Nocturnal Animals (2016) - T. Ford achieves greatness with plot-driven, stylish crime drama

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+ Best Crime Drama of the Year + Best Los Angeles Movie of the Year + Most Stylish Movie of the Year

 

Amy Adams and the shadowy contours of Jake Gyllenhaal fill out this stylish poster for Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals

Susan is a successful gallery owner in LA but also an insomniac with a cheating husband. She receives in the mail the manuscript for a coming novel sent to her by her ex-husband Tony, dedicated to her. The violent story it contains brings back the facts of their break-up and sheds new light on Susan's life.

Nocturnal Animals is the second film from fashion designer turned great filmmaker, Texan writer-director Tom Ford (A Single Man (2009)). It is an adaptation of Austin Wright's (First Persons: A Novel (1973)) novel Tony and Susan (1993).
The film opens powerfully with a memorable credit sequence that successfully establishes the alienated situation that our protagonist Susan finds herself in in her life. Amy Adams (Julie & Julia (2009)) is fascinating and full of internal life and mystery in the role, her second great work in 2016, a real Amy Adams year, following Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece Arrival. Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko (2001)) adds another superb performance to his accomplishments, playing both Tony and the fictional male lead of his book, who both struggle with the accusation of being weak. Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Godzilla (2014)) is diabolic and sexy here in a psychopath part that's already earned him a Golden Globe. - Michael Shannon (Man of Steel (2013)) is at least as brilliant as a loner lawman who longs for the taste of justice. The spectacular cast includes, in smaller roles, Michael Sheen (Passengers (2016)), Karl Glusman (Love (2015)), Laura Linney (The Mothman Prophecies (2002)), Armie Hammer (J. Edgar (2011)) and Isla Fisher (Bachelorette (2012)).
Nocturnal Animals is a plot movie, dissimilar from the more mood-driven A Single Man which it beats. Besides the sophisticated story, the film is stylish, laced with sly humor and with an appealing but restrained appetite for melodrama and glamour, running on the fiction inside it, an unpleasant crime story. But Nocturnal Animals never gets too graphic in its unpleasantness and is in fact also a fairly quiet film, literally, with rare periods of scored beauty by Abel Korzeniowski (A Single Man). It is a thrilling film, an adult drama about the prize of bowing out from love, which makes me hope that it won't be another 7 years before Ford releases another film.

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Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 22.5 mil. $

Box office: 28.4 mil. $ and counting 

= Too early to say, but looks like it will end up a big flop

[Nocturnal Animals premiered September 2 (Venice International Film Festival) and runs 116 minutes. Focus Features bought the North American distribution rights around 6 months before shooting started for a massive 20 mil. $. Filming took place in California from October - December 2015. The film opened limited in 37 theaters to a 492k $ first weekend at #18 and widened to #8 and 3.1 mil. $ in some 1200 theaters in North America, where it has grossed 10.6 mil. $, - which must be far below Focus Features' initial hopes for the release. The film won the Grand Jury Prize in Venice and is nominated for 9 BAFTAs. It won one Golden Globe out of three nominations. Nocturnal Animals is certified fresh at 72 % with a 6.9 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Nocturnal Animals?

A Single Man (2009) or, Tom Ford's Should I Stay or Should I Go?

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Stars Colin Firth and Julianne Moore look stylish on the poster for Tom Ford's A Single Man

1962: George is struggling with grief after his partner Jim's death. While the Cuba crisis is threatening world peace outside, George wants to shoot himself. But different people get in the way.

 
A Single Man is written by David Scearce (Measure of a Man (2018)) and debuting great Texan co-writer/director Tom Ford (Nocturnal Animals (2016)), adapting the same-titled 1964 novel by Christopher Isherwood (Down There on a Visit (1962)).

Firstly, the problems in fashion designer Ford's first entry into the world of filmmaking: Structurally, because we first get to know a great many things about George's loss, which could have been saved for later, to hit us with a larger force; especially since the film is not told in a linear style anyway. The use of color to illustrate life throughout the film seems trite and banal, just as part of the message of A Single Man, (live each day etc.) Finally there's the problem of Ford's aesthetics: Nearly every one in the film comments on how awful George looks, when, in fact, he couldn't look more stylish and spectacular. He is also surrounded by continually wildly attractive supermodel-looking people. These are, of course, the faults of a fashion designer who enters into filmmaking, thinking that his film must be as stylish as his fashion. With A Single Man in some periods you almost get the sense at times that the film serves as a prolonged commercial for Ford's fashion.
So what's so good about A Single Man as to make it succeed anyway then?
The film is a gay love story told without inhibitions, and without the sexual preference being the central issue in it. There's also some really fine, real scenes between the immersive, Oscar-nominated Colin Firth (The King's Speech (2010)) in the lead and Julianne Moore (The Hours (2002)) showing her very best side as George's old friend. Matthew Goode (Allied (2016)) and Nicholas Hoult (The Weather Man (2005)) are also wholly lovely in the film.
A Single Man has a boring end, and it is generally a bit overrated, but I still can't but embrace it in spite of its flaws.

Related post:

Tom Ford:  Nocturnal Animals (2016) - T. Ford achieves greatness with plot-driven, stylish crime drama

Watch a 3-minute clip from the film here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 24.9 mil. $
= Big hit (returned 3.55 times its cost)

[A Single Man premiered 11 September (Venice Film Festival) and runs 100 minutes. Shooting took 21 days in California, including Los Angeles. The film opened #21 to a 217k $ first weekend in 9 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #17 and in 353 theaters (different weeks), grossing 9.1 mil. $ (36.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 4 mil. $ (16.1 %) and Germany with 1.6 mil. $ (6.4 %). The film was nominated for 1 Oscar: Best Actor (Firth), lost to Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. It won 1/2 BAFTA nominations, an AFI award, was nominated for 3 Independent Spirit awards, won 2 prizes in Venice, and was nominated for 3 Golden Globes, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. Ford returned with Nocturnal Animals (2016). Firth returned in A Chrismas Carol (2009); Moore in Chloe (2009). A Single Man is certified fresh at 86 % with a 7.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of A Single Man?