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.

Reeling Backward: "Days of Heaven" (1978)

Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven" may just be one of the most gorgeous films ever made. Some also find it among the most confounding. I acknowledge both the beauty and the resentment.

It was only Malick's second feature film; its reception was such that he would not direct another movie for 20 years, through a consensual unspoken arrangement between himself and Hollywood. It was shot almost entirely in the "golden hour" between dusk and twilight -- actual only about 20 or 25 minutes per day, which must have been a logistical nightmare during production.

The cinematographer, Néstor Almendros, won an Oscar for his efforts, though he was losing his vision and had to leave when the production ran long, so Haskell Wexler actually shot at least half the footage used in the final film. "Days" also earned Academy Award nominations for sound, costumes and the lush musical score by Ennio Morricone, which employs a rather traditional orchestral arrangement of strings and wind instruments that the great Italian usually eschewed.

The look of the film is just mesmerizing. The great sea of wheat fields in 1916 Texas Panhandle (actually Canada) often whisper and whip around in the foreground, while the characters are far away and small to us. When Malick does go in closer, everything has a dreamy, slightly washed-out character of indistinctness.

We feel like we've wandered into a painting. Indeed, you could probably snip any single frame from the movie, blow it up, frame it and put it on a wall in a museum, and it would not look out of place.

The line between cinema and painting has sometimes blurred with a few artists, including Kurosawa and Malick. Malick is famously indecisive as a filmmaker, often re-shooting things many times over or entirely changing around a day's shooting schedule on a moment's notice. He spent nearly three years editing the movie, and finally stumbled upon the idea of having a minor character narrate the entire story, calling the actress back to record bumpkin-ish lines that were largely improvised.

(In fact, as Peter Biskind noted in his book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," Richard Brooks was given a look at some of the footage from "Days of Heaven" to help him decide whether to cast Richard Gere in his movie, "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." That film went through pre-production, shooting, editing and post-production and was released into theaters while Malick tarried with his film.)

The three main characters remain very remote to the audience, and this is the main reason I think the film isn't nearly as engaging as it could be. Roger Ebert, in his Great Movie re-review of the film, argued that since the young girl Linda (Linda Manz) is the narrator, the audience is experiencing everything at her remove, so the people she's talking about are necessarily at arm's length. To me, that explains what the movie is trying to do but fails to justify the fact that it doesn't really work as a storytelling device.

The plot is pretty simple. A hot-headed young migrant work named Bill (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his boss with a shovel while working in a Chicago factory, so he flees with his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and sister Linda down south. To deflect attention from the fact that he and Abby are unmarried, they maintain the fiction that she is actually his other sister.

Given how they canoodle and romp during their their little down time at the farm where they end up, no one is really stupid enough to believe this. Although the rich young farmer (never named and played by Sam Shepard) who owns the spread is ensorceled by her. He offers to let her stay on during the off-season, and Bill overhears a doctor telling the farmer he has a year or less to live due to some mysterious illness. They hatch a scheme to marry Abby off to the farmer so she can inherit his rich 20,000 acres.

This goes well enough, except for two problems: Abby eventually comes to genuinely care for the quiet, decent man, and he manages to retain his vigorous health for the most part. Bill leaves in a huff, angry at himself for using the woman he loved so poorly. He later returns, and tragedy soon follows in his wake, some of it almost Biblical in aspect.

Everyone looks so impossibly young and fresh-faced. Adams had an ethereal beauty, with big eyes and a small downturned mouth, and seemed like she could belong to whatever era she was portraying. Shepard and Gere wear contemporary hairstyles parted in the middle, which I think was intentionally incongruous. Their smooth faces are contrasted with the foremen at the factory and on the farm, who serve as villains with their creased, pock-marked visages.

I loved watching "Days of Heaven," but in the sort of way one admires an arresting landscape. You never really tire of looking at it, but any meaning or narrative you must impose on it yourself. Paintings often tell a story, but only a tiny snippet of one. We must imagine what came before and after ourselves.

Review: Safe House

"Safe House" has a lot going for it, and a few bad things that don't spoil the ride.

It's a slick, plot-driven thriller about the nasty underside of the spy game. It's got Denzel Washington doing his smooth-talking thing, playing the man of quiet confidence who doesn't feel a need to broadcast his exceptional skills to the world. His actions speak louder than.

The action scenes, especially the car chases and hand-to-hand fisticuffs, are crisp and well-staged. And the supporting cast is top-notch, including Vera Farmiga, Brenda Gleeson and Sam Shepard, not to mention Ryan Reynolds, who for once is not doing that smarmy cad with the heart of gold thing.

Some of the plot twists aren't twisty enough to prevent the audience from seeing them coming a ways off, and the movie's villain might as well be walking around with an 'X' on their head. But still, it's an undeniably engaging piece of entertainment, a bit of sweet cinematic candy with a little salt to it.

Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a junior CIA agent with the worst posting possible: babysitting a safe house in Capetown, South Africa. These are the sort of places the spooks bring bad guys when they want to do things while the international community isn't watching. But Capetown is a sleepy burg, and Matt yearns for bigger things.

He gets his chance when a present arrives on his doorstep: none other than Tobin Frost, a living legend in the international espionage community. Tobin was once a top CIA agent himself, until he went rogue a decade ago.

Now he's got something really valuable, a computer file with Very Important Secrets. It's a classic MacGuffin -- nobody really knows what it is, but everyone wants it. Soon the safe house has been breached by bad guys, and it's up to Matt to bring Tobin in all by himself.

Tobin is one cool cat. When the goon squad threatens to waterboard him, he calmly informs them they're using the wrong thread of cloth to cover his face, then brags that he can last longer than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who managed 20 seconds. (A bit of Hollywood hoopla; Mohammed was reportedly waterboarded 183 times.)

Gleeson, the wonderful Irish actor, falls down while attempting an American accent -- no black mark there, since every U.K. thespian from Anthony Hopkins to Kate Winslet has punted in that regard. (The only truly good one I've heard, by which I mean I couldn't even detect the effort, was Aaron Johnson in "Kick-Ass.") He plays Barlow, a senior agency man and Matt's mentor.

Farmiga is Linklater, an ambitious rival of Barlow's who views Matt as an untested liability. Ruben Blades turns up as an old associate of Tobin, and Robert Patrick has a weary, professional air as the chief of the goon squad, tasked with doing stuff that isn't very pretty.

Rookie screenwriter David Guggenheim falls into some clichés, but the story has good pacing and chirpy dialogue. Director Daniel Espinosa provides a sure hand, pinning Matt as the unimpeachable white knight surrounded by figures of dubious intention -- including Tobin and the CIA bosses who want his head on a platter.

The interplay between the wily old Tobin and the inexperienced Matt is rather predictable, but is often delicious. Robin lectures and berates Matt like Hannibal Lecter toying with Clarice Starling, offering sage advice one minute and trying to rip his throat out the next.

Talk about on-the-job training.

3 stars out of four