Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Midnight Special (2016)

10/04/2020

Midnight Special (2016) - Nichols' strange, cool sci-fi curveball

♥♥♥♥

A mysterious bespectacled boy reads underneath a blanket on the uninformative poster for Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special

A boy whom a Texan sect is centered around has been abducted, and the authorities send their big guns out to locate him, when among other things they learn that he has divulged some of their secrets, which he couldn't possibly have known about naturally.

Midnight Special is written and directed by great Arkansan filmmaker Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories (2007)).
It is a strange story about a fantastical boy from a foreign civilization, which is elevated through handsome photography (by Adam Stone (The First (2018, TV-series))), skillful editing, an effective score (by David Wingo (Barry (2018-19))) and an excellent cast.
Jaeden Martell, formerly Lieberher, (St. Vincent (2014)) is tremendously credible as the boy; Adam Driver (Lincoln (2012)) is a delectable NASA scientist; Kirsten Dunst (Luckytown (2000)) finds herself in a very unglamorous maternal crisis in the film; and Michael Shannon (What They Had (2018)) and Joel Edgerton ($9.99 (2008)) are wooden men in the car.
Nichols doesn't miss an occasion to score a facial close-up from anyone in the fine cast, and the father-son dynamic between Shannon and Martell, - when we don't fully know the actual history between the two characters, - is a bit odd. The film remains exciting nevertheless, and it culminates forcefully with a view inside the super-evolved world of the strange boy. Midnight Special is a cool film.

Related posts:

Jeff Nichols: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Loving (2016) - Edgerton and Negga own the screen in Nichols' powerful period drama
Top 10: Best drama-thrillers reviewed by Film Excess to date
2012 in films - according to Film Exces [UPDATED I]
Mud (2012) - Career-defining, electric Americana
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
Take Shelter (2011) or, Madness in Ohio

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 18 mil. $
Box office: 6.7 mil. $
= Mega-flop (returned 0.37 times its cost)
[Midnight Special premiered 12 February (Berlin International Film Festival) and runs 112 minutes. Nichols wrote the script as a reflection of his becoming a father. It is Nichols first studio production, done so only when he was promised final cut. Shooting took place in Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico and in Mississippi from January - March 2014. Dunst wore no makeup in the film. The film opened #30 to a 190k $ first weekend in 5 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #14 and in 521 theaters (different weekends), grossing 3.7 mil. $ (55.2 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 1.4 mil. $ (20.9 % ) and the UK with 1.3 mil. $ (19.4%). Nichols returned with Loving (2016). Shannon returned in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016); Dunst in Hidden Figures (2016); and Martell in The Confirmation (2016). Midnight Special is certified fresh at 84 % with a 7.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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10/04/2020

Midnight Special (2016) - Nichols' strange, cool sci-fi curveball

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