Review: Nocturnal Animals (2016)

I don’t remember ever going into the cinema as blind as I did last week for Nocturnal Animals. I’d heard a lot of buzz surrounding the name, I’d watched the trailer (once) which didn’t give much away at all, and I knew Jake Gyllenhaal was in it. That was enough for me, and I somehow convinced my husband to come along too. I don’t know how I did it, but I have a feeling it may have been something to do with the ever beautiful Amy Adams.

Before I go into an actual review, I have to share a funny moment with you. Tuesday and Wednesday showings have a silly amount of adverts before the movie, because of the wildly popular ‘Meerkat Movies’ 2-4-1 deal. This poor couple in front of us were already there when we arrived, sat through the whole slog of ads, the 5 trailers (although we were shown the Arrival trailer twice in a row, odd) and when the BBFC ratings screen came on with ‘Nocturnal Animals’ emblazoned on the left hand side, they realised they were in the wrong screen. I hope they didn’t miss too much of Doctor Strange, because that opening scene was awesome.

Anyway! Nocturnal Animals is a dark movie split into two narratives. First we have Susan (Amy Adams), an art gallery owner living a seemingly-perfect life in her mansion of a house adorned with staff, and a husband who sadly, is hardly ever at home. One morning she receives a parcel from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), a manuscript for a book he’s written that he wants her thoughts on. The book turns out to be dedicated to Susan, but is a dark and twisted story, which haunts her.

Whenever Susan starts reading the book, we get to see it played out, by Jake Gyllenhaal himself and his book-wife (Isla Fisher). Their story isn’t for the feint-hearted, it’s a cruel and violent tale. Some scenes are particularly difficult to watch, and I get the feeling they were deliberately made as long as possible to make the audience uncomfortable. If that is the case, it definitely worked on me. I kept thinking to myself ‘Oh that won’t actually happen though, they wouldn’t show us that’ and then they did! I’m getting the shivers just thinking about it.

So, whilst we see Edward’s story played out in snippets, we also go back to Susan often to learn more about her, and more importantly, what happened all those years ago between her and Edward. There’s a theme of revenge here for sure, and we know that Susan left him, but not why, or under what circumstances. It’s really well edited in these sections, the way something happens in the book that then takes us back to real life, and editing isn’t something that I normally take notice of.

Of course, I won’t give anything away, but I love an ambiguous ending. One that’s satisfying enough when taken at face value, but when you start to analyse every little detail, you begin to come up with different theories about certain elements. 

I really loved this movie, but I will NOT forgive that jump scare. You can witness it for yourself, I’m not going to warn you, but it scared the crap out of the entire screen. Then I had to watch the next ten minutes from the corner of my eye in case something else happens. My poor nervous wreck of a husband now labels Nocturnal Animals as ‘that piece of sh*t movie that scared me’. He liked it of course, but he’s a bigger scaredy cat than me!

So yes, big seal of approval from me. Just...skip the opening credits if you can...trust me.

Review: Godzilla (2014)

Please allow me a moment of ignorance right now. I have never seen a Godzilla movie. Mercifully, this confession has so far been met with shrugs of shoulders, and no one seems to think it's a big deal. Last weekend I gladly walked blindly into my local IMAX to witness Godzilla for myself.

I learnt something new about a week ago too. There's a fantastic cinema inside Millennium Point in Birmingham, which was an IMAX. About 2 or 3 years ago they re-branded to The Giant Screen, and I always assumed that it was still an IMAX, but it isn't! I'm equal parts shocked/betrayed/confused about that. So after a confusing chat with friends, we booked at an actual IMAX cinema.  I used to love the IMAX at Millennium Point but when they changed it to Giant Screen it was rubbish, went once and never went back again!

I promise to try to keep this as spoiler free as I can, but if you haven't seen Godzilla yet or know much about it, maybe you should check out another page of ours!

Firstly, I can't emphasise how amazing the IMAX experience was, especially for a film like this. Godzilla's roar literally made my seat shake!

There was a lot in this that I didn't understand very well (shut your face Jenna!) but that's probably down to my lack of knowledge on anything Godzilla more than anything else. Also, I had no idea that Godzilla is actually a good guy?! That's where his name comes from I'm guessing...think, Allie, think.  Don't worry Allie, there was a lot I didn't understand, mainly because they didn't explain it, the characters just pulled suggestions/ideas out of thin air with no justification and they just happened to be true!  As for not knowing that he was a good guy, it depends which version of the film you watch, the 1998 film with Matthew Broderick shows a different perspective.

Honestly, this film was nearly perfect. Godzilla himself? Awesome. The other monsters? Terrifying. The music? Blew me away! It could have definitely done with more action and more of Godzilla himself, but I appreciate that then we would all whine that there wasn't enough of a storyline.  I could tell what the Director was trying to do, bring through the human element and make Godzilla almost a supporting character in the background, unfortunately it didn't sit too well with me.  They didn't showcase any one characters personality enough to care about the human element so you spent the whole film gagging for more Godzilla action and less of Dr Serizawa staring dumbstruck into the distance, while his sidekick explains why.

I'm completely gutted that Bryan Cranston only had a small role in this, in fact, the first trailer was really misleading in regards to Bryan. I also didn't like Aaron Taylor-Johnson in this. He was great in Kick-Ass but he lacked something in Godzilla. He just didn't seem to care that much if that makes sense?  All the characters lacked something I thought, they massively underutilised Bryan Cranston and briefly touched on family issues in the Brody family but never went deep enough for me to care.  Does it make sense that this guy, Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) would completely walk out on his father who appears initially to have had some sort of psychotic break but will miss a flight to see his family to help a small child he has never met before?? Yeah that's what I was thinking too, but then I don't think I would have wanted to sacrifice Godzilla screen time to go into more character development.

I loved the film though. I'll be getting it on Blu-Ray when it comes out, and I'm even tempted to watch a previous Godzilla film to fill in the gap. Does anyone have any suggestions?

The idea of focusing on the humans (instead of the monsters) and how they deal with the situation was a good concept but didn't quite do enough for me to enjoy it.  The serious nature of the film means that errors in the plotline are massively highlighted where they would have been laughed off in a joke in the 1998 version. I'm just happy that for once my confusion is justified and not just me being thick!

Looking Forward to in the Cinema this Month, May 2014

Okay, I was polite last month and let Jenna have Spider-Man. It was a pretty slow month for film releases to be honest, I haven't seen Transcendence yet and I'm not even sure if I want to now I've heard so much about Locke. My point being that I'm going to get in there first this time! Haha! Can't argue with that...

There's actually a whole load of things I want to see this month. Bad Neighbours, X-Men and A Million Ways to Die in the West are but a few. What I'm really looking forward to though is Godzilla. I am so glad you said that, I thought you were going to take X-Men and my heart broke a little!! Sorry carry on...

There is no doubt in my mind that this is going to be epic. I'm going to see this at the Giant Screen in Birmingham, tickets will have gone on sale by the time you read this and I'll have booked mine too! I saw Pacific Rim there last year, and despite what some people may say about that film, you can't deny the sheer awesomeness of that screen!

Cue another gasp of disbelief but I never saw the original Godzilla. I err, kind of get the gist though. Watch this space because I'll be reviewing this very soon! My dad LOVES this film but I wasn't all that impressed.  It's not bad just could have been better.

If you've been living under a rock for the past couple of months and haven't seen the trailer yet, here it is in all its glory.

 

 

Thankfully, mine is X-Men: Days of Future Past, I am HUGE fan of the X-Men movies (except The Wolverine but lets not get into that here - wise!) and I have been looking forward this one for years.  When I found out there was a full panel of all the cast at Comic Con last year (where I was supposed to be but wasn't) I was distraught.  Watching it on YouTube wasn't the same!  So, Jennifer Lawrence is one of my favourite actresses right now and who doesn't love Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, only for this photo:

 

If that's not enough then you have the rest of this stellar cast to look forward to:

How can we not be excited.  Although, I am a little concerned about the confusion element (to be fair the title confused me alone) and after watching Singer's work on The Usual Suspects, I'm not holding out much hope for understanding what the heck is going on - but hey that's what the second viewing is for! This is going to be a headache for me, I only understood 1 out of 4 Pirates of the Caribbean films so I don't stand a chance!

Here is the trailer in case you missed it:

What films are you most looking forward to in May??