Thoughts on Nocturnal Animals(2016)?

Stylish but deeply empty. The highway scene and the ending were strong and Gyllenhaal gave a very solid performance, but the other three mains were pretty disappointing (especially a boooooring Michael Shannon) and some of it was impossibly pretentious and heavy handed. Something like a 5/10, maybe a 6 at a push because there are flashes of something really good in there.

I thought it was pretty dumb. Shannon and Gyllenhaal were entertaining though, and I liked the very ending. 6/10

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say it's pretty good, even if I understand and to some degree concur with a lot of the criticisms that are leveled at it.

It's definitely not on par with the source material, mostly because Ford can't get out of his own way: the novel is a deceptively simple yet very effective and self-aware character study, with a fascinating structure that plays with the reader's expectations and manipulates information in a very clever way. Ford did capture the basic points, but he also re-worked a lot of it to make it essentially about himself and his milieu (the upper class, high fashion art world as opposed to the boredom of middle class academia), while also emphasizing and cranking up the pulp elements that the source material treats as secondary. The rape/murder/revenge subplot (the book within the book) is entirely accessory and simply a means to tell the ultimate story here: that of a supposedly good, honest woman tearing through the bullshit narrative that she's concocted in her head to make sense of her life choices and admitting to herself that she's actually just a selfish, materialistic and bitter failure.

That's admittedly very abstract, internalized and not terribly cinematic, which is why it could only be captured in full by a filmmaker with a different sensibility (Sofia Coppola comes to mind). Ford gets the main gist, but he chases after the shiny objects more often than the spirit of the novel would allow for: the extravagant opening credits, Aaron Taylor-Johnson butt-naked taking a shit on an outdoor toilet, the jumpscares-- that's not the original book, it's Tom Ford being Tom Ford.

With all of that said, while it's a letdown in comparison to the work it's adapted from, taken on its own, it mostly works. Not really as a subtle character study, which would've been more satisfying, but at least as a pulpy passtime. It shares a lot of the flaws and strengths that A Single Man did, and is ultimately a minor step up compared to that: like Ford's debut, this sophomore effort is also too slight to make a true impact, but is similarly well-acted (...at least for the most part, *cough cough* Golden Globe winner Crazy Hillbilly), stylish and pretty to look at, while also adding up to something a little more significant at the end of the day. Adams is easily MVP, though Shannon is a close second.

Agreed on all points . 

I just… I feel like I should write an itemized list of everything I didn’t like about it, but a.) that’d be quite the long list, and b.) it’s not worth the effort. I know most people here don't like him, but I genuinely don't understand how people could crap on someone like Refn for being "style over substance" and yet praise Ford, when his sins are far more egregious. Whoever denounces Refn for being a "perfume ad director" needs to take a long, hard look at this fucker. I always thought A Single Man was slight (good performance from Firth or no, it's little more than a beautifully shot and scored How-To video on grieving), but this... Jesus. I don't really know where to begin.

The Adams-centric storyline was so stilted and hamfisted, with none of her reactions feeling natural or real at all, and the bulk of her performance is looking pensive after reading a passage in a book. None of her interactions also sounded genuine at all ("Oh, I didn't know you had an ex-husband. Did you love him?" WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?). It was also horrendously edited to stall the Gyllenhaal-centric story at precisely the worst times imaginable. Which brings me to the Gyllenhaal stuff. Not only was police procedure laughable to the nth degree (a police lineup in the SAME room as the witness?!), but it was written like a C-minus pulp thriller, with many plot and character inconsistencies that made me wonder how it got published . . . unless it was self-published on the Internet. There. That must be it. Which I'd have no problem with, except Adams feels so brutally affected by the story, despite not even thinking about Edward for most of their twenty-year separation. And the addition of the stupid-ass jumpscares...

Also, I really hated how Michael Shannon and Aaron Taylor-Johnson got traction for their work here. The former has been so much better than in this one-dimensional part (it's remarkable how much I dislike his two Oscar nominations despite being a fan of the man), and the latter veered between legitimately intimidating to Johnny Knoxville-in-The Ringer.

I know this isn't a particularly well-plotted or well-written critique on the film, but as Nocturnal Animals wasn't a particularly well-plotted or well-written (or well-anything) film, I don't really feel I need to put in the effort. It was an infuriating viewing experience, especially as someone who was actually looking forward to the project since it was announced.

P.S. Also, whoever decided Adams and Gyllenhaal could convincingly play college students AND a divorced couple nineteen years after the fact should be fired.

P.P.S. What the fuck, Laura Linney?

I didn't like the film either but it's not like this is the first time we see actors well into 30s or even early 40s posing as college students or even high schoolers. Reese Witherspoon isn't particularly old-looking irl but no way in hell could she pass as a college student in 2014, and no way in hell could Laura Dern pass as her mother (yes I'm talking about Wild). Not that I'm saying they weren't good in it because they were.

I like it except for the on-your-face-symbolism. Abel Korzeniowski's score made in to my top 5 of that year.

Absolutely superb performances and very good cinematography. Though I did not get the outcome. If there even was one.

I don't mean this as a defense of the film or anything, but the source material treats Edward's book as exactly that: an unrealistic, amateurish first effort from an unaccomplished hobbyist who never had the talent or the drive to succeed, and thus has very basic writing abilities. That's never spelt out for the reader, but there's a very clear contrast in the writing styles of the two storylines, with Susan's segments being a significant improvement on Edward's, which I can only assume was entirely intentional. If I recall correctly, Edward's book wasn't even published in the novel, it's just a manuscript, though I may be wrong about that. 

The reason why Susan's reaction doesn't seem reasonable is mostly that Ford drastically changed and shrank their backstory, sacrificing several elements that recontextualize the police procedure narrative and snap Edward's intentions into focus. Obviously we're not supposed to take the entry-level murder/revenge storyline at face value, because the whole point of the novel is to decipher the veiled message/threat that Edward's book is intended as, but the only way to do that is to know about his and Susan's backgrounds and the history of their marriage, the details of which are sprinkled/mirrored throughout Edward's book and are only gradually supplied to us readers as the novel goes along. There's really only one story being told, and it's Susan's. Everything else is accessory, and a means to tell that one story. But Ford either removed or downplayed most of those clues and drastically changed the setting of the main plotline, which makes the whole exercise less effective because then there's less substance to go off of.

I remember when I went to the zoo for the first time... it was a smelly place and you couldn't have those plastic tops for your fountain beverages, so there were bees everywhere taking in the delicious and unprotected nectar of the Coca-Cola Company. Now my dad was a financially sound man in that he didn't spend no $5 on a damn coke especially one with no damn lid-- so if I wanted something to drink, it was to the public fountain I go.

On one of those trips to the fountain, I passed a large man who had his cup of cola being flanked by a large yellow jacket that he managed to use his giant bear-sized hand to swat away and onto me, where the yellow jacket decided to take out his frustrations on the world on my neck. So of course I cried and my dad rolled his eyes trying to pretend I wasn't his kid. He took me inside to where all them nighttime animals were so that I could calm down from the searing iron poker that the damn bee left in my neck........ and I was still mother fucking thirsty on top of it all.

So that was probably my most fond instance with Nocturnal Animals. Take from that what you will.