Film

Baser instincts

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal is the very definition of serpentine in Nightcrawler, a scathing look at TV news and the lengths producers and stringers will go to for ratings and a payday. Stealing wire fences and manhole covers for a living and desperate for some real work, Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) happens upon a car accident where an invasive cameraman is filming bloody footage for a quick buck. Bloom, an isolated man who spends his days studying like mad on the internet, pawns a stolen bike, gets himself a crappy video camera and scanner, and thrusts himself into the business of crime footage videography. He starts small, grabbing footage at auto wrecks and butting heads with Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), a seasoned videographer who doesn’t like newbies treading on his territory. Louis eventually finds himself in the presence of Nina (Rene Russo), a bloodthirsty TV news producer struggling to find her way on a lowrated station. She pays Louis a couple hundred bucks for his bloody footage. Against the wishes of her co-producers, Nina leads with Bloom’s video on the morning news, and an unholy alliance begins. Bloom hires an assistant in Rick (Riz Ahmed of Four Lions), who clumsily navigates as they race through the streets of Los Angeles looking for carnage. Things escalate from filming car crashes and fires to filming shootings and other crime scenes. When things start to slow down, Louis becomes unrelenting in his attempts to find stories. In short, there is nothing he won’t do to get ahead and get the footage. Nothing.

He’ll move bodies to frame a better shot. He’ll withhold footage from the cops after entering a residence to film murder victims. And none of these actions even compares to what he will do in the event that an employee tries to negotiate for a raise. He’s a far cry from the puzzle solving, earnest news investigator Gyllenhaal played in Zodiac. He by Bob Grimm represents the complete degradation of media into something beneath sensationalistic into bgrimm@ something that is pure evil. newsreview.com Russo’s Nina is, in many ways, as psychotic as Louis. On the tail end of fledgling 4 career, she is reckless, encouraging Louis to dig deeper and pushing him into more deranged territories. Russo hasn’t been this good in years. Paxton, who used to specialize in wild man, gritty roles before Twister and Titanic, relishes the chance to get down and dirty again. He only has a few scenes in the film, but those scenes are true standouts. Ahmed gives the sidekick role plenty of dimensions. He gets the laughs when they are supposed to come, but he also manages to create a frightening tension in his showdowns with Gyllenhaal. This is the directorial debut of Dan Gilroy, who also penned the screenplay. Gilroy clearly doesn’t have a positive opinion of the broadcast news machine. The folks putting together the news in this movie are something akin to cannibals and vampires waiting in the dark for a vein to be severed. Louis is a genuine movie monster. Gyllenhaal lost a bunch of weight to play the greasy Louis, and he achieves a physical creepiness to go with his character’s infected soul. Louis is darkly funny, especially when he berates Rick or blackmails Nina. He’s also sinister and deeply scary in a very Travis Bickle/Taxi Driver sort of way. Gyllenhaal is excellent here, his second great 2014 performance after playing twins in Enemy. The guy is really stretching out. According to Nightcrawler, gone are the days of dignified anchormen and heroic news gatherers. The tie-wearing talking heads and scrappy field reporters have been replaced by bloodsuckers and sycophants, with the likes of Louis Bloom leading the sick charge. The baser instincts that may’ve been a small part of an intrepid news reporter’s makeup have taken over and, unfortunately, they appear to be delivering what the people want. Ω

“It is anchorman, not anchorlady. And that is a scientific fact.”

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Very Good 5

excellent 4Dear White People Writer/director Justin Simien makes a memorable debut, as good a comedic film about race relations that American cinema has seen it the last 25 years. Set in the fictional, predominantly white Ivy League college of Winchester University, the movie recalls the weeks leading up to a “race party” thrown by a white fraternity encouraging attendees to show up in black face. It’s a movie where the laughs come with a lot of stank on them, a biting, sometimes nasty satire that can never be accused of playing things safe. The film is named after a college radio show emceed by black female student Sam White (the mesmerizing Tessa Thompson). White plays music, occasionally speaking over the tunes with stinging observations about black and white student interactions. She’s a media major who, quite convincingly, argues “Gremlins” is about suburban white fear of black culture with her professor. Fellow students suggest she might be the pissed off baby of Spike Lee and Oprah. Sporting a massive, epic Afro that white people can’t help but run their fingers through, black and gay Lionel Higgins (Tyler James Williams) is trying to figure out his place on the campus and in society. Thompson, who has been acting for about a decade, is a contender for breakout performer of the year. The movie might not hit the mark with every observation, but it hits a lot more than it misses. Simien throws caustic barbs at Tyler Perry, reality TV, Cosby and Tarantino. He is far more successful with his satire than he is with the film’s romantic relationships, which feel a little false and forced at times. That’s OK. With dialogue this sharp, I can forgive a few boring scenes with people who lack any real chemistry.

5Gone Girl David Fincher set out to make the nastiest, most poisonous movie about marriages gone bad ever made, and I think he succeeded. Fincher and Gillian Flynn, the author of the novel and screenplay, came up with a toxic cocktail, laced with dark humor, scabrous satire and blistering performances. On the day of his fifth anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns to his home after sulking at the bar he owns with his sister (a funny Carrie Coon) to discover his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), is missing. Nick calls the police and the in-laws, and quickly finds himself sucked up in a media circus that leaves him dazed and confused. His demeanor in public is a strange combination of a malaise and ill-timed smiles. Yeah … he’s a suspect. Through a series of narrated flashbacks, we hear the story of the Flynne marriage from Amy’s perspective, chronicled in her diary. Then, at about the halfway point, the movie goes completely, wonderfully insane. For those unaware of the plot twist, my best advice to you is that you should accept it—even though it’s totally bug nuts—sit back, and enjoy the rest of this messed-up ride. Anybody who goes to this movie thinking they’re going to see something grounded in reality will be setting themselves up for disappointment. Gone Girl is nightmarish fantasy, a hyper-sensationalized “what-if” that thrives on its implausibility. Had this movie tried to stick closer to reality, it would’ve killed too much of the fun. Pike, a British actress perhaps known best for Jack Reacher, gets the role of a lifetime with Amy, and she devours it. Affleck shows what’s been true all along in his career: He’s a fine actor capable of great nuance and a movie star of the highest order.

3Horns Harry Potter goes over to the dark side in Horns, a nasty little movie from director Alexandre Aja, maker of Piranha 3D and the decent remake effort, The Hills Have Eyes. Danielle Radcliffe plays Ig, accused of killing his girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple) after an ugly breakup. Not too long after this event, Ig starts sprouting horns out of his head, much to his chagrin. When people see these horns, they behave rather badly, but they also have a hard time lying. So Ig uses the horns to not only bring out the worst in people, but to start solving the mystery of his lover’s death. Radcliffe is great here, using a strong American accent and getting a nice chance to let his nasty side come out. Temple is adorable as Merrin, her story told in flashbacks and leaving no mystery as to why Ig is so messed up after the loss. Joe Anderson is good as Ig’s musician brother, strung out on drugs and hiding a few secrets. James Remar, David Morse and Kathleen Quinlan all make their marks in supporting roles. The movie is a hard R, with crazy violence. Mommies and daddies, don’t let your kids watch this one, no matter how much they want to see the new flick from the Harry Potter guy. As a mystery, the movie is a complete failure in that it is obvious early on who did the killing. It doesn’t matter, because the film is very strong as a horror comedy. It’s Aja’s most fully realized film to date, and it’s arguable that it contains Radcliffe’s best performance. (Available for rent on VOD, iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release).

4John Wick The latest Keanu Reeves vehicle is a true stunner. It boasts a high body count, and offers cinematic proof that you shouldn’t mess with a man’s best friend. In the film’s opening moments, we learn that the title character (Reeves) has lost his wife, and he’s taking it justifiably hard. After a member of the Russian mob kills his dog and steals his car, we find out that Wick is a former assassin with guns and gold buried in his floor. The loss of his ride and canine friend are enough to make him spring back into action, and he does so in spectacular fashion thanks to Reeves and directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski, both making their debuts. Stahelski has actually been a Reeves stunt double many times, including the Matrix films, Constantine and Point Break. The familiarity with each other pays off, because the stunt sequences and choreography are flawless. In the pantheon of action movie directing debuts, this one stands very tall. Willem Dafoe makes a nice mark in a few scenes as a double-crossing hitman. Adrianne Palicki, the actress who was supposed to be Wonder Woman until NBC saw the pilot and puked, shows action movie chops as another gun-for-hire that can’t be trusted. This is a great-looking movie that mixes in some strong emotions with its awesome set pieces. It’s nice to see Keanu Reeves back in the saddle. Now, with the success of this film, perhaps somebody will finally greenlight Bill and Ted 3.

1Ouija Hasbro gets another movie touting one of its products (along with Transformers and Battleship), and this is by far the worst, if that is even possible. Laine and Debbie (Olivia Cooke and Shelley Hennig) have been playing with a Ouija board since they were kids. Debbie plays solo in her house alone when they get older, and winds up dead, hanging herself with a string of plugged in Christmas lights that, mysteriously, don’t unplug under the stress of her weight pulling on them, but we won’t go into that right now. Laine and her friends start playing with the Ouija after Debbie’s death, and they discover that there are spirits living in Debbie’s house, and they had something to do with Debbie’s death. Maybe one of them pulled on the middle of the strand of Christmas lights while she was hanging herself, thus relieving some of the tension and preventing them from becoming unplugged? Oh wait, I’m sorry, I pledged not to go into that. The wannabe scares in the PG-13 outing consist of fake-outs and people behind doors, the kind of stuff you will see coming if you’ve seen, say, one horror movie in your lifetime. If that is in fact true, don’t make this your second one, for you will wind up disappointed.

3St. Vincent Vincent (Bill Murray), a reclusive, crotchety old guy, reluctantly finds himself interacting with his new neighbor, Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), and her son, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), after her movers break his fence, tree and car. Vincent eventually winds up babysitting Oliver, which leads to them bonding at the racetrack and inside bars, and hanging out with a “lady of the night” (Naomi Watts), much to the eventual chagrin of Maggie. Murray and Lieberher are great together, which allows you to forgive the sometimes schmaltzy direction and writing from Theodore Melfi. Vincent is the meatiest role Murray has gotten in almost a decade, and it’s exciting to see him firing on all cylinders. Recently, I have been complaining about McCarthy getting stuck in mostly insulting slapstick roles. This movie gives her a chance to show off the fact that she can really act, and she makes the most of it. Lieberher is one of those child actors who seems like he’s been acting for 30 years, well beyond the amount of time he has spent on this Earth. Watts takes the pregnant Russian prostitute role and runs with it, getting some good laughs through a wildly overdone accent. They all put this one over the top with their performances.