Take Shelter (2011)

This movie fails. Utterly and completely. Even those reviews that praise the movie concede it is "slow" and "challenging." They are right. This movie is so slow, but you keep watching it because you keep waiting for an answer to the key question, "Is the main character crazy or prophetic?" In the end, you will feel cheated.120 minutes of the movie lead you down the path of believing the main character is crazy. These are the key events of the first two hours of this movie: the main character's life unravels piece-by-piece until he is broke, he has no job, his child's needed surgery cannot occur, his best friend hates him, and his wife is contemplating leaving him. Meanwhile, his family and friends try in vain to help. If this kind of human misery and suffering is something you enjoy watching, have at it, but also know it's been done a lot better a lot of times.The ultimate betrayal in this movie is that the only thing that keeps you watching is finding the answer to the question of whether the main character's dreams are insane delusions or a premonition. If he was crazy, the movie could have ended with the main character repairing his life and getting the help he needs, but then within the last 30 seconds of the film, the script reveals he was actually right all along, but then just ends. Wha-wha-what? If the story takes the premonition route, it has some obligation to explain what exactly this premonition is of? Why he is the only one seeing it? Does he and his family survive? Why premonitions of the storm include such silly things as furniture floating? A decent script would have paid the viewers some amount of respect and attempted to tell the viewers SOMETHING. No. The moment we learn that he actually did predict a storm, the screen goes black. No questions are answered. No story is told. And if I see one more review telling me how beautiful this movie has been shot, I may just have to pour lemon juice into my eyes. Yes, the movie looked good, but how does that make up for a missing plot? Or glacial pacing? It doesn't.I did not plan on writing this review. I wanted to go to bed after this 121-minute waste of time ended, but the final scene (i.e., revealing snippet of long-awaited answer and then goes black) made me so viscerally angry that I had to say something.

Once again I have been misled by people's ratings and reviews here, and I do wonder if some people liked this film only due to the fact it had won the Grand Prix Nespresso at Cannes. The ending of the movie confirms with the audience that Curtis wasn't going crazy but in fact the apocalyptic storm was coming. The synopsis sort of tells you already that most likely he wasn't suffering from mental illness; therefore, the end was very predictable. I personally don't think I would have watched the film if I knew beforehand that the storyline was so downright simple and straightforward. It had been a slow-paced movie , and I did try to be very patient but still ended up feeling quite disappointed at the end.

"he starts building an elaborate and expensive storm shelter in their backyard".sensationalizing the story with this line. the storm shelter was neither elaborate nor that expensive. He bought a shipping container to extend the existing storm shelter, I was expecting something more. The ending was a let down, I could not tell if it was a dream or real. It should have ended with his vindication by having he and his family leaving the shelter only to find devastation around them. a good movie just the same

Browsing through the local Family Video store yesterday, this was on the rack as a two for a dollar rental special. Being a fan of Michael Shannon and Boardwalk Empire, it only makes sense that I rent this immediately. I mean, it was only fifty cents, so what did I have to lose. Anyway, on to the review.The premise is simple: a working-class family man has dreams of an oncoming apocalypse, and this leads to increasingly erratic behavior and has our hero questioning his own sanity. It's essentially a re-telling of Noah's Ark with an element of mental illness thrown in. The nightmare sequences are beautifully filmed, and made better by Shannon's intense acting style. Jessica Chastain plays the wife, a character type that almost seems to be a typecast for her these days (see A Most Violent Year or Mama for further evidence), and she does her job well. Shea Whigham and Katy Mixon are also in the film, but they are criminally underused. The rest of the cast does their jobs well.The problem with the film is that it is way too long. I'm not the type to complain about running times, but there is one scene towards the end that just drags on forever. In fact, the whole middle section of the film just drags. The acting is great, but nothing really happens in these scenes. I'm from the Midwest, and it is quite boring, but the scenery alone in the film proves that point. I don't want a completely accurate depiction of the region I grew up in. A good half-hour could have been cut out of the film, and it would have been just as satisfying. Another gripe I have is the fact that some of the special effects during the movie are extremely distracting and fake looking. I realize that the budget was limited, but come on.Overall, this film is worth seeing just for Michael Shannon's performance alone. Take Shelter is long. Too long. So long I felt tempted to fast forward one of the final scenes. I can sit through Casino without any problems, so the issue is with the pacing of the film itself. If you don't mind an inflated middle half, Take Shelter is a diamond in the rough.