Nocturnal Animals (2016)

Tom Ford builds Nocturnal Animals like a nesting doll, a story inside a story inside a marriage, and the outer doll is the hollow one. The frame story is a fashion shoot with feelings: Amy Adams in a glass house, staring at a manuscript in perfect lighting while her marriage goes cold. The book itself plays out as a West Texas thriller so tense you’ll grip the couch. Flashbacks to young Susan and Edward in New York explain why the book exists. Jake Gyllenhaal plays two men, a writer and his fictional hero, and that overlap is the movie’s smartest trick. Michael Shannon is terrific as a lawman with a dry drawl and a cough he won’t discuss. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is unnerving as a roadside troublemaker whose grin never switches off. The art world satire stays shallow. A 7.2 because the story inside the story grips, and the woman reading it is kept behind glass. $786 says a package with no return address lands on your doorstep this year and you circle it like it might bite.

What works: The West Texas thread is gripping, Michael Shannon is terrific, and the way the three timelines echo each other is clever.

What doesn’t: The Los Angeles frame is so cold and glossy that Susan’s regret feels like a perfume ad, and the art-world jabs are shallow.

Who it’s for: Fans of slow-burn thrillers with nested stories, and anybody who keeps a box of old letters they swear they never open.