What I Think About Movies I've Seen

Michael Shannon plays Brad McCullum, a man who's gone a little crazy. He kills his mother with a sword while visiting their neighbors, and then holes up in his house with hostages. When the police arrive, homicide detectives (played by Willem Dafoe and Michael Pena, among others) try to talk him out and figure out what's going on. In the course of the standoff, they interview Brad's fiancee (Chloe Sevigny) and a close friend (Udo Kier), as well as the neighbors. We're taken through a recap of the events of the day and what led up to them.

This movie was written by Werner Herzog and has his trademark absurdity in which you don't know what to expect next, except in this case I didn't have too much trouble predicting the ending (although there was plenty of other unexpected content). I wanted to like it more, but it tried to be a little more artistic than I normally care to see. It's also completely unbelievable that someone like Brad with his myriad problems (and who lived with his overbearing off-her-rocker mother) would attract someone like the character played by Chloe Sevigny, let alone have the relationship progress to engagement with everything that happened. There are some good moments, but it fell a bit short of my expectations.