Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

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mfunk9786
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Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#1 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Nov 01, 2014 10:03 am

Here we have another situation where a performance is so compelling that it manages to elevate material that wouldn't necessarily be a home run on its own. Jake Gyllenhaal is astonishing in Nightcrawler, putting a very believable rotten shade of the asperger's scale on screen with an intensity that can make the audience's blood run cold. Imagine his Lou Bloom as his underrated portrayal of Robert Graysmith in Zodiac devoid of any perception of morality or empathy, merely driven to further his own interests regardless of how many lines he's crossing in the process. Gyllenhaal seems to relish this opportunity to deconstruct that sort of character that he played so straight before, elevating Bloom into sort of an Anthony Perkins or Daniel Day Lewis level of playing someone who is so inherently evil that he is always straddling the line between unsettlingly humorous camp and bone chilling intensity. It's the best performance by a lead actor this year by a country mile, and further establishes Gyllenhaal as the most underrated notable actor working today.

Much will be made about the film's satirization of that same easy target, local news' obsession with violence, that is so often the target of the ire of those who want to Say Something about what's wrong with our modern media. But what I found much more compelling is what Nightcrawler had to say about the nature of at-will employment - people's jobs hanging on a string and depending on delivering beyond what should be demanded of anyone, being paid below what is appropriate because their employer knows they're desperate to retain work, and all in the pursuit of the singular ambitions of their employer. The film is essentially bursting with terrific satire that always strikes the right balance with its menace and Bloom's stomach-turning lack of morality. Why would anyone bother to consider the feelings of others when it would just slow them down on the road to success?
Last edited by mfunk9786 on Mon Nov 10, 2014 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#2 Post by PfR73 » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:06 pm

Saw this last night & absolutely loved it. It's shot straight into my Top 5 of the year so far. Deeply, darkly funny & riveting. Lou Bloom was like an alien who came to earth and the first thing he read was a "how to succeed in business" book he found laying in the gutter, or the strange lovechild of Robert Graysmith and Patrick Bateman. Gyllenhaal has now become the rare actor where his very presence in a film is going to be enough for me to go see it. Something I thought was interesting about the performance was almost a complete lack of blinking, in contrast to Detective Loki in Prisoners who was blinking all the time. I also loved James Newton Howard's score, which I've been listening to over & over at work today.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#3 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:22 pm

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#4 Post by PfR73 » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:51 pm

At last, I'm a somebody!

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#5 Post by malpractice » Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:29 pm

I saw it yesterday and i pretty much agree with everything said here. It almost seemed like a Cronenberg version of Network at times but i might of just been having a lot of flashbacks to Crash throughout and that might of made it seem more Cronenberg-ian than it actually was.

One thing i wondered about the film afterward was
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if it actually would of been more horrifying if he never broke the law at all. If you really think about it, he rarely (other than 2 or 3 occasions) actually blatantly broke the law, most everything else was a grey area or he stretched the truth.

Also, not that i care that much about how things would actually go down but that whole scene with the Chinese restaurant would of happened differently. The cops might of sent in a pair of uniformed officers just to test the waters like they did in the film but they probably would of sent in armed plainclothes officers and created a perimeter outside around the restaurant and ambushed them when they left to minimize potential backfire on civilians. You could almost buy that maybe this is how a police force would of handled that in another less populated area where they aren't used to dealing with situations like this but this is supposed to be Los Angeles, and the LAPD handles stuff like this all the time (Lou specifically says they are armed as well). BUT it made for a pretty amazing sequence so i can understand why they chose to go that way.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#6 Post by aox » Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:50 pm

Was this intended to be a comedy or a Taxi Driver hit piece?

It's pretty awful.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#7 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:30 pm

aox wrote:Was this intended to be a comedy or a Taxi Driver hit piece?

It's pretty awful.
Why is it so difficult to contribute something to the discussion about a film? This post is beyond pretty awful.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#8 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Nov 05, 2014 10:31 pm

Really enjoyed this. On top of everything else being praised, the stunt driving throughout was quite impressive in it's execution.

The most chilling moment for me was
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Paxton's character being stretchered out and seeing his reaction to Lou filming him. Lou may well thought he was doing his job, but even that is such a cold move after what's been done.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#9 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Nov 06, 2014 7:31 am

This was a fantastic film. Gyllenhaal's picking some really good films at the moment (when will Enemy get a UK release???). His performance as a reptilian sociopath is quite astonishing.

A few things of note:
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I like how his talk and drive is his main form of persuasion but there's the undercurrent of violence when things don't go his way - his scream into the mirror and then its smashing, and the more obvious physical threat to Rick just before the shootout in the Chinese restaurant. And then there's the sexual blackmail of Nina.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#10 Post by Jack Phillips » Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:10 am

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
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Paxton's character being stretchered out and seeing his reaction to Lou filming him. Lou may well thought he was doing his job, but even that is such a cold move after what's been done.
He used to be a colleague. Now he's a sale.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#11 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Thu Nov 06, 2014 9:58 am

Jack Phillips wrote:
flyonthewall2983 wrote:
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Paxton's character being stretchered out and seeing his reaction to Lou filming him. Lou may well thought he was doing his job, but even that is such a cold move after what's been done.
He used to be a colleague. Now he's a sale.
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He also got the previous "scoop" after Rick screwed up the GPS

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#12 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Nov 10, 2014 1:57 pm

I also enjoyed this quite a bit, and agree that Gyllenhaal is sorely deserving of some awards recognition. The film's satirical target is clearly more broad than just the local news industry, which mainly serves as a perfect 21st-Century parasitic job opportunity for a sociopath who has adopted the jargon of the new economy as his shaky mask of sanity. The best comparison I've read is that it's American Psycho for the 2010s; poorer, less concerned with appearing cultured, and more willing to claw anyone's face off for success.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#13 Post by warren oates » Sun Nov 16, 2014 3:08 pm

A link to Dan Gilory on The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith. Really a fantastic podcast. It's hard to imagine even Criterion outdoing Goldsmith in the extras department when it comes to his best interviews, of which this one is a prime example.

I agree with all of the praise this film has gotten so far. Jake Gyllenhaal is certainly on a roll after Prisoners, Enemy and now this.

Gilroy has talked about films that influenced him, mentioning The King of Comedy over something like Taxi Driver and citing other films like Network. Others have mentioned Broadcast News, which also feels right, given that, when it comes to the news, Nightcrawler seems more like a procedural docudrama than a pointed political satire. But if there's one film that feels like a spiritual prequel to this it's Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, which also broadens a narrative about the news media into a critique of the nature of capitalism. It isn't enough anymore as a newsman just to be shamefully opportunistic and manipulative, to actively sacrifice your human subjects to the ever-hungry maw of the news cycle -- now you have to amp that callousness up to the level of something on the order of autistic sociopathy.*

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Dan Gilroy's complex take on all of this is how it treats Lou Bloom's blind devotion to the language and philosophy of business school self-improvement. It isn't simply that Bloom ends up hurting people because he lacks empathy or misapplies these ideals (whereas, say, in the hands of a less aggressive, more empathetic mid-level manager somewhere it would all be a-okay), but that he understands their logic all too well.

Here's one of the those rare films that isn't just set in Los Angeles but authentically about the place too. Nightcrawler almost never cheats its geography and, more importantly, doesn't lie about the way the places it shows us feel. I have a feeling Thom Andersen would approve. And man was it a thrill not just to see some parts of the city that we don't normally see being represented, but to watch Lou Bloom walk out of the police station at the end a block away from where I'd parked my car to see this at the Arclight Hollywood.

Robert Eslwitt's cinematography is really excellent, some of the better video work I've ever seen, definitely as impressive in its own way as one of the other great video originated features I saw this year, Norte. I'm surprised that I couldn't find any reference to this anywhere (even in the too brief American Cinematographer article), but I could swear that one of the bigger visual influences on the look of the film must have been the oversaturated color settings on TVs you see at big box stores -- those intense almost pornographic reds and blues, which are echoed in the designs of the main news set and the colors of Lou's apartment.
*Not that I believe such a thing could exist in the wild, but if it did it would look like Lou Bloom. One of the world's leading experts in autism and psychopathy, Simon Baron-Cohen (yes they are cousins), believes that both conditions are related to empathy deficits and are on somewhat opposite ends of a continuum. For Baron-Cohen autism is about caring but not being able to read other people, whereas psychopathy is about reading other people perfectly without being able to care.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#14 Post by bdsweeney » Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:53 am

warren oates wrote: Robert Eslwitt's cinematography is really excellent, some of the better video work I've ever seen ... I could swear that one of the bigger visual influences on the look of the film must have been the oversaturated color settings on TVs you see at big box stores -- those intense almost pornographic reds and blues, which are echoed in the designs of the main news set and the colors of Lou's apartment.
I kept being reminded of Robby Müller's colour work with Wenders.

I agree that Gyllenhaal's performance is something to behold and it worked well as a thriller, with its steady ramping up of tension. For place I've never visited, it felt like it gave a pretty decent account of the 'real' LA that people say never gets shown properly in films.

However, as mfunk9786's already said, the satire is a little too obvious and the conclusion can be read a mile off.
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I thought that the film should have ended with Bloom's arrest at the TV station and Russo delivering her lines/summation about the whole affair. Everything afterwards seemed a little pat ... if not straight out unbelievable.
Was anyone else unimpressed with James Newton Howard's score? Its faux sincerity underlined the satire a little too obviously for me.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#15 Post by Rsdio » Wed Dec 03, 2014 8:48 pm

bdsweeney wrote:
warren oates wrote: Robert Eslwitt's cinematography is really excellent, some of the better video work I've ever seen ... I could swear that one of the bigger visual influences on the look of the film must have been the oversaturated color settings on TVs you see at big box stores -- those intense almost pornographic reds and blues, which are echoed in the designs of the main news set and the colors of Lou's apartment.
I kept being reminded of Robby Müller's colour work with Wenders.

I agree that Gyllenhaal's performance is something to behold and it worked well as a thriller, with its steady ramping up of tension. For place I've never visited, it felt like it gave a pretty decent account of the 'real' LA that people say never gets shown properly in films.

However, as mfunk9786's already said, the satire is a little too obvious and the conclusion can be read a mile off.
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I thought that the film should have ended with Bloom's arrest at the TV station and Russo delivering her lines/summation about the whole affair. Everything afterwards seemed a little pat ... if not straight out unbelievable.
Was anyone else unimpressed with James Newton Howard's score? Its faux sincerity underlined the satire a little too obviously for me.
These were pretty much my thoughts as I was watching (the Wenders part too). I enjoyed the film quite a bit but I can't help thinking it might've benefitted from a little more ambiguity or a more delicate touch. I was struggling with that notion throughout but by the time
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it got to the point of showing Gyllenhaal and Russo sharing a tender moment before a glaring image of his dying partner with angelic music blaring in the background
I wasn't really able to suppress it anymore.

Not that satire has to be subtle of course, but I felt like this was (almost!) getting towards Tony Kaye levels of hammering the audience over the head with its points at times.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#16 Post by warren oates » Wed Dec 03, 2014 9:07 pm

I agree with bdsweeney that the score is a problem. In the interview I linked to Gilroy explains their thinking -- that the score wasn't meant to be objective but to play as the soundtrack to Lou's inner life, to his heroic idea of himself. It's the one aspect of the film that feels inappropriately over the top to me. The rest of it does go too far and isn't necessarily subtle, but I don't think that's the point.

bdsweeney's suggested ending, for instance, is one that's feels far more obvious to me, the faux-resolved version that would have happened had this been a noirish B-picture in old Hollywood. I found it interesting that the film dodged another expected outcome, a similar ending to Ace in the Hole, where Lou's obsession
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would have caused his own death instead of (or perhaps at least in addition to) his partner's.
I guess I can sort of see the Müller connections, maybe with the neons of To Live and Die in L.A. even moreso, though I feel like all of his work is still more elegant and less intentionally lurid than the visuals in Nightcrawler.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#17 Post by Rsdio » Thu Dec 04, 2014 9:26 am

I found the thrust of the ending fine and possibly the only way it really could've gone without diluting what it was trying to get across. A lot of my complaints could well have been down to my expectations going in. Having caught the gist of the strong reviews and word of mouth I was hoping for a little ambiguity, something that might reveal more with future viewings. Instead I found that it made its points very early on then just restated them with ever-increasing force, so that by the time the scene I mentioned arrived the pudding seemed more than a touch over-egged. I came out having liked it (particularly Gyllenhaal's performance and the Challenger sequences, which were really nicely done and played to the kid in me who watched Vanishing Point countless times growing up) but I also couldn't shake the feeling that it was a little bit of a missed opportunity.

I do appreciate it probably wasn't going for subtlety though and as it stands it does make for a stronger statement.
Last edited by Rsdio on Thu Dec 04, 2014 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#18 Post by PfR73 » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:21 pm

I love the score. I thought it gave a great added mood to the film. I've been listening to it quite frequently since seeing the film.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#19 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:35 pm

I like it too. I think what Howard did was go along with the success story aspect that Gyllenhaal and Gilroy have alluded to in interviews, so in a way it's as if the music is more being dictated by what's going on in Lou's head than a much less subjective approach.

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Re: Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

#20 Post by warren oates » Thu Dec 04, 2014 2:47 pm

Which is exactly the way I described it above. Still, like I said, it doesn't work for me, at least in part because the film doesn't even seem to need much of a score at all. The concept of what they're doing and the way it plays feels problematically heavy handed in a way that the writing isn't. However lacking in subtlety one may find it, Lou's success story doesn't ever have to come off as something that the film itself is uncritically endorsing -- that is, until we get to the issue of the score, which feels very much like it's been larded on unselfconsciously. I get what they were going for, just not sure why they thought it was necessary or how they didn't imagine it might undermine, however slightly, the rest of what they've accomplished.


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