Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Overrated and overhyped

Just perfect...

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

You know this is what is wrong with the American audience nowadays if it isn't spelled out to you in specific terms .When you have to actually think about what this movie is about .Your lost or it sucks ,this is a great movie . It has to be by far the best movie in 20 years .I'm sorry to say are we really that stupid America.Do we really need everything spelled out for us .

The excessive privilege of Susan's world of artists and entitled people is a beautiful cinematic experience. If the story stayed at that level this would be a masterpiece. When she receives a copy of her ex-husband's book, she sees his metaphor for how and why she left him, and what it felt like through his eyes. We see the mother's warning about romanticizing someone who will never be the man she wants him to be. Her guilt over succumbing to social pressure, that's what she can't forgive about herself; that's what she says, but her actual relationship with Edward doesn't bear it out. Her mother was right. She's in love with the man she wants Edward to be, but Edward - the real Edward - the man she's disappointed in and exasperated with? They have a boring, unfulfilling relationship and she wants out. The movie isn't honest about this detail and it's too important to ignore. She claims, later on, to have really loved him, and her claim is convincing. Even the husband she left Edward for, he cheats on her and she knows it, but she gets him because she has more respect for him as a man. If the director (Tom Ford) didn't mean to show that, it's incompetence. If her relationship with Edward was love, that's not shown, and Ford took a hard swing at it and missed.

The good - Amy Adams. Jake G. The superimposed story-in-story. The cleverly conceived shots. The ending. The subtle nuances which makes this a "veiled threat and a revenge". Tom Ford's direction. The Lynchian undercurrent of tension. The bad - (Or is that a good and intentional thing?) - The movie leaves you feeling somewhat incomplete on a lot of fronts. I bet you won't watch this movie a second time even if you really liked it, because we only want to recreate wholesome experiences. This one leaves you hanging. Just like Amy's character at the dinner table.

I read most of the reviews before watching the film, and assumed it was just a bunch of uptight people from "flyover" states. I was wrong. I watched this because Tom Ford did such a great job on the aesthetic beauty/cinematography and tenderness of "A Single Man"; assuming his follow up project would be similar (at least in style/taste). I could not have been more wrong. It was graphic and disturbing to the point that, had I not known Tom Ford had written & directed, I would have thought it was the product of a very disturbed mind. I still don't know what could have possessed him to imagine and write this. I don't know what the point of the opening sequence with the nude, morbidly obese "art show" was - it seemed like it was just for shock factor rather than any sort of artistic or body image commentary, given the fact Tom Ford made Colin Firth lose weight for "A Single Man". I don't want to get into any plot spoilers, but it made Law & Order: SVU look like a Rom-Com. I think the worst part is the sense of self-indulgence/self-importance of the film. There was an over abundance of drawn out "reaction shots" that just felt like a pretentious attempt at being artistic: Jake Gyllenhaal sitting naked on the side of the tub; Amy Adams inhaling overly dramatically long and deep while reading the manuscript (repeatedly). I really like Tom Ford and the bulk of his work (fashion and otherwise), but I hope that he either retires from filmmaking or once again embraces the thoughtfulness, sensitivity, and... "spirit" that made " A Single Man" such a bittersweet pleasure.