"Nocturnal Animals" was a great film to stumble upon this afternoon. I sometimes don't shop for a film, but simply look at the title description and rating before diving into a film like this and wait to be surprised or disappointed. This movie was one of the greats as far as watching a film cold is concerned. Right out of the barrel, the opening scene gripped me in a visceral way, which is the intrinsic point of "art" after all. We see the gallery with the shocking spectacle projected on screens, which pan down to the sculptures of the subject as a reclining nude. The thematic device of the reclining nude appears several more times in the film, both as a horror and in the context of appreciable art and real life. I'm not going to ruin the film by giving a laundry list of what happens after that, but having watched the film, I must admit that the layered story-line, the careful weaving of symbolism, the transcendent tendrils of recurring imagery and an engrossing juxtaposition of timelines, where truth is stranger than fiction and art mimics life, really is composed as if with an artist's brush and it really gets down to the marrow of our daily existence and our psyches. The film makes us think about the choices we have made in our past and what we could have done to change the outcome. As a side note to the armchair malcontents, the likes of which we see far too many these days; get over yourself. The plethora of reactionary attacks of hatred unleashed upon any film that dares to be creative or different are unwarranted and quite frankly, despicable. If self-loathing nincompoops want to "review" something; why not review your own life? Yes. I'm talking to you. Most of you trolls who leave the imbecilic one and two star Reviews are semi-literate, immature, inadequate, spiteful, self-aggrandizing, pompous, contemptuous, unenlightened, spiteful, egotistical; as well as being the worst type of knuckle-dragging mouth-breathers on the planet and if tasked to make a movie on your own, could not do so if your life depended on it. If you hate movies that require any type of thought or creative consciousness outside the norm; just watch the films intended for people who are at the lowest point of intelligence on the Bell Curve and leave the rest of us alone. We do not care what you think. Sorry. I had to get that out of my system. If this movie was so terrible, as the oafs living in their parents' basement seem to think, then all movies are bad.

This is a film with about as much substance as the money-grubbing revisit of David Lynch to TWIN PEAKS. Vulgar and pointless.

The good first. The movie did a very good job in slowly ramping up the tension and unease in the scene where some crazy men accost a family attempting a late night voyage on a mostly deserted road. Yet, you could see that in so many other movies.So its originality you're looking for? Nocturnal Animals strives in earnest to find originality. Therefore, for the first five minutes or so of the film during the opening credits, we are treated to two morbidly obese women shaking around butt naked in slow motion. Sorry to comment on their figure, but they were obviously chosen for that exact purpose, to be sensational. And then that scene really carried no meaning further into the film, other than to establish that our heroine and her husband worked with an art gallery.The slomo cellulite dance is never revisited, thank goodness, but the film ended leaving me with the same sense of "um, why?" that it began with. Although not hopelessly vague, I suspect less people would understand what point the movie is trying to make if there wasnt a sentence or two describing the plot of the film that people can read before choosing to watch it. And then even knowing what is supposed to be happening here - women regrets past mistakes and begins to wonder if the scary book her ex husband wrote is a veiled threat - is not rewarded with much of a conclusion.Jake Gyllenhaal's character(s) in the film also came across as... somehow not right for Jake Gyllenhaal. Dialogue marks him as a peceivably "weak" man yet the camera titillates over his muscular body; just a small example of the casting paradox that is also felt in other ways I can't describe. It feels like he is forcing himself into a role not written for him. Amy was alright playing the rich mopey girl, but not enough to call the performance exceptional. I give this a 4 because it didn't suck so much as to make me hate the film - I did sit through the entire thing after all. I just feel it deserves considerably less than the average rating. Tom Ford can make a good film, no doubt - so watch A Single Man instead. This one's more of a hollow art piece, for people who think wine tastes better when its in a fancier bottle.

Susan, despite her art gallery business, is an unhappy woman in an unhappy second marriage. Then Edward, her first husband, sends her the manuscript of his forthcoming novel - a tale of a family who fall foul of three intimidating young men on a remote Texas highway - and she is soon tied up in the narrative and its parallels with her life.I don't normally have much time for art-house films, and this is clearly an art-house film. But it tells two stories, and tells both of them brilliantly. The events of the novel are delivered as a suspense thriller, and are cross-edited with Susan's story and experience of reading the manuscript. The editing is superb: it is as artistic, in its own way, as the film itself, where sound and image are carefully considered and crafted throughout.The crime thriller aspect is a story we have probably seen before, but we care - as does Susan - about its resolution. I found myself caring less about Susan's own story, the "real" story, if you will, although this gradually changed as the parallels between Edward's novel and his marriage to Susan became clearer. And this was not least due to the brilliant stroke of having Jake Gyllenhaal play both Edward and the protagonist of his novel.The performances are first class. Gyllenhaal, in particular, impresses enormously in both roles, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as chief tough is unrecognisable.It is rare to see a film which is so obviously an art-house film but which also entertains and impresses as a mainstream piece of cinema, but Nocturnal Animals manages it, and I recommend it accordingly.