American Animals (Bart Layton)

[TGM]

AMERICAN ANIMALS

Director: Bart Layton

imdb (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6212478/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

[TGM]

So this was a pretty unique experience. It's mostly a narrative film, though it's based on a true story of a bunch of college kids trying to pull off a heist, and there's documentary elements following along featuring the real life people who the cast is based off of. And as they tell their story, the narrative story follows it as it's being told, except that there are times when the people telling it start contradicting one another, or we learn that some of them might be unreliable narrators, which is then reflected in the narrative part of the movie. It especially gets neat when the real people appear in and directly interact with the actors playing them during some of these moments.

I had my concerns early on when we first saw the documentary stuff come into play, and I was about to get all "choose one!" on this movie. But they managed to pull it off in a way that really makes it all come together and really work. And on top of all that, it's a pretty damn thrilling heist film to boot. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you're in the mood for something a little different from the norm.

[Dukefrukem]

Only 2 MCers saw this?

[Stay Puft]

I never posted anything about it, but... yeah, I didn't like it. Which is to say, I liked it while I was watching it, finding it slick and entertaining, but... it never amounted to anything, in my eyes. The more I thought about it afterwards, the more it seemed it had nothing to say. All of its clever meta gambits don't add up to anything, and most of those stylistic devices are even abandoned in the second half, so... what was the point? This is a movie that opens with a quote from Darwin, purposefully removed from its original context, but I can't figure out what Layton actually wanted to say. I get the sense he's reaching for connections between things that don't exist (Darwin, Audubon, the lives of well-to-do college white kids), refusing to face the most simple and basic fact: These kids are dumb and did a dumb thing and deserve to be in jail. Layton's approach absolves the kids and refuses to challenge or even simply confront their privilege. I walked out of the theatre scratching my head.

[Dukefrukem]

Its message is simple; all movie and TV heists are not as smooth as say, Ocean's 11, which was a very clever reference. This felt very Fincher to me. I'm putting this in my top 10 of 2018.

[Grouchy]

I'm with Puft here. The movie's gimmick was handsomely executed, but thematically, it was really thin. It ran out of interesting things to say about its subject matter long before it was over.