kyussjm You know this is what is wrong with the American audience nowadays if it isn't spelled out to you in specific terms .When you have to actually think about what this movie is about .Your lost or it sucks ,this is a great movie . It has to be by far the best movie in 20 years .I'm sorry to say are we really that stupid America.Do we really need everything spelled out for us .

craysellers The excessive privilege of Susan's world of artists and entitled people is a beautiful cinematic experience. If the story stayed at that level this would be a masterpiece. When she receives a copy of her ex-husband's book, she sees his metaphor for how and why she left him, and what it felt like through his eyes. We see the mother's warning about romanticizing someone who will never be the man she wants him to be. Her guilt over succumbing to social pressure, that's what she can't forgive about herself; that's what she says, but her actual relationship with Edward doesn't bear it out. Her mother was right. She's in love with the man she wants Edward to be, but Edward - the real Edward - the man she's disappointed in and exasperated with? They have a boring, unfulfilling relationship and she wants out. The movie isn't honest about this detail and it's too important to ignore. She claims, later on, to have really loved him, and her claim is convincing. Even the husband she left Edward for, he cheats on her and she knows it, but she gets him because she has more respect for him as a man. If the director (Tom Ford) didn't mean to show that, it's incompetence. If her relationship with Edward was love, that's not shown, and Ford took a hard swing at it and missed.

rdolan9007 I did have my preconceptions of this film, which were based upon the mixed reviews of it. I had heard it was superficial, and yet others were lavishing praise upon it. The mixed reviews I confess attracted me to the film, and I wanted to see the side of the argument, I would come down upon.The positives first of all. It is beautifully filmed - it's slick, polished and the colours are luscious. It also has an astonishing beginning, which is one of those beginnings in where you go wow and are both 'magnetically' attracted and perhaps if you admit it a little repelled despite your pc correctness saying no you shouldn't be. It has a Lynchian quality to it and offers the promise of a quite wonderful and strange film. The other quality the film has is it's structure - a film within a film. The structure in itself allows for exciting ideas to be developed, and the film makes use of that structure to good if not quite, however, outstanding effect.One other positive, and it has to be said because so much of the film lingers on Amy Adams, is that she is quite simply stunning looking. This may seem like an archaic value judgement, and yet the film does depend upon her attraction to match the slickness of the film. Now this is a problem as well, because Amy Adams isn't really asked to do that much acting, and when the dramatic scenes come you are not quite convinced you care about the fate of her or the other people in the film.The film with in a film does however contain a fine performance from MIchael Shannon; a dying cop investigating the rape and murder of Jake Gyllenhall's characters family. Jake Gyllenall is also the ex-husband of Amy Adams who has sent the film script of this film to her. Therefore the setup is about how much does this film relate to Amy Adams relationship with her ex husband. Amy Adam's character is unhappily married as well, and therefore her ex-husband by way of the script (which by the way is good) reawakens a wish in her to go back to him. There is a critical problem however in that she aborted their child. This is revealed fairly late on in the film and adds a new dimension to the film with in the film.This though is the problem: does the film with in the film convincingly relate to the overall story. I wasn't really convinced because I didn't think there was an explicit enough connection between both sides of the film. The film with in the film to be fair would have made a good enough film on its own. The acting unfortunately is rather uneven throughout both 'films'. Jake Gyllenhall seems too intense for the role, and the film really needed to allow its actors more room for subtlety.This is a complicated and ambtious film and it is very well made, but something is missing from it. It isn't a purely superficial film, because there is depth underlying it. There are characters who are genuinely damaged, but the film ends up being more superficial because it doesn't allow room for the characters to be fully developed. I think the film's main reveal about the abortion comes too late in the film. It might have changed our earlier perceptions of where the film with in film was going and maybe this would have got me more involved with the film within a films meaning.This is a difficult film to review, and you have to see it to really understand, why people have mixed feelings about it. I admired the acheivement, but wasn't emotionally involved in the story. The film isn't a failure, but it is a film that doesn't quite work and it's ending is rather anti-climatic. The film just didn't quite nail it. .

Neil Welch 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.