Almost perfect. While it may not even end up in my top five movies of the year, Tom Ford’s (
A Single Man)
Nocturnal Animals was almost perfect. I liked it so much in this movie, and Ford almost created a masterpiece, but it fell short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie I’ve seen that would classify as an A+. Jake Gyllenhaal (
Love and Other Drugs, Everest) is better than ever, and he could end up with an Oscar nomination for this film. In a perfect world, he would, especially since he may have been the odd man out in 2015 (
Nightcrawler) and 2016 (
Southpaw) for a Best Actor Academy Award. But with four of the five slots pretty much locked up (Tom Hanks –
Sully, Denzel Washington –
Fences, Casey Affleck –
Manchester by the Sea, Joel Edgerton (
Loving), that leaves only one more nomination between Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling (
La La Land), Warren Beatty (
Rules Don’t Apply), and Andrew Garfield (
Hacksaw Ridge). And, honestly, while his performance was excellent, it wasn’t nearly the performance he gave in either
Nightcrawler or
Southpaw. Ford’s chances for a Best Directing nod look even dimmer, and an impressive performance by Amy Adams (
The Fighter, American Hustle) may be overlooked entirely because she will likely receive a nomination (and may even be the frontrunner) for
Arrival, a movie that was released just a week before
Nocturnal Animals.
Continue reading Nocturnal Animals (2016) →
Midnight Special. First, the good. The tone was incredible. It was seductive. It was menacing. It was creepy. It was engaging. It kept you on the edge of your seat. Finally, it had the right director. Jeff Nichols (
The most overlooked performance by a lead actor in 2011 was Michael Shannon’s performance as the delusional Curtis LaForche in the Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) bone-chilling drama Take Shelter. Though Shannon’s acting career began in 2001, and the first three movies he appeared in (Pearl Harbor, Vanilla Sky, and 8 Mile) each grossed over $100,000,000 at the box office, it wasn’t until 2008 when he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor after two jaw-dropping scenes as a mentally unstable man in