Nocturnal Animals (2016): Tom Ford, Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon

No trailer yet...

http://cdn1-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/1970/01/file_605273_tom-ford-next.jpg

Sounding good, very much a coffee-table-book Gone Girl-type thriller.

Missed opportunity to be really great imo, each piece is poorly written, too flat, too on the nose.

But the concept/s, performances, yeah, definitely well worth a watch and think.

If it only existed to deliver the scare of the year it's justified the ticket price.

this did not need its own thread but yeah actors were good and the neverending story/relationship flashback shit didn't work at all

so so so so so so so great

A vacant, horrifying moviel.

this did not need its own thread but yeah actors were good and the neverending story/relationship flashback shit didn't work at all

― diary of a mod how's life (wins), v

One of the things for which I hated it is making Jake give his worst performance to date.

did y'all like A SINGLE MAN? i just saw it for the first time on monday, loved it, completely devastating... this was obv pretty different but much better, more mature filmmaking and subtler... like that saturation trick was sooooo overused in ASM, but I loved the details in NA (notice the Koons sculpture disappears toward the end of the movie as her husband's deal presumably falls through).

thought a single man was glossy trash

he was unclothed, you have to give him that much xps

A Single Man had a couple of sequences that understood what Isherwood had to say about memory and desire but none of his wit. Ford makes one mortal error: the uncle who calls George to break the news about Jim does invite him to the funeral, even going so far as to “admitting George’s right to a small honorary share in the sacred family grief” but is “chilled” by George’s coldness. To wring homophobic bathos, Ford has the uncle disinvite him or something.

It's a travesty. Hoult and Firth have a nice frisson though.

this was very stupid with the whole contemporary art is vapid/sellouts feel bad present day stuff & I'm slightly ashamed at how much I liked the dumbass pulp fantasy parts

I mean, one Neon Demon a year is enough.

i loved the jabs at the art world and how AA's character thought everything she made/sold was shit and people were fools for buying it and pretending to be interested in it.

This got Film Of The Year in Uncut Magazine oddly enough

saw it again tonight. no one else dug it????????????????

Finally saw it and dug it: as good as De Palma's best, and nearly as ridiculous. Also reminiscent of Soderbergh'/ The Underneath, but more successful.

Sad/beautiful people + Jim Thompson ended up being a satisfying double feature.

**spoilers for those who saw it and care**

thought more about how Susan's daughter only shows up in one scene, when Susan calls her in the middle of the night after reading the kidnapping scene in the book. besides being posed in the same way as the dead mother & daughter in the book, she's never even mentioned outside of this scene, and i think she might be a hallucination of Susan's, the aborted daughter she never had...

Hadn't thought of that, but completely makes sense.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson was hella fuckin creepy

yeesh this was bad

saw this today, quite liked it. i'll agree jake's performance is overshadowed by just about everyone else in his plotline but i don't care. big year for west texas!

Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson were two of the most enjoyable performances of the year imo

yeesh this was bad

― johnny crunch, Friday, December 9, 2016 10:15 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Surprised at how polarizing this movie has been. What was your take on it?

It's about man who passive-aggressively punishes his ex-wife with a shitty novel

I enjoyed watching it but it's ultimately kinda indefensible

Michael Shannon was good

It's about man who passive-aggressively punishes his ex-wife with a shitty novel

I enjoyed watching it but it's ultimately kinda indefensible

― Fiddle Catstro (latebloomer), Friday, December 9, 2016 11:46 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what's indefensible? the movie or the character?

I was being a bit hyperbolic when I said "indefensible". I just think it's kind of a glossy but dumb movie that flirts with misogyny without really subverting it.

yes but was it any good was the question

It's got a good beat and you can dance to it

I enjoyed watching it but it's ultimately kinda indefensible

new board description

i thought there was a lot to unpack and think abt, but not entirely in a gd way; like just really placing the filter of each scene where what the viewer is seeing is amy adams characters visualization of what shes reading, and then contemplating the motive of jakes character writing it and how he wants it to impact her

My review.

yea also the *spoiler* above of the call to check in on the daughter scene being hallucinated or dreamed, i think that has to be correct, but the scene itself gives no indicator that i recall of that being the case ~ thinking back to the scene where she drops her art collegues phone when she shes the villain/rapist on the nanny cam is support for it imo but i thnk thats a lil oblique and hard to puzzle out

"[Adams]doesn’t give a performance – she presents a series of theatrical gestures, like gaping at theoretical perversities or falling into exquisite chairs as if they were beanbags"

yea this is otm i was lol-ing @ her gasps while reading a bk

It's about man who passive-aggressively punishes his ex-wife with a shitty novel

punishes her for getting an abortion, since absolutely everything must be related back to trump

"if you massage your pussy with PAM cooking spray for a month before the baby comes you won’t need vaginal rejuvenation"

yeah the neverending story-isms were corny and bad xp

TS: "if you massage your pussy with PAM cooking spray for a month before the baby comes you won’t need vaginal rejuvenation" vs "“How many cocks can you entertain in that cum dumpster of yours?” in Only God Forgives.

Satires of the contemporary art world in shit films reminds me of those long-forgotten never-to-be-read-again kingsley amis novels you find in second-hand bookshops whose blurbs say things like "a raucous satire on feminism and psychoanalysis!"

always with an exclamation mark

those Amis novels are funnier and faster than this slog

and actually the New York Review of Books has just reissued most of those!

haha well it isn't quite a value judgement but I do not need them

I appreciate the exclamation mark on your last post btw

idk why im still thinking abt just like the mechanics of the plot, its a bit psychologically interesting

Susan, receives the novel from her ex-husb, Edward, dedicated "for Susan"; the main character of the novel is called Tony; understandably and as we learn it is supposed to be a stand-in for Edward, the author/ex-husb and so we are shown Jake G as Tony in the fictional visual portrayal;

the novel wife is called Laura, understandably and as we learn a stand-in for Susan we can assume? but in the fictional visual portrayal we see Isla Fisher, not amy adams

I think its just sorta sloppy & shouldn't be this dissected prob; also it would be more confusing for the viewer if amy adams was Laura (but it'd prob actually be cooler + more effective in a way)

or you can think that Susan cant or isnt confortable visualizing herself in the fictional world (assuming what's on the page as descriptors mirrors her actual features) so she creates someone similar

yeah i don't think she's comfortable visualizing herself in the story, especially as it progresses.

Hollywood Reporter @THR 59s
What's next for 'Nocturnal Animals' scribe Tom Ford? "I've written something that's very politically incorrect"

ooh la la

waiting with baited cockbreath

waiting with roach bait

baiting with cockroach breath

Except for the, um, scandalous credit sequence--which just seemed show-offy to me, although I can see making a case for it--liked this much more than I expected to. The dinner scene with Adams and Gyllenhaal before they marry was excellent, the one shock moment ditto (I always sheepishly laugh at myself afterwards--"Did anybody hear me gasp or see me flail my arms idiotically?"), and, being a passive-agressive type, I loved the ending. Thought the three leads were great.

Hm -- ILE knows what a Jake G partisan I am, and I thought he gave his worst performance. The film's trick is to pass off its received redneck plot as a story to hide its inadequacies.

I liked that dinner scene too; it belonged in another movie.

Didn't see any problems with Gyllenhaal; his novelist seemed like a variation on Robert Graysmith in Zodiac, the trusting boy scout ("Eagle scout, actually"), and in the parallel story I thought he was credibly distraught and frantic. Shannon looks like he's having a blast. (Didn't mention Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who was indeed creepy.)

I was kinda disappointed by the reveal that Shannon had cancers because I was really into his breaking off midsentence to spit on the ground as just a crazy Michael Shannon acting choice

Loved the movie but then again obsessed w Tom Ford since his Gucci days. I still haven't seen A Simple Man strangely.
I love the way they portrayed the art scene. So over the top.

(xpost) It did lose a bit retroactively, but that was so funny.

Holy Aaron Taylor-Johnson was virtually unrecognizable - good acting

is that what it was?

Let's hope so.

how are y'all seeing this? still in theaters or is it already out on blu-ray/on demand/whatever?

Not sure if it's good acting just as much as a different look tbh. Gonna correct myself there. Enjoyed this but found some of it overly ratcheted up

liked the look of it but couldn't help sniggering at Adams doing her breath-y over-dramatic reaction thing every five minutes. funny cast all round; Taylor-Johnson seemed to be doing a bad impression of Brad Pitt in Kalifornia, Armie Hammer wanders in for a completely pointless couple of scenes..

She was meant to be like that imo

upon re-appraisal, this movie was cack

Michael Shannon tho

he's the best part of the movie. i also really soured on this, despite seeing it twice when it came out last november. amy adams is also great, & i still like the movie (though should revisit), but i wouldn't rate it above kelly reichardt's certain women.

this was fun but facile. alfred otm in his review. especially about the women being dressed terribly. stupid to throw away andrea riseborough on one scene too. also they talk about the split and abortion happening twenty years ago (19, she corrects him) ut with armie especially being and looking in his early 30s it doesn't make any sense.

but with*