ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

bikerhiker46 I hate writing reviews because if a movie is good enough to merit the effort it often seems like any attempt to describe it is destined to fall short. That said, as a one time social worker who has experienced up-close the miseries of those without home and hope I found this a remarkably accurate portrayal of the lives that can result. Having forgone the usual formulaic pap the author does an excellent job or recreating the "feel" of having no place to lay your head at night as well as the constant tension of never knowing who or what you can trust. The usual simplistic Hollywood garbage is happily absent and one finds oneself immersed in a world of bewildering complications and contradiction. Making it through each day becomes the goal and winning means little more than living to suffer another day. Such are the lives of far too many in America and elsewhere. Happily many of the "bad" guys are shown as victims themselves of a broken system rather than the arch villains of yore. Some try their best to accommodate, others try their best to take advantage of the person's vulnerability. You can't help but sympathize with the former and hate the later. While I can't even imagine trying to play the role of the two lead characters both did an excellent job and gained and held my sympathy from beginning to end. Jobs well done! And I can only guess at what cost. Camera work was excellent throughout with some of the dream like sequences outstanding. All in all a wonderful film and one I heartily will recommend to friends.

leplatypus For one time, there is an American movie dealing with hobos, Muslim faith so about the invisible, the forgotten ones, the unloved so i can't blame it for that. However having the courage and heart to speak about those issues and fellows should not excuse the big nonsense and the lack to talent! Sadly this movie is filled with that ! As a typical American production, the first scene is about reading for a big, lost minute the logos of all producers in black and white ! Then, when the movies really begins, it's a repeat but this time with the names repeated in the frames ! For sure, nobody will tell that it's useless, irritating, that we don't give a s..t about them and that's maybe inappropriate with the content of the movie ! Next, as a typical American production, the cinematography is just awful : again this dreadful orange / blue filtering that makes people highly tanned in daylight and smurfs by night ! Once again, nobody to tell that movies looked better years ago, that the real world is also green, red, white. Jenny has a long career and should realize that her early movies had a more vivid, colored look than this actual poor two colors ! Next, I expected the story to tell the painful, atrocious lives of hobos but instead the movie manages to tell us about the life of privileged ones ! Having Jenny and her boyfriend crash a luxurious penthouse and benefit with this cool place is just dumb ! When they are in the streets, the story is pitiful : drugs, asthma, snow storm, sexual advances, accidents… well, it's too much, not very real, adding useless drama to already dramatic lives… The directing is stupid : we can see syringes but not inter-courses ! So it's like some events are too hard to show while it's the point of making such movies ! In addition, instead of giving it without make-up, fresh, clear and true in documentary style, the choice is to embellish with useless and stupid pathos : long scenes without dialogues, characters thinking or sinking and little tearful music ! For sure, the ending credits with the dedication caption to the homeless couple in front of his building is stupid because you really wonder what he did with them to have such a poor inspiration ! And he took us for idiots as his (my) building is surely Jenny's (our) building as well!So what's left is a courageous Jenny who is faithful to her challenging choices and who stunned me with her cute, perfect fluency in french, some good dialogues about faith but at the end, you would prefer Needle Park with Pacino for a better, documented, gripping tale of urban desolation !

TxMike I found this on Netflix streaming. At the end is a very short dedication to a homeless couple who lived outside the Bettany and Connelly home.Set in New York, Anthony Mackie is Tahir, homeless and plays makeshift drums on the street to earn spending money, mostly for food. He is an undocumented immigrant from Nigeria and seems very nice and kind.Also homeless in the New York streets is Jennifer Connelly as Hannah, who also appears to be a drug addict. (She is very thin in this movie, making me wonder if she lost weight for the role.) Their lives intersect.One several days we see him sort of following her around, not sure why. When she confronts him he says it is because she has his jacket tied around her waist, and he wanted it back. He had just spent a short time locked up and much of his stuff was stolen while he was gone from his nighttime alley.So the two become friends of sorts, then later start to refer to each other as boyfriend-girlfriend. They seem to make a genuine connection.The movie is well-written and well-acted but is never a fun or entertaining movie. The topic is too bleak, homeless in New York during a winter. However I am glad I took the time to watch it.SPOILERS: Hannah's husband was killed and she left home, abandoning her young son, I believe in Dallas (the dialog was unclear), and he dad makes occasional trips to New York to try to find her. As the movie is ending we see her on a bus, presumably finally kicking her habit and going home to her son. Tahir, it turns out, had joined Boko Haram and finally realized that was wrong and sought to clean up his life in New York. He gets sick and dies, perhaps of pneumonia. Hannah wraps his body and straps it to a makeshift raft, sending it out into the Hudson.

ckdos2 SHELTER is a masterpiece of realism, love and forgiveness that will come into its own as it ages. The two lovers, Hanna and Tahir, are bound together by loss and tragedy as they struggle to rise above themselves and their wounds in an uncaring world.Played on at his weakest moment, illegal immigrant Tahir (Anthony Mackie) falls into bottomless guilt for once being a member of the radical Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria. With painful obsession he prays for redemption for his participation in burning down schools, hospitals and for the unspeakable, brutal murders of thousands of innocent people including women and children.Jennifer Connelly (Hannah) makes her acting comeback with a splash as she navigates her own depression and suicidal attempt while grieving the death of her surgeon husband whose plane was shot down at the hands of a similar terrorist group. It becomes evident that Hannah must forgive Tahir and his evil past in order to escape the NYC streets.Hannah is redeemed by her luminous, loving humanity and indestructible bravado, but she has earned it by surviving on the streets. Unfortunately the anguished Tahir is forced to finally accept that he is damaged beyond his ability to redeem his violent past when he once again resorts to his most primitive expression of mindless violence and in the end decides the only way for him to find ultimate redemption is to be reunited with his maker and the pure innocence of his young murdered son (at the hands of Nigerian terrorists).SHELTER concerns itself with what's happening in our world today as ISIS invades our own country. Can you forgive the Godless, senseless violence of the terrorists that have taken away your loved one without embracing them as Tahinr did? Bottom line is that you have to 'let it go' or you will be consumed by your own personal mix of hate, revenge and finally guilt. That is if you actually are a decent, sane person.