Shotgun Stories (2007)
Directed by Jeff Nichols
Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.
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What critics compared Shotgun Stories to
In the Michael Shannon-fronted thriller “Shotgun Stories,” he focused on a fatal feud between half-brothers in rural Arkansas.
From his first feature, the powerful clan tragedy Shotgun Stories (2007), the writer-director Jeff Nichols has shown a knack for crafty storytelling and the occasional tendency to go off the rails for the big finale, especially in Take Shelter and his newest, most audience friendly film, Midnight Special.
Writer-director Jeff Nichols has done some of his best work with children (“Mud”) and Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter,” “Shotgun Stories”), and here, he recasts the veteran movie heavy as a boy’s hero.
With just a handful of films, the Little Rock, Arkansas, native has crafted his own busy little pocket of Southern Gothic, spilling over with feuding families (2007's Shotgun Stories), ordinary people touched with terrible prophecy (2011's Take Shelter), and the painful limits of self-aware mythologizing (2012's Mud).
A perfect batting average is as rare among directors as it is among baseball players, but Jeff Nichols continues the streak with his fourth feature, following “Shotgun Stories” (2007), “Take Shelter” (2011) and “Mud” (2012).
His first film, "Shotgun Stories," was a terrific study of violence and revenge; "Mud," his last picture, returned to those themes, but added evidence that he was good with young actors, and major stars.
Blue Ruin has a grubby, low-life mood that—especially with its theme of unresolved inter-family tensions—reminded me of Jeff Nichols’s debut Shotgun Stories .
“Blue Ruin” joins “Shotgun Stories” and “Joe” as vivid reminders that however homogenized American culture seems, there are still pockets that are distinct, with people who live by their own rules and their own bloody code.
Set among the beaches and backwoods of the South, "Blue Ruin" has an eye for local color and dog-eared realism that may remind you of the recent "Mud," or the lesser known (and even superior "Shotgun Stories").
Blue Ruin is all about escalation, and while its sensibility is Coen, its plot is very much like Shotgun Stories (which is still my favorite film directed by Jeff Nichols ), twisting about in the absurdity of a feud.
(In this sense, Blue Ruin brought to mind Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories .)
In temperament, Blue Ruin calls to mind Nichols’ Shotgun Stories, which also examined how a personal feud escalates into bloodshed.
Watch: Go See This Movie: "50/50," "What's Your Number?" and "Dream House" The second feature film directed by the prodigiously talented young American filmmaker Jeff Nichols , "Take Shelter" represents a very impressive imaginative and technical advance from his admittedly excellent debut film, 2007's rough-hewn and deeply felt parable of violence, " Shotgun Stories ."
This is the second collaboration by writer-director and star, whose powerful " Shotgun Stories " (2007), established Nichols as a gifted new filmmaker and further cemented Shannon's growing reputation as an actor of uncommon force: the young Christopher Walken , my wife says, and he does embody the same shifting air of disquiet.
Writer/director Jeff Nichols ("Shotgun Stories") captures the zeitgeist of today's United States with his second film.
Shannon and writer-director Jeff Nichols previously collaborated on 2008's Shotgun Stories, and obviously have a rapport and mutual affection for one another which results in a film that never feels uncertain about its intentions, however coy and soft-peddled it is.
Nichols' "Southern" Shotgun Stories gave Shannon's mesmerizing screen presence — he ranks in the vicinity of Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich on the intensity scale — some welcome narrative grounding in the story of feuding half-brothers in rural Arkansas.
Refining both the technique and the themes present in his debut film, Shotgun Stories, as well as his follow-up, Take Shelter, the thirty-four year olds’ third feature, also his best, recounts a tale of lost love and shattered innocence against an iconic American backdrop.
If "Take Shelter" embodied man's crushing inability to cope with forces beyond his control, and "Shotgun Stories" examined a blood feud from the side of those in the wrong, then ascending writer-director Jeff Nichols blends the turbulent waters of the former with the dirty dealings of the latter to make "Mud."
In 2007, Jeff Nichols made "Shotgun Stories," a down-home story of a rage-blinded feud.
It's not a kids movie, but a sense of youth and freedom informs this latest from the gifted Jeff Nichols ("Take Shelter," "Shotgun Stories"), even as its various characters are resisting imminent forms of confinement.
Director Jeff Nichols ("Shotgun Stories," "Take Shelter") returns once more to his Arkansas roots for a Twainian tale of boys becoming men, with all the freedom and heartache that entails.
It's written and directed by Jeff Nichols, who directed Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, two films that were adored by pretty much everyone but me.