life and literary endeavors -- to knock it for its quivery plot would be like criticizing a flamingo for being too pink.

Brazilian director Walter Salles and Puerto Rican screenwriter Jose Rivera previously teamed up for "The Motorcycle Diaries," a similar project about young men rambling about the countryside looking for themselves, also based on a book by a person of note (in that case, revolutionary Che Guevara). Since "On the Road" has generally been regarded as unfilmable, perhaps it required a foreign perspective to adequately capture the peculiar rhythms of this quintessential, quirky American tale.

Certainly "On the Road" has verve and gutso. In chronicling the on-again, off-again travels of Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) and his best friend/muse Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) during the late 1940s, the actors and filmmakers have probably made as good a translation of the book as possible.

It's a booze-soaked, drug-riddled, sex-filled escapade with no real point other than casting off whatever yokes chain them and seeing what's out there. It captures the pure exhilaration of freedom for its own sake.

Some portions of Kerouac's  narrative are skimmed over or eliminated, while others are pumped up -- particularly those involving Dean's teenage wife (soon to be ex-wife) Marylou, played by "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart. Stewart has a vibrant, erotic presence as a wanton girl who enjoys her escapades with Dean -- including three-ways in bed with some of his friends -- even as she knows it must all come to a crashing end, with her grasping the stick's short end.

One scene, where Marylou and Dean are shaking it to a raucous jazz song as others look on, is scorching hot. Stewart's small but steamy role should do much to banish her adolescent image.

Much of the heart of the book dealt with Sal idolizing Dean as a sort of vagabond holy man, a con artist and liar who nonetheless embraced the concept of living in the moment, and inspired others to do the same. Dean is a car thief, treats women as disposable objects and leeches off his friends, but others are drawn to his audacious individuality.

Hedlund is terrific as Dean, the distilled essence of American manhood, especially his use of his voice to command and compel those around him. Riley is also good in the less showy role of the introspective writer and chronicler of the group. Tom Sturridge has an abbreviated but effective turn as Carlo Marx, a self-destructive poet who struggles with his homoerotic fixation toward Dean, which Dean uses to tease and taunt.

Viggo Mortensen turns up as Old Bull Lee, an older writer and heroin addict who acts as a mentor and father figure to Sal. It's notable that he is the one person who is instinctively disdainful of Dean's flights of fancy, recognizing them as more narcissism than revelation.

Kirsten Dunst plays Camille, Dean's much put-upon second wife; Amy Adams is Lee's mentally fractured wife; Alice Braga is an itinerant love of Sal's; and Elisabeth Moss and Danny Morgan play a recently married couple sundered by Dean's need to always be on the move.

Kerouac lovers probably know that the book "On the Road" was written in long, frenetic sessions using rolls of paper so he wouldn't have to stop typing. The movie erratically but vividly captures that freewheeling sense of losing oneself -- in the act of creation, or consumption, and even self-destruction.

3 stars out of four