Nightcrawler (2014)

This is one of the few films that has held me in my seat from beginning to very end even when half way through I desperately needed to visit the bathroom . The storyline, script, filming and acting combine into the perfect storm of a brilliant film. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a character, on what I can only describe as at the higher end of the autistic spectrum and deserves an Oscar nomination for this role. His character is perfectly matched by Rene Russo playing the role of her career as the success seeking ageing news editor. And a shout too for Riz Ahmed as Rick, Gyllenhaal's assistant. What a contrast to "The Judge" which I saw last week, "Nightcrawler" is superior on every level, go see !

Fmovies: Lou is a sociopath. Its established at the beginning of the film. Lou will beat you senseless for 100 feet of chain link fence and a fake Rolex.

That he has the drive and audacity to thwart the conventions of decent behaviour without regard to human cost marks him as a sure winner in our dog eat dog world ( unregulated or laissez faire capitalism).

And win he does as he exploits any and every vulnerability his avaricious instincts detect. Whether it be the vulnerability of a news director depending on ratings to keep her job or a down and out young homeless man who will do anything to improve his circumstances.

He's found inspiration, valediction and encouragement in his discovery of 'deep' business platitudes masquerading as acumen on the internet.

Sought, found and, proudly, digested and regurgitated context free, at every opportunity he exhorts and extorts and threatens with the naive impunity of the sociopathic internet autodidact that he is. He is proof that knowledge is power and that a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing indeed

All vulnerabilities must be seen as opportunities and exploited immediately without any regard or the well being of the people involved. They have been deigned by fate to further his cause. That's just how it is in is in his twisted little narcissistic world.

Its an ambitious film that takes on the reality of a society where opportunity is freed from the restraints of common decency by a winner take all ethos fuelled only by the bottom line. This is our dystopia just slightly exaggerated for effect.

A brilliant film expertly realised by all involved.

Nightcrawler is slang. I will not ruin or spoil anything in this review. Jake Gylenhall has never been better. His character must have been incredibly hard to play, and you will see why. There is a reason this Thriller & Drama opened on Halloween. His character is ambitious to a fault & highly intelligent. He interacts most often with Rene Russo & a man he calls his intern. If you thought Julius Caesar was ambitious or Alexander the Great, this character must have the same motivation to succeed minus the goal of conquering the world. Needless to say he is driven. Russo is also ambitious, so they make a good team. The difference is how far each is willing to cross the lines of morality, legality & humanity.

The movie is original in every sense. There has never been a movie similar in the character or the situation, and the movie makes an open commentary about an important but not political aspect of American society. To say it was gripping would be literal. I looked down at one point, and I was clutching my outer thigh. The movie is tense & intense. Every move seems known to Gylenhall but not to anyone else. If you like entrepreneurs, this movie will appeal to that in one aspect. Overall, it is definitely a Thriller full of danger & illegality. It is Gylenhall versus the world, if he were a diplomat & the world represented achieving his goals. That's his character around others. When left unwatched, even for a moment, he devolves into a character that does whatever it takes.

See this movie for the originality. See it if you enjoy thrillers. See it because he gives the best acting performance of his life in a character with many sides. See it for fun. See it for a cool fast car. Or, the fact it is tracking above 8 stars out of 10 which is about as good as it gets on IMDb, considering that is the average of thousands & thousands of ratings by people as diverse as patrons watching on a Washington, D.C theater. From that number you can safely predict it's very likely you will find it as highly entertaining as the international average (plus or minus 1 star). In my estimation, I reserve a 9/10 rating for the best of the best. 10/10 stars are for the greatest movies. This is easily the best of the best.

One friendly tip: If you are on heart, or anxiety medication, take it as scheduled or if it's as needed, make sure it's within reach.

Knox D. Alford, III

Nightcrawler fmovies. Whereas Gone Girl explored the wild misconceptions and dangerous influence of the media, Nightcrawler explores another even more corrupted facet of the entity's nature: shamelessly capitalizing on the popularity of crime television—violence, murder, blood, gunshots. The program's ratings continue heightening along with the network's desire for even more thrilling footage. Nightcrawler follows Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he climbs up the ladder of success and builds a career through rash ambition. Lacking a formal education and adequate work experience, he's truly a victim of the unfair modern job market/unemployment. So, he says "screw it" and takes matters into his own hands, acting with sheer desperation and eagerness to reach that level of power and affluence America so often glorifies.

After personally witnessing a car accident on the freeway as snooping reporters close in, the scene lights a fire inside Louis and inspires him to give the job a try. Soon afterwards, he purchases a camcorder and a radio scanner, persistently discovering new crime scenes to capture on tape as intimately as he possibly can. Thus, his extensive coverage grabs the attention of a morning news channel, and a special relationship forms therein: a consistent supply of new gruesome/entertaining crime footage for an increasing sum of money. As we see the frightening lengths Louis is willing to strive towards in order to prove himself as a proficient workingman and elevate his value above and beyond, this grave thriller intermittently surprises us with effectively mocking twisted humor, but the incredibly deranged human psychology on display keeps us startled and tense throughout regardless.

Gyllenhaal arguably gives the absolute best performance of his career in a role that substantially differentiates from his earlier work. His creepy, relaxed composure hides the true inner scariness and ferocity. Publicly, Louis is a professional, polite, and upstanding citizen who's just looking to work hard. Privately, he violently yells in front of a mirror until he shatters it, as well as blackmails a TV news director to further his career. Rene Russo also impresses as the morning news director—almost as daring in her lust for more provocative violent imagery—who's beguiled by this eccentric and only (mistakenly) fuels Louis' psychotic drive. In addition, Riz Ahmed's Rick serves as Louis' gullible, clueless "employee" who just wants to escape the dispiriting state of homelessness and finally earn a living, completely unaware of the perilous and unethical situations he'll be cast in along his employer's selfishly ruthless path.

This isn't the kind of film whose quality solely relies on a central performance because the narrative is just as cruelly gripping. Unfortunately, the film industry is stocked with so many safe crowdpleasers and compromising thrillers that it's wholly refreshing to see these uncompromisingly grim, chilling psychological character studies occasionally pop up. The film becomes more morally repulsive and disturbing as it proceeds while the satire on the American Dream and merciless ambition becomes that much more brutal. Nightcrawler is deeply unsettling as well as it is honest in its portrayal—Los Angeles is actually the perfect setting, beautifully shot in its alluring and deceptive nighttime scenery. After all, it is probably the #1 destination for the unrelentingly audacious and reckless individuals of the nation in search of a prosp

Nightcrawler seems like a satire to modern television news about how they choose their leads or often seek for more ratings by entertaining their viewers rather than aim straightly to the facts. But there is a much interesting story beneath here and that is the main character, Louis Bloom. The guy that easily manipulates people with his sinister tricks of persuasion. Everything else may just be the natural world of crime and accidents, but in the eyes of this character, the experience is made far stranger and oddly fascinating. This provides a compellingly menacing and provoking piece of commentary which results to such engrossing film.

What the plot mostly does is to fully absorb the viewers into the character of Bloom by studying his sociopathic behavior and the words coming out from his mouth. He is a charming young man with a dark intention hidden behind his grins. He pushes the limits of the law and his own safety, only to accomplish on what he must do in the job, even if it risks many people's lives. The actions of this antihero is ought to feel terrifying on how it affects to both the business he's working on and the society he is watching. The media's side however is more of a picture of cynicism on how they broadcast the scariest stories of the city, giving the people fear so they could earn more viewers out of the concern. It just breaks down on how the evil of their success is disguised as their own ethics.

The filmmaking perfectly captures their night's work. You couldn't clearly see the scenario they shoot unless you watch them on a video footage. The violence and peril they witness are shown without any hint of sympathy, since they only use them for the news show. The horror of these gritty scenes once again belongs to the nightcrawler. Jake Gyllenhaal is one of the biggest highlights here. His character obviously has the personality of a psychotic villain; he is mostly bluffing, and by the dashing enthusiasm he shows to the people around him, you probably may not know when his inner total madness will burst out from his frightening eyeballs, and that provides more tension than you expect. This is one of the Gyllenhaal performances that will be remembered for his career.

Out of common sense, this story may lead its main character to a moral about how much he is taking this job too far, probably destroying his humanity. But no, this guy is relentless, almost inhumane, and his style in fact helps his career grow bigger, which turns out we are actually rooting for a villain. And that probably pictures to some oppressive ambitious beings out there behind some system. This is where things go in the end, bringing an outcome to a social satire. You can spot a lot of relevance even when some of the situations get a little out of hand. Nightcrawler is something else than a sentiment, what we must focus here is Lou Bloom: a new, possibly iconic, movie vigilante, except the only skin he is purposely saving is himself and his career.

"Nightcrawler" is the kind of film that will catch audiences by surprise with its painstaking thoughtfulness, and features the kind of lead character that will be discussed in film circles who don't detest American cinema and actually give it the benefit of the doubt. The film plunges us into the dark, seedy world of a nightcrawler, somebody who, often working freelance with his or her own equipment and schedule, patrols the streets of crowded cities with multiple police scanners searching for recently-committed crimes in the neighborhood, like rape, shootings, murders, car accidents, and so forth. The object of a nightcrawler is to get candid and intimate shots of the ugliness that plagues these scenarios as quickly and as neatly as possible and sell them to news stations or eyewitness programs to turn quick profit. Job requirements include possible insomniac, lack of emotional connection or any immediate empathy to tragedy or horror, exceptional navigational/driving skills, and a load of free time.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a man at rock-bottom living in Los Angeles, selling scrap metal to get money before eventually turning to the nightcrawling business. He teams up with Rick (Riz Ahmed), a young man desperate to make money to keep a roof over his head, who helps navigate Lou's routes as a nightcrawler and learns of numerous police codes to help Lou decipher the police scanner jargon. Together, the two make for an amateur nightcrawling team, turning profit by selling the footage – expertly shot, analyzed, and even occasionally manipulated by Lou – to Nina (Rene Russo), the station manager of a severely failing news station that is in dire need to regain viewership.

Ultimately, "Nightcrawler" juggles two tricky but immersing features with its material, simultaneously giving us a look into a grimy and often dirty gig as somebody who is essentially a voyeur into the most vulnerable time of the people he meets and posing frightening commentary on contemporary news. The nightcrawler is not looking to help or to provide encouragement; he's there to get his shots and move on, hoping to turn as large of a profit as he can. We see Los Angeles in the light of what could be classifiable as a contemporary film noir, in dark, sometimes shadowy-photography and dingy environments that reveal an ugliness to a city that is normally captured as very beautiful and ideal in terms of climate. Director Dan Gilroy and cinematographer Robert Elswit (a frequent collaborator of Paul Thomas Anderson) do everything in their power to subvert our ideas of Los Angeles and focus on transitory locations that show the ugliest of human events in such a way that is beautiful and captivating thanks to crystal-clear photography.

The other feature "Nightcrawler" toys with is the contemporary exploration of journalistic ethics and how, with local cable news competing with so many twenty-four hour news stations, who, in turn, are also battling more rapidly-updated social media websites, the manipulation of news is ever-present on Television. News programs, like sitcoms, reality shows, and sports events, are a game of numbers and those numbers are ratings – something that "Nightcrawler" makes depressingly clear to us. A crucial scene to this message comes into play when Lou has shot and sold the defining tape of his career and has worked to manipulate it for personal gain. He watches as Nina plays the tape on the air, directing the news anchors in such a specific way in terms of lan