Movie Review Nocturnal Animals

Nocturnal Animals (2016) 

Directed by Tom Ford

Written by Tom Ford 

Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon

Release Date November 18th, 2006 

Published November 16th, 2006 

“Nocturnal Animals” is a daring film of unique power and affect. Directed by fashion designer Tom Ford, the film stars Amy Adams as Susan, a desperately unhappy Los Angeles art dealer whose past comes back to haunt her in the form of a book written by her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Reading the book, alone in her enormous and empty home over a weekend where her new husband (Armie Hammer) is out of town, Susan is struck by feelings for Edward she thought she’d lost years ago.

The book is called “Nocturnal Animals” and it is dedicated to Susan. The book is a revenge thriller about a family traveling through a West Texas desert when they are menaced by a group of criminals. We see the story play out in Susan’s imagination with Edward in the lead role of Tony, a good man but not one well suited for a confrontation with criminals. We watch as the confrontation between Tony’s family and the criminals grows from harassment to kidnapping and to something extraordinarily disturbing.

The film goes on to lay in the back story of how Susan and Edward met, fell in love and eventually fell apart. Susan devastated Tony and created a resentment that lasted nearly two decades. The book he’s written is in many ways a reflection of his hurt feelings but you will need to see the movie for yourself to follow that line of logic as I will not spoil anything here.

Michael Shannon plays a role in “Nocturnal Animals” that I am reluctant to go into in order to avoid spoilers. That said, Shannon is Oscar-level brilliant. Shannon acts with every inch of his gaunt frame and with his devastating glare. The character is not unlike a Quentin Tarentino character full of pith and anger in equal measure but slightly less morally ambivalent. It’s an exceptional performance, easily one of the best single performances of 2016.

“Nocturnal Animals” is the second feature film for Director Tom Ford following his artful debut, 2009’s “A Single Man” which won an Oscar for Colin Firth’s remarkable lead performance. Coming from the world of fashion, Ford has a phenomenal eye. Both “Nocturnal Animals” and “A Single Man” are gorgeous to look at even as they explore the uglier side of life. Even the grittiest moments of “Nocturnal Animals” have a beauty to them that most filmmakers would have foregone in trying to underline the grit. Ford smartly uses the crisp, clear cinematography to show that beauty exists even in the dark.

I must add a bit of a caveat to this review. Though I am recommending the movie highly, “Nocturnal Animals” is not for all audiences. The first moments of the film are taunting and provocative and will cause some people to walk out of the theater in protest. Full disclosure, I turned away from the screen on my first viewing and had to force myself to confront the images the second time I watched the film for this review. The opening has little to do with the rest of the movie but I appreciate how this credits sequence jolts us in the audience to wide attention.

Moviegoing is often a passive experience and the credits sequence of “Nocturnal Animals” breaks through that passivity in no uncertain terms. Could the film have done without the jolt? Probably. The story being told is quite good and the performances of Adams, Gyllenhaal, and especially Michael Shannon are strong enough to jolt audiences on their own. That said, I understand the inclusion of the opening and on reflection I appreciate the jolt even as it is quite forceful.

Movie Review Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Directed by Mark Romanek

Written by Alex Garland 

Starring Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Sally Hawkins, Charlotte Rampling 

Release Date September 15th, 2010

Published November 4th, 2010 

The wonderful thing about “Never Let Me” Go is how its languorousness invites the viewer to project a meaning onto it. Yes, that projection requires ignoring a few things about the characters and what is happening on screen but there is something valuable and even entertaining about a movie that gives the viewer so much room to move around. Some have found parallels to the holocaust. The great Roger Ebert finds a modern equivalent in the sad fate of workers at big box stores like Wal-Mart. Other critics acknowledge a philosophical truth in the film that is just out of their grasp but somehow knowing it is there is enough for them.

Strangely, I find myself somewhere within that last group. I too want to believe and have searched for various philosophic or metaphoric meanings in Mark Romanek's gorgeous direction and Alex Garland's teasing screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's moving if also vaguely interpreted novel.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan) fell in love with Tommy when both were young students at an out of the way private school somewhere in the English countryside. Kathy was a self conscious introvert with the soul of an artist. Tommy was an outcast prone to violent rages that only served to make him even more of an outcast.

The center of their world is their relationship with Ruth (Keira Knightley) a popular girl who befriended Kathy in search of a worshiper and fell in with Tommy as a way of preventing that worship from being cast elsewhere. It's clear to us and especially clear to Ruth that Tommy and Kathy should be together but her insecure need for their attention supersedes her ability to let her friends be happy.

This is especially tragic because Hailsham is not merely a country boarding school and the students are not really students at all. As explained in excruciating detail by one of the teachers, Miss Lucy (Sally Hawkins), Hailsham students will have painfully short lives in which they will donate their organs until they complete, a nicer way of saying they are spare parts until they die.

The brilliance of “Never Let Me Go” is not in setting up a life or death situation but in the real human ways that these characters take in this extraordinary information and assimilate this knowledge as part of who they are rather than the going concern of some sci fi story of survival.

The arc of the average life is played out with a timeline in mind that lasts a lot longer in our minds than in reality. For Kathy, Tommy and Ruth the arc of birth, life and death is compacted into a mere 30 years at most yet they grow and age and live as if a full life were lived.

They cram their short lives with experiences of love and compassion that a longer life no doubt takes for granted. When Kathy finally gets the opportunity to be with Tommy she doesn't spend much time lamenting, they get right to loving and while there is temporary hope for more life, Kathy is not so concerned about prolonging love as she is about enjoying what she has.

Ruth's is the saddest of all of the stories. Her life is marked by pettiness and a greed for attention. She found weaker kids and forced herself on their attention and in her fight to remain at the center of their world she destroyed them and herself, robbing all of them of the little life they could have had.

Carey Mulligan deserved an Oscar for her work in “Never Let Me Go.” The heart, the love and the compassion she portrays is the heartbreaking force of the film. A soul as wide and as deep as Kathy's deserved more than to be an organ bank and yet that is not what the film is about, it's about what life she brings to what little life she has and much of that is played on Mulligan's wonderfully expressive face.

Mark Romanek captures the essence of Ishiguro's novel in ways that most directors likely would not. Like Ishiguro, Romanek is not really interested in the grander political points about breeding humans for their organs. Rather, that is the setting for telling human stories about what real people would do in these circumstances. The fate of these characters lends a certain tragedy to them but that tragedy is compounded by what unique, fascinating and thoughtful beings these characters are.

The political points, the metaphors and meanings are ours to bring to the film. What Carey Mulligan, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland are focused on are the human beings and the lives they live against this unique and tragic background. It's a wonderfully experimental ploy and it works brilliantly as a movie that makes you think for yourself and moves you deeply.

Movie Review My Soul to Take

My Soul to Take (2010) 

Directed by Wes Craven

Written by Wes Craven 

Starring Max Thieriot, Denzel Whitaker, Raul Esparza, Shareeka Epps 

Release Date October 8th, 2010 

Published October 11th, 2010

How could a director as obscenely talented as Wes Craven turn out a work of such asinine numb-scullery as “My Soul to Take?” It's a baffling question. Do not be mistaken, Craven has splashed his name across a number of horrendous movies as a producer. He even directed the stupefying werewolf movie “Cursed.” That however, was written by Kevin Williamson and had any number of production issues.

For what we know of “My Soul to Take” from script to casting to direction, all was controlled by Wes Craven and this fact leaves one to wonder if the now 70 something director has abandoned his faculties.

”My Soul to Take” tells a vaguely “Nightmare on Elm Street-esque” story of a serial killer seeming to strike back after death. The 'Riverton Ripper' was a serial killer who happened to be a family man suffering from schizophrenia. He has seven personalities, one of which happens to be a deranged killer.

On the night of the birth of his son the Ripper murdered his wife and was thought to have died himself in a subsequent stabbing, shooting, car accident, and explosion and drowning. Somehow, doubt remains. 16 years later the son of the serial killer is unknown but he is definitely one of seven children born the night the ripper died.

Get it yet? Seven kids born the night the guy with seven personalities died? Huh? Maybe, each of the kids got one of the personalities? Maybe, even the serial killer one? Oh yeah, you get it. We get it. Oh, good god do we get it. “My Soul to Take” is dopey on a level of severe mental decomposition. What it lacks in intelligence it also lacks in scares, continuity, fluidity and simple coherence.

The cast of “My Soul to Take” is a group of non-descript youngsters just good looking enough to be pleasant but not interesting enough to be memorable save the poor lass saddled with the Jesus Freak personality, Zena Gray, whose flaming red mane and pale, statuesque skin evoke prurient sympathies even as her arch piety is an extensive put off.

The religiosity of “My Soul to Take” bears mentioning if only as yet another of the film's many punching bags alongside basic movie mechanics and compelling storytelling. The prayer of the film's title is used merely as a foreboding sounding phrase and has no use whatsoever in the film other than as a brief bit of dialogue.

The film's one truly pious character is a stunningly beautiful yet entirely overbearing figure whose beauty and innocence is guaranteed to be punished. There is some mention of a group of parents planning a meeting at a church however, because they were all conspirators in a lie about the son of the serial killer their religiosity is cast as something sinister.

I am the last person to defend religion but this type of amateur hour, faux critique is beneath even the most condescending of atheists and it turns “My Soul to Take” from something merely awful into something strangely offensive to even those that might share its perspective.

What a mind-blowing failure this film is. Granted, my feelings are colored by the fact that “My Soul to Take” comes from a director I have long adored and respected and that has certainly colored my opinion; possibly made my reaction even angrier. That said, “My Soul to Take” likely would not have been any good under any director; under this director it's just all the more sad.