Nightcrawler

[imp]

Lots of good reviews, high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a sound premise - freelance cameraman follows the police sirens around LA and sells gory footage of shootings, car-jackings and accidents to a local TV station that needs to up its ratings against the competition.

There's the odd slice of dark comedy in the script, maybe four or five very funny moments. But they sit oddly with the film's obvious intent to question the morality of the media and the people who lust for, and gawp at, catastrophic footage. Jake Gyllenhaal's character is so odious, right from the start and all the way through, that he's a paper thin psychotic caricature, and so you find yourself feeling uncomfortable laughing at his lines. His human sidekick Rick - the homeless intern he has in an economic and emotional stranglehold - is his stereotypical opposite, a voice of sanity, but no more imaginative or individual a creation for having a conscience.

The film is empty - it's contrived, predictable, melodramatic, beyond credible, and not anywhere near as shocking or controversial as it would love to be. It's not even contemporary - who watches local TV news nowadays for local stories? We're online for the latest updates, dude. A huge disappointment after all the plaudits.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Nightcrawler

You are so wrong! Oh, so wrong!
I think YOU are trying to be controversial because almost everywhere I've read it got high praise.
Rightly so.

Historically, the day you and I agree on film or anything will be the day the sun tells the moon it wants to be Mars and becomes a gay Saturn just to spite universe.
So, fuck it, like.
Still like you, though.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Nightcrawler

I really liked it. Really impressed with Gyllenhaal's performance.

Not the greatest film ever, but much better than Interstellar, Gone Girl, Hobbits

[Nefertiti2]

Nightcrawler

Felicity, I guess so wrote: I really liked it. Really impressed with Gyllenhaal's performance.

Not the greatest film ever, but much better than Interstellar, Gone Girl, Hobbits

I thought Gyllenhaal was very good. but the script ran out of steam and the sidekick wasn't up to it. The irony was that the film was forced to be an action film when that idea of action had already been shown to be phoney. More interesting areas, like the potential relationship between Gyllenhaal and the journalist, were only hinted at. havent' seen Hobbits or Gone Girl but not atrocious by any means.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Nightcrawler

It's fairly well made stylistically, and I thought Big Face Gyllenhaal went creepy enough without going full creep (even his face seemed smaller). But yeah - the premise doesn't yield much cause no one in a UK cinema really needs to be shown at length that watching catastrophe footage on US TV news is, like, bad, or that ruthlessly ambitious people might be, like, sociopaths. We don't watch that stuff in the first place, and hardly anyone has a career where they'll encounter raw ambition like that. And most of us don't work with cameras, so the resonance may be limited to the few that do.

I'm sure people do watch TV news in great numbers, however, and remember that online babble can usually be traced back to old media news reports. The main character here has educated himself into position using only the internet (like a typical sociopath or, er, definitely none of us, no) so I don't think I'd call it out for being anachronistic.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Nightcrawler

Worst. Film. Ever.

(Haven't seen it mind.)

[imp]

Nightcrawler

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: He looks like a handsome Hollywood leading man who's shoehorned himself into this role as a crazy loner when the role would be better suited to someone like, I don't know, a younger Steve Buscemi or Crispin Glover.

Actually, he reminded me right from the off of Jools Holland about to make a trademark crappy wisecrack. Hard to take him seriously when you've got that image in your head. The parallels with Taxi Driver are laughable. Someone would have decked this cunt years ago, and that would have been that.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Nightcrawler

Lucia Lanigan wrote: It's fairly well made stylistically, and I thought Big Face Gyllenhaal went creepy enough without going full creep (even his face seemed smaller). But yeah - the premise doesn't yield much cause no one in a UK cinema really needs to be shown at length that watching catastrophe footage on US TV news is, like, bad, or that ruthlessly ambitious people might be, like, sociopaths. We don't watch that stuff in the first place, and hardly anyone has a career where they'll encounter raw ambition like that. And most of us don't work with cameras, so the resonance may be limited to the few that do.

I'm sure people do watch TV news in great numbers, however, and remember that online babble can usually be traced back to old media news reports. The main character here has educated himself into position using only the internet (like a typical sociopath or, er, definitely none of us, no) so I don't think I'd call it out for being anachronistic.

80% of this you mention is about television, the US freakish kind. I for one don't think the film's main is pointing a finger against that. Remember that in the very beginning when he's selling off some stolen scrap, he want's to pursue a career in that business. Begging to get a foot in. To be someone who can throw his all lust for knowledge into that one thing and be recognized as an expert.
It's a devilishly good performance and story. How (some) TV in US works has little to do with it. It's much more a journey into a messed up mind.

[Reed John]

Nightcrawler

Nobody under 70 watches the local news anymore.

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

Enjoyable. 8/10.

Good effort from the leading man. Lot's of nice dialogue and action.

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

Watched it again earlier, so some others could watch it.

It's really very very good you know. JG is great. Potentially Oscar winning stuff.

Spoilery stuff

The shot of Gyllenhaal when Paxton's character is taken, paralysed into the ambulance is brilliant, like Karloff as Frankenstein's monster. The sidekick dude is good, it's almost like he's acting as the in-film substitute for us, the audience.

Not sure I've heard twerp used before in an American film either. I thought that was fairly English. Some great modern L.A. noiry photography and a decent bit of car action at the end as well.

I guess the film is highlighting (in a rather OTT way perhaps) how a lack of feeling might be useful in certain ventures. I'm not sure he's meant to come across as obviously frightening rather than slightly off-kilter, You know, scary in close up, not quite right in-passing but otherwise harmless if you don't happen to interact with him.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Nightcrawler

Carnivorous Vulgaris wrote: Erm... thanks?

Haha, noticed this now.
That wasn't at you, it was to imp.

[imp]

Nightcrawler

"Art is the exaggeration of an idea," Andre Gide once wrote. But art is not the flogging, flailing and shredding of an idea. This film would have been more subtle if they'd got Neil Warnock to direct it.

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

If they were aiming for subtle they failed. They hit a few other spots though.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nightcrawler

I'm not sure he's meant to come across as obviously frightening rather than slightly off-kilter, You know, scary in close up, not quite right in-passing but otherwise harmless if you don't happen to interact with him.

What now? The guy who set up several people directly to be killed, basically blackmailed someone into sex and, at least possibly, killed his main rival? I mean, on one level, everyone's harmless to you if you don't interact with them, by definition. But he's toxic to everyone he interacts with.

Anyway, I absolutely loved the performance, but I wasn't so keen on the message, if it had one. The "TV news is bad, and you're bad for watching it" angle was extremely heavy-handed, and much better done by Network yonks ago.

I just couldn't accept him as a psycho. He's nowhere near frightening enough, he's not offbeat. He looks like a handsome Hollywood leading man who's shoehorned himself into this role as a crazy loner when the role would be better suited to someone like, I don't know, a younger Steve Buscemi or Crispin Glover.

Couldn't disagree more with this. He was frightening as fuck, especially in his interactions with Russo. And his delivery of those internet business school bullshit lines was just perfect. It was confident but not quite human, kind of like that crap always is, but more so.

More interesting areas, like the potential relationship between Gyllenhaal and the journalist, were only hinted at.

See, that's what I loved about the film. It was all show, don't tell. Hints at his background and psychology, letting you fill in the gaps from the things he says and doesn't say. You intuit his relationship with her from that time he explodes in the editing suite - it's so economical, exposition-wise, and so chilling.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Nightcrawler

Jake's next movie looks promising
Southpaw

Almost a De Niro like effort shaping the body

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

Ginger Yellow wrote:

I'm not sure he's meant to come across as obviously frightening rather than slightly off-kilter, You know, scary in close up, not quite right in-passing but otherwise harmless if you don't happen to interact with him.

What now? The guy who set up several people directly to be killed, basically blackmailed someone into sex and, at least possibly, killed his main rival? I mean, on one level, everyone's harmless to you if you don't interact with them, by definition. But he's toxic to everyone he interacts with.

Yeah, agree with most of that.

I'm not quite sure what your What Now? is about. To fill out MY original comment;

In the context of L.A. and the business he's chosen, his behaviour (in passing) could come across as jobbing everyman. There's parts (the mirror scene) where monster dude comes out, but on the whole he's contained. Maybe not to us the audience, but to A N Other within the film who might have a first impression of him.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nightcrawler

I dunno about that. Clearly the first impression he makes on anyone who isn't a bit desperate is "creepy as fuck, would not hire him".

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

How many people would have thought that?. I'm not so sure I would attribute the same thoughts to them ALL which you do (conveniently dismissing those who are a bit desperate, which could include the three characters he interacts with most).

I mean, I think we're arguing over whether the first impression he gives is off-kilter or creepy as eff. I think there's enough ambiguity in the film to indicate he can be both.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nightcrawler

How many people would have thought that?

The security guard he mugs. The scrapyard manager. The other nightcrawler. The paramedics and crime scene cops. Russo's more ethical co-worker.

Just about the only people who aren't repulsed by him on first contact are Russo and Riz Ahmed.

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

Ginger Yellow wrote:

How many people would have thought that?

The security guard he mugs. The scrapyard manager. The other nightcrawler. The paramedics and crime scene cops. Russo's more ethical co-worker.

Just about the only people who aren't repulsed by him on first contact are Russo and Riz Ahmed.

Well I don't agree they all outwardly convey the emotion you attribute to them. For a start, the scrapyard manager was fairly relaxed and rejected him because he was a thief. I'd have to go back and judge those other more peripheral characters you mentioned (and ones you didn't) to judge whether our positions are so far apart as to be worth disagreeing about.

If there is a clear difference in our positions, I think mine could explain how people like him could (and do) actually succeed by (in passing, to the characters he interacts with, at least) having a certain hard working everyman quality. Characteristics people respect and might find harder to see if dominated by a dominating creepy as f** attitude. Which I accept that to the watching viewer, he certainly is.

My position perhaps making the whole thing feel more plausible, for me at least.

[Ginger Yellow]

Nightcrawler

I'm not denying that "people like that" do succeed. I mean, the character's pretty clearly if not a sociopath then something very akin to one, and there are plenty of successful sociopaths. I was just disagreeing with him coming off as harmless to most people.

[Come along, Min]

Nightcrawler

Well, like I wrote in my last reply. I suppose that's where we disagree and for me, my reading of it makes what happened all the more plausible.

I probably should have made it clearer in my initial comment you queried. Rather than just write (and forgive me if I get this a little wrong, I'm on a phone atm and it makes it a little awkward to go back and forth to check) "harmless enough if you don't interact with him", I probably should add a "that much" to the end of that sentence to make my point make a little more sense.