Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Susan Morrow	Amy Adams
Edward Sheffield / Tony Hastings	Jake Gyllenhaal	½
Hutton Morrow	Armie Hammer
Anne Sutton	Laura Linney	½
Alessia Holt, Carlos' wife	Andrea Riseborough	-
Carlos Holt	Michael Sheen	-
Sage Ross	Jena Malone	-
Detective Bobby Andes	Michael Shannon
Ray Marcus	Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Laura Hastings	Isla Fisher	-
India Hastings	Ellie Bamber	-
Lou Bates	Karl Glusman	-
Steve "Turk" Adams	Robert Aramayo	-

Review

Tom Ford's second feature, after his successful A Single Man in 2009, is a more formally and narratively ambitious film about a rich L.A. gallery owner (Amy Adams) with a strained marriage who begins revisiting her former life after receiving a manuscript for a novel from her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal). With its novel-within-a-film framework, the film feels inescapably literary, but Ford solves the challenge of shifting to/from and incorporating the 'fictional' portion of the picture sleekly, even if the storylines arguably do not tie in with each other quite as powerfully as one could have hoped. Instead, they remain individually effective, and Ford shoots the gritty backwoods with just about the same subtle irony and disdain as he does the glitterati art world. That being said, he cares for his main characters, even if it's more in the form of sympathy than empathy. There are skilful, if somewhat unfulfilled performances from the two lead stars. And of course solid work by the always dependable Michael Shannon.