{"id":7304,"date":"2018-06-19T07:43:27","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T11:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7304"},"modified":"2018-07-03T07:13:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T11:13:25","slug":"american-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7304","title":{"rendered":"American Animals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AmericanIn writer-director Bart Layton\u2019s entertaining new film (trailer<\/a>), four bored college students plot to steal priceless works from the library of Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. Is this a daydream, or will they go through with it? Should they do more than watch old heist films to prepare?<\/p>\n

A vivid demonstration of Murphy\u2019s Law, their wildly inadequate scheme is both hilarious and tension-filled. Yet, as far-fetched as it may seem, the film is based on a real episode<\/a> from 2004 and includes fourth-wall breaking interviews and current-day reflections of the actual would-be thieves and their parents. Using his skills a documentary filmmaker, Layton cleverly meshes their different perspectives on events (who decided what when), and his energetic recreation of their misbegotten enterprise is \u201csingularly fascinating\u201d says Cary Darling<\/a> in the Houston Chronicle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The four criminal masterminds are played by Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abrahamson, and Blake Jenner. The librarian they must disable is played by Ann Dowd (if you\u2019ve watched The Handmaid\u2019s Tale, <\/em>you\u2019ll recognize her voice before you even see her).<\/p>\n

Drifty art student Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) wants something to happen in his life. The idea of the theft comes to him as a kind of vague \u201cwhat if?\u201d, but when he shares it with Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), he\u2019s found someone with the single-minded enthusiasm to turn it into a sort-of reality.<\/p>\n

Have you ever pursued an idea long past the moment when it makes any sense? Then you can understand how the four students got carried away, trapped by their own momentum. What starts out as an especially brazen prank by privileged college students has a long tail of consequences, and at times the former students\u2019 articulate silences express their belated second thoughts. A visual theme based on the paintings of John James Audubon\u2014one of the works they plan to steal is his Birds of America<\/em>\u2014recurs throughout, adding grace notes to a tawdry episode.<\/p>\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 85% ; audiences: 91%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In writer-director Bart Layton\u2019s entertaining new film (trailer), four bored college students plot to steal priceless works from the library of Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. Is this a daydream, or will they go through with it? Should they do … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"American Animals - bored college students get carried away with a bizarre heist scheme. Highly entertaining film!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,272,52,57,104],"tags":[1338,84],"class_list":["post-7304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-comedy","category-crime","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-american-animals","tag-true-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1TO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7306,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304\/revisions\/7306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}