Take Shelter is a film of rare power and beauty and one that I really wish I had experienced on the big screen. Like the work of Terrence Malick this Jeff Nichols’ sophomore effort is not easy to convey in text as the film is about the feelings that it evokes and it demands to be experienced first hand. Few films have made me quite so tense and sweaty palmed as this. From the opening few minutes there is an almost suffocating air of foreboding that runs throughout the picture only to be punctuated by moments of quite beautiful serenity. I apologise if that sounds a little hokey, as I said earlier it isn’t easy to articulate the emotions you…

There aren't many things more rewarding than expectations met. This film lived up to its expectations and then some.

This film transfixed me for its entire running time. From the first roll of thunder to the last. It is a testament to great film making when a film manages to captivate its audience to such a degree that time doesn't seem to have the same quality it had before you started watching. Take Shelter does that, it is simply impossible to not be pulled into the head of its unfortunate and compelling hero.

Jeff Nichols' film is visually stunning. He has the ability to create truly mesmerizing images it is simply impossible to take your eyes off. Be it a…

You think I'm crazy? Well, listen up, there's a storm coming like nothing you've ever seen, and not a one of you is prepared for it.
-Curtis

I love Michael Shannon on Boardwalk Empire, but when he gives a performance like the one in Take Shelter you have to wonder why is he on television and not concentrating solely on film roles. The entire cast is great here, especially Jessica Chastain, but Shannon steals the show with one of the best performances of his career so far.

The film starts off with a sense of coming dread and builds on that every single minute up to the end. It almost becomes unbearable. Even in scenes where you're tipped off in…

The best film of 2011 is also the most criminally under-seen. Blue-collar, Midwestern father Curtis LaForche is either developing paranoid schizophrenia or accurately prophesizing the apocalypse — a binary that could have all too easily become fodder for hokey metaphor. But with writer/director Jeff Nichols and actor Michael Shannon at the helm (their second film together, following 2007’s Shotgun Stories), Curtis becomes one of the most authentically human characters in the history of cinema. He may be the symbolic fulcrum for a plethora of dense themes—the pervading feeling of loss of control among modern Americans, the vitality of the family, the inadequacy of American mental health services, the fine line between madness and brilliance—but he is nonetheless a man. Foreign…

Some parts of Take Shelter are really powerful. Other parts feel a bit artificial. Overall, it's a mixed bag.

I don't think I've ever really seen a movie like this. What you got is essentially a thriller, but with almost none of the kind of things you'd expect from the genre. There's almost nothing inherently thrilling in the story itself; it all comes from the psychological conflict that Curtis is dealing with. Luckily, Nichols cast an actor more than capable of playing the part - Michael Shannon is, like the DVD case says, "electrifying". Jessica Chastain is pretty memorable as well, but that's probably more because of how her character is written than just her performance. You might be surprised…