Review: Nocturnal Animals

This is certainly the week for Amy Adams, as two of her three 2016 releases is coming out in the space of six days here in the UK.
Director Tom Ford has done very little within the film industry. He is more known for his work within fashion. But his work in his only other film as director 'A Single Man' showed us his potential.

In this one, Ford has the amazing talents of Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal to use. I am a big fan of Gyllenhaal. His choice of projects hardly ever ends up being a stinker. He is consistently strong and anything that I see him advertised in, that is enough for me to go and check it out.
As for Adams, apart from Catch Me If You Can, her career has effectively kicked off in the mainstream world, in 2007 with Enchanted. Now, she has become a huge A-lister that you can almost guarantee any film she is in to be in the running for possible awards success.

Not expecting will certainly be the theme of this review. I went into this with very little knowledge of what to expect, except that it was being billed as a thriller. A thriller I got, but not one that ended up being so hard-hitting. Even the story structure was made in a way I have not seen in many films. I had no idea where it was going, it had lots of nice twists and turns, it was tense pretty much all the way through and I found it to be a very powerful and engrossing story.

Jake Gyllenhaal continues to show the vastness of his talent with another strong performance. Maybe not as worthy of an award nomination like his performances in Nightcrawler, Demolition or Brokeback Mountain. But still another memorable role to be added to his consistently strong back catalogue. It was a more subdued outing for Amy Adams. Nevertheless, she was the right person for the role and did it well.
A couple of shining stars in the supporting roles. Michael Shannon is great as always. He makes any performance feel natural and effortless. He continues to be one of the best actors to be in a supporting role. Who knew Aaron Taylor-Johnson would be really good in his almost unrecognisable role as an incredible vile character.
Also, there are a surprising amount of cameos that would even challenge the amount in Anchorman 2.

A lot of technical aspects to the film that I must praise. It's shot really well. Once you see it, you will be impressed more then your usual cinematographer, as there are different types of cinematography needed for this film, and they all work.
Some other aspects that I don't usually mention is the use of sound and the editing. I don't usually know what is great use of sound or editing. But in certain films, you can tell when something clever has been done in those departments to give more depth to the story, and I noticed it in this one. Props to those respective crew members.

A big thumbs up for this. Tom Ford has great job. It is a very well crafted film that deals with some interesting and disturbing content. This film shows where he can go and how wide his variety can be. His attention to detail is as top notch as ever. The performances as a whole are strong and the story is one of the most unique ones this year. It is tense, a real tough watch and executes the upsetting scenes rather well. I can see this being in the running for possible awards nominations.

Additional, I must mention that the opening credits are certainly one of the strangest ones I have seen. You will instantly go "What On Earth Is This?!" But trust me, it does mean something once the film gets going. Also, the score in those credits sounds great.

Rating: 8/10