American Animals

Part documentary, part narrative retelling, Bart Layton who messed with all of us with his previous effort, The Imposter, blurs the lines of what is true by melding each of the four thieves stories into each other, even when they don't coalesce neatly. Plus it's a movie about book dealings. You know, like many famous movies: The Ninth Gate, Notting Hill, Unfaithful, You've Got Mail and other movies nobody cares about. This is a good time though. Recommended.

The most shocking thriller since the 2013 masterpiece "Brad Forgets His Country Club Locker Combination," American Animals takes you deep inside the fractured psyche of some college students who try to steal a book. From the library. OF DOOM. And it's all true! (Except that "doom" part.)

Layton's blending of biopic and documentary gives this a really interesting angle. It uses the elements from both to give the audience perhaps the greatest insight into the characters' minds that you could possibly get. Very interesting and the way the heist was actually done is definitely real-life-is-crazier-than-fiction territory.

Very well done, the mix between the actors and the real persons is well made. A must watch in my book.

Up to a point, an entertaining spin on the traditional heist movie, incorporating the 'real' players to great effect; nods to the OCEAN trilogy in style and especially score are welcome, however a moment of unnecessarily vivid, brutal and mean-spirited violence in a key second act scene is an ugly detour that deflates the rest of the movie, and only serves to underline what vapid and nasty a cast of characters we have been presented with. The lead quartet of actors are at least all terrific.

American Animals is not only a great heist movie it's also a documentary about a crazy event in american history.The decision to inter-cut documentary style interviews of the actual people with a storytelling narrative I thought worked incredibly well.It gave the film a unique style that took it above just your run-of-the-mill heist thriller.The performances here are also excellent,the soundtrack is super fun and the way they chose to demonstrate memory is incredibly inventive and unique.

They had to be as monumentally stupid in the first part to match the degree of panic stricken stupidity in the second part. Not sayin' it didn't happen, but if I want a study in stupid, all I need to do is watch Maxine Water's latest tirade or something. Downer.

American Animals is an intense and powerful docudrama about a university heist gone wrong; the masterful storytelling that blurs the lines between reality and cinema is exciting and novel.

FYI Barry Keoghan does not eat any spaghetti in this one. I found the novel blending of documentary and narrative quite effective and engaging. Stylishly assembled, good cast, the tiniest bit of drag in a few places but solid all-around with some notably strong editing and sound design. Always nice to see Udo Kier as a shady fence. Odd that The Taking of Pelham 123 was not one of the many robbery films brought up given that Pelham used both the old man disguises and the color-coded names.

Perhaps the zenith of the True Crime Reenactment subgenre - an arthouse version of made-for-CourtTV entertainment. To its credit, it's not even interested in the genre lines it's blurring - instead highlighting each of the players, weaving confessional and playacting, and seeing where the chips fall. The result, and possibly its greatest contribution, is a commentary on our weird need as people to justify our existence by manufacturing our own narratives, however small or stupid these may be.

I think this movie is a unique and incredible achievement that has been looked over. The way it intervenes a movie and reality is great and you feel so involved and anxious watching it like on no many movies. It is not perfect but you have to respect the craft, the story is a bit frivolous because is about privileged young boys who feel the void of existence and they attempt to fill in their illusion with a crime, but It talks about something real and takes it to an extreme to make a point.

not a bad movie, and the documentary-acting mix is unique and well-executed, but I didn't end up caring very much about the material or the attempt at a message. some losers driven by ego attempted a heist, so what?

Barry Keoghan needs to learn how to shave properly

I love heist movies but this wasn't much of a heist.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed American Animals. I liked that they interwove reality with fiction. They did a good job of showing how spotty memories are when it comes to storytelling and that that isn't even important. The most important aspect of storytelling is being entertaining and the creators of this film were able to do that by mixing the real life characters into the story of what happened. I thought the acting was really well done by the four young men who starred in this film.

It was OK, but I was hoping for more from a heist film. Thought they did seem to be working from the actual events so it couldn't be too far out there.

Smart and surprising and a hilariously scathing portrait of white masculinity. A spin on docudrama that was at once exhilarating and disconcerting.

It's good because what you think is going to happen seldom does. The questions asked at the end are good too. I can recommend this.

I really enjoy heist movies and the whole deal that goes into planning the robbery and then executing it. This is a realistic story of a heist (by amateurs) and while I don't expect to follow the real story down to a T, it is pretty close to the truth. The mix between documentary and movie works well here, shedding some light to the feelings of excitement, regret and guilt by the real people behind the characters. The soundtrack choices for this movie were damn awesome, too. I enjoyed this one

matt johnson filmiymiş gibi oluşu...

Very enjoyable and refreshing heist film, set apart by its contemporaries not only for its occasional meta sensibilities, but for its level of empathy for these characters and the tension in trying to commit a crime whilst doing as little harm as possible. Ambition and stupidity are seen in equals doses in these young men, and although there's one too many very on-the-nose mini-speeches about middle-class college kid ennui, the film improves in every department as it unveils.

The Imposter was a huge WTF for me and I think it's a better flick, but this is really great too. Because of the choice that Layton made to add the talking head docu element to it there was a level of sympathy/humanity present that may not have been there otherwise. Fiction can definitely hit that and every actor did great, but seeing the real people added something. It's a sloppy heist, but it's also based on reality so can't fault it there. It's a fairly unique heist movie, above all else.

Fuck these stupid entitled white boys. Great cast, great soundtrack, boring twaddle horseshit movie.

The contradictory perspectives thing doesn't really add much to the story, but it's a well made and intriguing film nonetheless.

Watch: Wait to stream this one | This was enjoyable. There's some fun cinematography, the docudrama style is fun, and ir did well to convey the uncomfortable side of a heist.

Could have had a better pace.

Interesting choice to merge heist with true story direct to tv story telling. I'm not sure it quite worked out or if I like them together. It took away from the quality talent involved.

Amazing background music, full of suspense and intense music. It also gives the various real life perspectives about an action, including the from the ones who did the robbery. It also has the moment of failures, their mistakes, their anger at one another because of the mistakes, their failure to be sceptical when they should have been, their choosing of the reality they liked when there was uncertainty. And all this is told explicitly near the end of the movie, not letting it get missed by us.

it is like heist movie without a heist ...well with some failing one for 10 minutes and then some follow up for half an hour .

American Animals employs a similar narrative structure to that used in "I, Tonya", juxtaposing the plot with meta-commentary from the perpetrators. The film is well-acted and well-shot. Despite this, I didn't enjoy it. I found the pacing too slow and the characters fundamentally uninteresting. There were a few highlights, such as the panicky end to the heist, but they were too far and few between to justify the almost 2 hour runtime.

Truestory+showrealguystoo+thoughtneededlifealteringeventforart+howtheyrememberdiff:P+we'llfindoutwhatwouldhappenirllool+studymovieslol+oldpeopleinvisiblelol+4librarianssobail:P+triestobackout-getsmadelookout+nodisguisesnowlol+doesnttazelibrarian:P-doeswhenguycomes-goeshorribly+wrongfloorLOL+noexitlol+falldownstairs-leaveit+have2lol+knowtheylefttrail-eatsatthem+theydoubthereallymmetabuyerhaha+reallibrariantalks

Kind of hated this.

I enjoyed this one a lot. Layton keeps his style going, maybe the story doesn't have as much dramatic turns as the Imposter, but still a very compelling and human story. Human, yes, but I still am not greatly enlightened on what actually pushed them to do it. Especially the latter characters. Still a great watch.

high school me would have thought this was one of the best movies ever!

A fun and original heist movie

Gençlerin sanat soygunu yaptığı film. Gerçek bir olayı anlatan, 4 gencin Kentucky kütüphanesinden çok değerli kitapları çalmasının anlatmışlar. Kurdukları plan çok acemice olunca eline yüzüne bulaştırmışlar. Filmdeki fikirler çok iyi düşünülmüş. Fakat icraata gelince sıfır. Bildiğimiz sonla biten film umut verici. Kuş hırsızları acemi olurmuş.

American Animals, gerçek bir hikayeden uyarlanmış fakat cast uyumu ve referansları ile kurtarılmış bir film. Özellikle film kurgudayken olayın gerçek tanıklarının röportajlarının aralara yerleştirilmesi gidişatı bozmuş, filmi sekteye uğratmış.

Doesn't really find its stride until the climax of the film. The mixed-media documentary stuff didn't work for me, I felt it continually broke up the natural flow of the story. It seems impossible that they were THAT stupid after the heist. Worth a watch for the insanity that ensues during the job alone.

It's interesting to watch a movie where every decision taken by the main characters is the wrong one... And being unable to hate it because all of it really happened. Yes, people can be this dumb.

This is more a documentary than a crime drama. They managed to suck the excitement out of it with the dissection of the events. The robbery was doomed from the start. Parts of it was engaging and entertaining, but it also had many slow boring parts. The acting, production quality and the music were all reasonably good.

good movie

It may be based on true events, but it's a very standard heist film with pretty minor variations on its subjects. Watchable but disposable.

Film giriş bölümündeki momentumu çok hızlı ve garip bir şekilde kaybediyor. Bart Layton'un güçlü belgeselciliği olaya bakış açısına ve sinema-belgesel arası bir disiplin yaratmasına yardımcı olsa da film sadece bir olayı anlatıyor ve bununla ilgili psikolojik-sosyolojik çözümlemelere yeteri kadar girmediği hissini uyandırıyor.

Objectively good, but took itself way too seriously

Having the real life characters of a true crime story have interviews. That sounds good on paper, but ultimately made it feel more like a strange documentary and less like a flick.

This film is in a league of its own. Incredibly unique and clever from beginning to end. Layton's attention to detail is unprecedented. On one hand, it's a complete love story (even if it's platonic), on the other, it's a great heist film about a subject that's underrepresented. Any bibliophile who's ever shamelessly stolen a book from a library will appreciate this.

Based on a story, but just hardly.

Well done, but overly sympathetic to the burglars.

A well-told suspenseful story with a great comedic climax that had audience members cracking up.

rapists are getting released from jail after 11 years in turkey right now wow

I wanted to like this, because of some cool ways it was shot, but the whole semi-docomentary style with all those unnecessary interview parts ruined the pacing.