Nocturnal Animals [DVD]

If revenge is a dish best served cold, this movie serves it up piping hot. The opening scenes, while difficult to watch, set you up knowing this is movie that will take you on a journey you may not be prepared for. Under the current tyranny of endless positive thinking, YOLO, and personal branding, Noctunal Animals wields a powerful sword that severs any mask we can hope for on our invented social media personas. There is very little technology involved in the film, and the return to a text based experience of holding a book (or at least a manuscript,) and living and breathing through its plot and characters will be especially appealing to Generation Xers who resent the enforced compliance with ever evolving technologies. Which is basically who the main characters are, almost archetypes of this demographic. Amy, a successful art dealer dealing with a marriage that is a facade, reflects the disappointment that accompanies achieving what you once thought were your dreams. I will say little about the plot, because you can piece a good deal it together just by viewing the trailer. However, this is by no means a predictable tale. Edward is obviously her animus, but she dropped him during a young marriage because his aspirations to write did not provide her with the security blanket she perceived to be more important than her passion to create art. Her mother's assessment of him as weak and unable to provide for her financially eventually becomes an internalized voice that drives her decision making. Meanwhile, Edward evolves to find his inner strength as a writer, proving to Amy there was a fortitude in him she either overlooked, or couldn't believe in. I haven't seen a film this interesting since Pulp Fiction. While the two stories have little in common scenery and plot wise, they both portray an image of Los Angeles that is definitly unKardashian. The story within a story motif is woven together like a handcrafted garment. Consider it a wake up call for anyone going through the motions of endless career advancement and Instagramming portrayals of one spectacular event after another. Amy is deeply unhappy, and Edward's inner triumph as both a writer and warrior make her realize her loss too late. The setting of the inner story in the dessert reflects the bleakness Amy confronts daily. The only let down is the ending, but not because it tears the heart apart with regret and melancholia. It is that you just never want the movie to end. I agree with other reviewers that the pace is slow, but watching it is like savoring a sumptuous brunch rather than tearing through a sleeve of Oreos. Fans of romantic comedies or silly laugh out movies need not apply.

Being a fashionista who jets between trendy LA and artsy NYC does not give you an inherent talent to direct a movie.Clothing designer and Vanity Fair favorite Tom Ford proves it here. This movie is a pointless mess.Nocturnal Animals is about a Texas expat girl-turned trendy art gallery executive in too-chic-for-you LA. She is tired and in an unhappy second marriage. Then her Texas expat ex-husband, who is trying to make it in too-smart-for-you NYC sends her a proof of his book. She reads it. He is in LA for business and offers to meet up. She agrees to meet him at a restaurant. He stands her up. She sits in the restaurant alone and sad.That's it. Then the movie abruptly ends. No resolutions, no plot twist, no real story. This may mean to the white-wine-in-the-Hamptons crowd that Tom Ford is brilliant, but he's not... he just insulted you, the viewer. He just wasted your time. This is a mediocre movie. There are some flashbacks about these two follow-your-heart Texas kids, and why their marriage ended, but that doesn't make this a coherent movie either.In fact, most of the movie shows what the girl is reading in her ex-husband's book. And it's a nightmarish book about psychopaths who terrorize an out-of-town, trendy family out in the barren hellscape of West Texas, then rape and murder the wife and daughter. And how that really doesn't bother West Texas, And how the husband/father and the dying, grizzled West Texas detective team up to take the law into their own hands and kill the psychopaths.So Nocturnal Animals is a mediocre movie about a sad girl reading a bad book. Then she tries to meet the author. Then he stands her up. Then she is sad again. That's it. That's the entire movie. Please don't encourage Tom Ford to think he's a good director.Oh, and he seems to have a real hate for the State of Texas. This movie pounds you over the head with the message that the smart kids of Texas need to flee the State. Again, either to trendy LA or chic NYC.A mediocre movie with an insulting ending. Don't stroke Tom Ford's ego by watching it.

A lot of people were disappointed with the ending, but you have to think about it for awhile to realize it's a sort of poetic/philosophical movie. The whole time everyone's telling Edward he's weak and sensitive. So he writes a book for his ex wife. In the book his wife and daughter are murdered by these terrible hooligans and the whole time he's trying to get revenge. He does and then immediately dies. Because of how well the book is written, his ex wife starts getting feelings for him again and reaches out to meet him. He stands her up and it ends. That's the movie. Sounds average. But break it down. The book is him getting stronger; it's not his wife and daughter getting murdered, it's Edward's weakness dying and his ex wife would be the murderers giving him reasons to get stronger. In the book, he spends time mourning and fantasizing about revenge. He finally gets his revenge and accidentally kills himself. How perfect is that? A part of Edward had to die to get over his ex and he wanted her to know. Now she finally wants him again and he's orchestrated this entire book/plan to just stand her up and prove that she's the weak one. Kind of a lot to process and maybe sounds cheesy, but I thought it was a good time.

Three things you might want to think about when viewing NA.1) 85 % of the film is Susan Morrow's visualization while reading the novel "Nocturnal Animals" It's so obvious.. there are Beckett and Albee parts of the script where the characters run out out of things to say, -- Brilliant!2) 10 % of the movie is in the present.3) 5 % is the past.so.. watch it again.. I rented this twice and finally bought it because there was brilliance here that I had to figure out.Now.. why did Tony Hastings (novel writer and former husband to Susan) write this Novel?? There you go! that's why this is a masterpiece!

Noctural animals begins with a stunning scene or extremely obese naked women dancing individually on a stage. For me, that did nothing to improve the movie and, actually, was quite unnecessary. Even so, we realise we are in an art gallery. It is owned by Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), who seems to have peculiar taste. Later Susan receives the manuscript of a book from her ex husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) whom she has not seen for 20 years. Susan’s present husband (Arnie Hammer) has had to go away on business, he told her. Their marriage is strained. Alone she reads Edward’s book and the story has meaning to her and brings out in her a feeling of loss and regret. It reflects the loss and regret of Edward himself. It’s a violent story and she is captivated by it. I found it so hard to write about this movie because it gives you so much to think about and the story in the novel is entwined with the movie’s story and we are taken from scene to scene into the novel and out again. It works magically and if you watch the DVD or BluRay (I saw the BluRay) then don’t miss the extra with Tom Ford, writer/director, talking about the meaning of it all and what he wanted the movie to be. Ford points out some of the little details that the audience may have missed. I admit I missed quite a few but when Ford talked about it, I recalled them. Missing the details does not mean, however, that the movie’s storyline cannot be easily followed. While I am not easily shocked, I did find the scene showing early on in the novel extraordinarily tense and found myself holding my breath. That, for me, is the sign of a really good movie, when I am made to forget that it is a movie and can empathise with the emotions of the characters involved. The movie has the whole works. The cinematography, the characters, the casting, the performances, the dialogue, the lot. And the soundtrack, that haunting soundtrack, should not be forgotten. For me, this movie is a winner. Strangely, the movie was only nominated for one Oscar, a nomination for Michael Shannon (who played a police detective) for best supporting actor. His performance was excellent but he didn’t get it. It went to Mahershala Ali for Moonlighting.Finally, while the movie covers some violent acts, including rape (all in the characters novel), none of the scenes are particularly graphic and the rape scene is suggested rather than explicit. Mostly it was psychologically disturbing which is what thrillers often are.

This is a ‘clever’, serious film which to me has some interest although is not compelling, with a couple of scenes I found unpleasant to watch.A woman played by Amy Adams (a very talented actress although the parts she plays do not always make the best of her abilities) is prompted to re-evaluate the life choices she made some years ago, when to her surprise she is sent the manuscript of a novel by a writer whom she almost married and started a family with some years ago, when he was unpublished and had no sure career future.At the time, partly on her parents’ advice, she left him to marry a businessman and make a career managing a pretentious modern art gallery. Reading the novel, about a family who suffer a grim fate when set upon by thugs one night in a remote part of Texas, she realises that it is in some sense about the family life she and the writer could have had together, and the writer’s feeling that she ‘killed’ it when she left him.Personally I think the writer is overdoing things although I think we are supposed to sympathise with his point of view.Some of the film is about Amy Adams’ character’s actual life; some of it is dramatised scenes from the novel. The ending of the film is surprisingly uneventful, but is meant to imply that writing or reading the novel has allowed them both to move on emotionally.There were two parts to this film that I disliked watching.The first is the opening scene which for reasons which turn out to be something to do with modern art, consists of fat, wrinkly, old women dancing naked. The sight of all that droopy old flesh may put young men who see this film permanently off the idea of marriage, if that is what their wife’s body will be like one day.The second is when the family fall victim to violent thugs at night on a desert road in Texas, and the daughter and wife are snatched away to unpleasant fates. This is not a horror or blood and guts film and the bad part is as much what we imagine happening as actually see on the screen.A well-made film that leaves the viewer with some vivid memories. Those who are not too squeamish and who like serious-minded films about relationships may well be enthusiastic about 'Nocturnal Animals', but it is not the kind of film I personally would particularly seek out again.

Adams is unhappy with her life as she suspects her husband is having an affair as well as feeling unsatisfied with her current career. Out of the blue, she receives a manuscript from her ex-husband (Gyllenhall) who after a long struggle as a writer has finally managed to get his first book published. It is dedicated to her and called, ‘Nocturnal Animals’ which was a term he used to call her as she always had trouble sleeping. Her husband goes away on yet another suspicious business trip and she finally begins to read the book.It turns out to be a bleak story about a married couple going on a trip with their teenage daughter. Their car gets run off the road by a group of crazy rednecks leading to his wife and daughter being taken from him and then subsequently raped and murdered. As she continues to read, Adams begins to have a lot of flashbacks of her former relationship with Gyllenhall as in many ways the story seems to mirror what happened in their marriage together. She left him for another man and then discovering that she was pregnant with Gyllenhall’s child, decided to have an abortion leaving him devastated.Excellent performances from Adams and Shannon who plays the lawman that tries to bring the criminals to justice (in the book).

This film really gets under my skin, it’s dark, depressing and completely messed up.After my first watch i thought the film was ultimately shallow however on my second viewing there is more depth to it than i first thought.Amy Adams is phenomenal as always, this and Arrival in the same year with no Oscar nomination, what the hell happened there?

Watched this first at the cinema and had to watch it again. It's very strange but the acting is amazing and it's a great storyline. Definitely worth watching.