cuttingroom
NIGHTCRA WLER AND CRIME PORN
Y
esterday, CNN showed reporters physically chasing a woman connected to the Ebola scare. Not too long ago, a Fox News affiliate aired a suicide live on television. So, no, Nightcrawler isn’t farfetched. It’s perfectly fetched. It’s importantly fetched. Beyond the indictment of journalism in service of voyeuristic pleasure, Nightcrawler is a stunning thriller with a career-defining performance from Jake Gyllenhaal (sorry, Bubble Boy). Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is part Patrick Bateman, part Jordan Belfort. He is a sociopath with laser focus, a monster completely in control of himself. He is terrifying and you cannot look away from him. The film wastes no time in telling us that we are to despise this man, who will do whatever he needs to in order to succeed. He is harassed by a security guard as he is stealing copper and wire, sees that the guard has a nice watch and beats him and takes it. It takes all of one minute for Louis to bare his teeth and declare himself a predator. When he sells the stolen goods to a construction manager, he also tries to sell himself, asking for a job…any job. When he’s turned down, he drives home and stumbles upon a fiery wreck and sees camera men filming the carnage. Louis has found his calling: visually feasting on the carcass of tragedy. He makes a connection with a local TV producer, Nina (Rene Russo), who tells him the specific type of horrifying shots she wants: white suburban victims. So Louis coaxes a broke drifter, Rick (Riz Ahmed), into being his copilot, helping him navigate the streets at night, using a police scanner to chase down the goriest crimes as fast as they can. The more successful Louis gets, the more dangerous he becomes, leading to a thrilling final 45 minutes that are as tense as any imaginable. Gyllenhaal is visual fly paper here. Bug-eyed and floppy haired, you can’t stop looking at him,
Film Streams at the Ruth Sokolof Theater 14th & Mike Fahey Street (formerly Webster Street) More info & showtimes 402.933.0259 · filmstreams.org Facebook | Twitter | Instagram: @filmstreams
18
NOV. 6 - 12, 2014
■ Sony Pictures has been bumbling around with the property they bought from Marvel, Spider-man, unable to generate even an itsy bitsy spider’s worth of excitement. First, Sony announced plans to give Spidey’s villains their own movie without him, to which the world cried out in one unified voice: “meh.” Then, Sony toyed with rebooting the entire series for the third time, an idea that earned a collective groan. Now comes something…different… A rumor surfaced that the studio is contemplating a “Spider Women” type movie, in which the females in Spidey’s universe would all buddy up against evil or something. The idea is in the gestation phase, but the thought of a female-driven superteam movie is pretty B.A. Well, at least it would be if a studio capable of making it good were handling it. ■ Keeping up the lady hero business, DC and Warner Bros. had a little leak of their own. That is to say a rumor broke out, not that they peed a little. Wonder Woman, which is presently scheduled to be the first major superhero movie to have a female lead, may be set in the 1920s. Ooh! That actually sounds like a good idea, so there’s virtually no way it will survive through the production process. Personally, I think Wonder Woman is a character who is better suited for an earlier era. So it will suck that much worse when a studio suit points out you can’t have product placement if it’s set in the roaring twenties. ■ You know what, let’s do this thing! Let’s make all three of these news items about female superheroes! Marvel Studios announced a slate of about a billion films that run from next year until the planet can no longer sustain human life. Interesting tidbits included news that Doctor Strange is gonna happen, The Inhumans (basically space X-men) is in development and Avengers 3 will be split into two parts. But the two biggest bombshells were Black Panther, with actor Chadwick Boseman already cast, and Captain Marvel, the first solo female movie from Marvel Studios. It’s that last one that’s particularly exciting, as Captain Marvel is such a cool character with such a rich history to pull from. My early recommendations for casting that role are Anna Kendrick or Léa Seydoux, but really, so long as they don’t cast someone like Kelly Cuoco, I’m good. Oh god, I just gave them that idea, didn’t I? Dammit. —Ryan Syrek
BY RYAN SYREK
contemplating him. He’s not a serial killer or sexual assailant; he’s the twisted endpoint of the American Dream. He’s ruthless capitalism in the flesh, unconcerned with how many dead bodies he must step on to reach the next rung in the ladder. Russo is also amazing as the type of character most stories don’t consider: she’s a smart, grizzled woman on the back end of her career, willing to compromise her integrity for one last go. Writer/director Dan Gilroy has made something remarkable. Much like the work of Joon-ho Bong, Nightcrawler bends genres. In its darkest moments, it is sometimes intentionally funny. Its scathing criticism of this type of media and its audience flips between satire and violent condemnation over and over again. Beyond all of that, the film simply sizzles, racing towards the conclusion like Louis after his next story. Nightcrawler is an audacious mainstream thriller, a bombastic character study and a hell of a first movie for Gilroy, even if it’s a little terrifying to think of what characters he will dream up next. , GRADE = A
Cutting Room provides breaking local and national movie news … complete with added sarcasm. Send any relevant information to film@thereader.com. Check out Ryan on Movieha!, a weekly half-hour movie podcast (movieha.libsyn.com/rss), catch him on the radio on CD 105.9 (cd1059.com) on Fridays at around 7:30 a.m. and on KVNO 90.7 (KVNO.org) at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays and follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/thereaderfilm).
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Dir. Koji Masunari. November 1, 2, 6, 8, 9 & 13
Silver Linings Playbook 2012 November 8 & 11
American Hustle 2013 November 9 & 12