Nightcrawler: Dan Gilroy writes & directs, Jake Gyllenhaal stars (October 2014)

I liked the look Jake gave Russo when she guzzled the margarita.

like with whiplash it may or may not be fair to its ostensible subject, but i thought it did a solid, lively job of mixing metaphor and melodrama. both made me realize i don't really sweat whether it would happen irl if there's an enjoyable payoff to it happening in the film

call it the son of flubber rule

"yes everyone would freak out if a basketball team suddenly could leap insane heights but would you have been more entertained by the alternative"

forgot it's football in son of flubber, basketball in absent-minded prof, but anyway

well, sure, i love jackie chan movies too.

it's not the plausibility per se, it's the idea that the scenarios in the film were supposed to sustain some kind of critique of—media, capitalism, whatever.

well he was an autodidact mba who saw a chance and took it - a dark success story - but it wasn't haranguing or pious enough for me to be annoyed with it, or demand a strong thesis.

yeah, not a lotta depth there, and the ante-raising doesn't match Network, where each act is progressively more outlandish. What you see is what you get.

I do think JG should do a zany comedy again, say The Soupy Sales Story

i don't think the movie was trying to give us the state of the media any more than whiplash was trying to give us the state of conservatories

I'd have appreciated using the media as merely cool backdrop/framework if Russo wasn't allowed a point of view.

have you seen any Dan Gilroy interviews? he appeared to v much have that ambition. xp

ante raising p massive here imo

you always know where its headed but still, how much further did it need to go

i read some oscar promo he did for deadline and didn't notice too much hot air

http://deadline.com/2015/01/dan-gilroy-nightcrawler-interview-jake-gyllenhaal-1201343460/

pertinent bit: The idea came in pieces. I think the first piece is when I became aware of a crime photographer in New York City from the 1930s, a guy named Weegee. I actually collect his photographs. He was the first guy to put a police scanner into a car and go to a crime scene. He sold his photographs to tabloids in New York. I moved to L.A. and realized there would be a modern equivalent where these nightcrawlers drive around at 120 miles per hour with 10 scanners going, and it seemed like an interesting backdrop for a film. It was when the character of Lou Bloom (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) came into the picture that I realized it was ultimately more of a character study than it was about this unique world.

reservations aside, I'd be happy if Jake got an Oscar nod; dude's been doing solid work for a few years.

have you seen any Dan Gilroy interviews? he appeared to v much have that ambition. xp

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, January 14, 2015 4:34 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah and the audience identification figure in the newsroom (the "mad men" guy) was a dead giveaway as to the film's underlying moralism too.

he was definitely there to express the familiar journalistic moral, i don't think we were supposed to identify with that dude too much. he's not walter matthau in a face in the crowd

morality, rather

i'm not saying the film didn't think network news was worthless, just that i don't think it was particularly hand-wringy about it, or that the point of the film was that network news sucks

it's also possible that after pro blogging and mba school, nothing this movie assumed about business or media struck me as unfair

heh

i'm not saying the film didn't think network news was worthless, just that i don't think it was particularly hand-wringy about it, or that the point of the film was that network news sucks

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:55 PM (6 hours ago)

i dunno about "the point of the film", but its critique is sustained, savage and hardly subtle. basically henley's "dirty laundry" dragged out for another 110 minutes. then again, i suppose you could say that the point is the complicity of the media with sociopathically predatory capitalism.

Well, yeah.

as i said in what you quoted, i agree the film is critical of the media. but its not bemoaning it, contrasting the situation with what should be, or noting some better, innocent world beyond it, etc. the a guy who hates what leo represents is treated as a nuisance, not as a conscience to necessarily be respected.

between this, whiplash, wolf of wall street, gone girl, observe & report, i'm gathering i have a pretty high tolerance for anti-heroism when the film isn't afraid of humor and melodrama. reacting to this movie with some variation on "i get it, i get it, the media sucks" just feels very forest for the trees where i'm at. it's about watching this guy navigate that world. a world the movie has a critical distance from, but isn't clucking its tongue over.

oh yeah, agree completely. but the movie is, nonetheless, a critique of the mainstream news media. we can accept this while also recognizing that its portrayal of local evening news ethics is a natural extension of its larger view of "late stage capitalism" as america's economic/social/moral universe.

i say it's critical of the media, you say it's a critique of the media, obv the twain shall not meet

okay, gotcha. in calling it "a critique", i'm not limiting it to that, but i can certainly see how the language tends that way.

to be clear, i was just laughing at the fact the idea that i don't accept it's a "critique" after posting it's "critical"

the fact. really should proofcheck any post i'm going to start with "to be clear"

i def don't accept the film is basically henley's "dirty laundry" dragged out for another 110 minutes though, any more than Lolita is basically gary puckett's "young girl" dragged out for 110 minutes

well, there's no point in bemoaning it, cuz it's never gonna change in the few decades we've got left, except for the worse.

LOCAL news, not network

i def don't accept the film is basically henley's "dirty laundry" dragged out for another 110 minutes though, any more than Lolita is basically gary puckett's "young girl" dragged out for 110 minutes

― da croupier, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 11:37 PM (Yesterday)

okay, edit to: the film's view of local news is basically http://www.drummerworld.com/drummerworld/donhenley550kjrs23.jpg

you should re-read those lyrics, don't recall nightcrawler talking about how they love to slam don henley

also do you have a different view of local news than "crap is king"?

no! and who doesn't love to slam don henley? i don't fault the film for its view of local news, though as social critique, it did seem almost comically overheated (in a good way). i quite liked the move, if that wasn't clear. i'm predisposed to gyllenhaals.

"movie" is the "move"

i'm just confused why you keep saying "you have to admit it's an overheated critique" when i keep saying the film is a melodrama that assumes the la local media world is shit

my point is simply that the movie mostly assumes rather than argues it sucks, and uses that as the backdrop of an antiheroic story, so merely seeing it as one long slam of the media is to miss the focus of the film.

accent on the word "merely," lest someone think i'm denying the media is getting a slam (a slam no one has actually said is unfair yet).

well, i started out quibbling about "the point", but in the long run, i don't think we disagree on that score. i'm not suggesting that nightcrawler has no concerns beyond its media critique or even that local broadcast news is its primary critical focus. i tried to clarify this yesterday (and a couple posts back), but maybe it got lost in translation. [shrug guy]

apology accepted

lol

keep forgetting it wasn't jim carrey in this film.

ten years ago it would've been.

lol I compared it to the cable guy

Michael Sicinski (giving a 4/10):

"By the by, the subject of accident-chasing newshounds in L.A. has already been broached in a much better film, Richard Dutcher's Falling from 2005. It's grittier, less winky-nudgy, and has more at stake since its protagonist actually starts out with a soul he can lose."

The more I think about this movie the less I like it.

I saw it last night. Lots of fun.

Both silly and heavyhanded, starting with when renee russo's character becomes a literal whore (why would a corporation/sociopath crave human contact anyway)

the more I think about this movie, the less clothes I like on Jake