Nightcrawler (2014)

Jack and I picked this story of a man driven to be the best news videographer in LA because of its Gotham Award nomination and thought it well worth our time. Jake Gyllenhaal is sublime as the tightly-wound, almost Aspergers-spectrum Lou and the cinematography by Robert Elswit (won his Oscar for There Will Be Blood (2007), nominated for Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and did great work on Desert Hearts (1985), Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Heist (2001), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Syriana (2005), Michael Clayton (2007), Duplicity, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Salt, The Town, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, among his dozens of credits) is beautiful and dark with fabulous helicopter shots of Los Angeles.

Gyllenhaal (last blogged in Prisoners) was described by one reviewer as "unblinking," and apparently blinks very little during this performance. I was too caught up in the story to notice, but Jack did. Gyllenhaal is gaunt, having lost 20 pounds for this role and should be nominated for something. The one who was, besides the director, however, is Riz Ahmed (new to me) as Lou's assistant Rick. Rene Russo (mentioned in Thor: The Dark World and linked to other blog posts in Thor) is good as the news director.

Director/writer Dan Gilroy, Russo's husband, makes his directorial debut; he co-wrote The Fall (2006) (a wonderful fantasy about a hospitalized stuntman telling supernatural stories to his fellow patient, a little girl) for director Tarsem Singh, and more; he's the brother of Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote all the Bourne movies then directed the last to a script he wrote with Dan). This script is tight and the pacing good.

James Newton Howard (most recently in these pages for scoring Larry Crowne) provides a tense soundtrack that can be accessed one track at a time beginning here.

Those afflicted with Motion-Picture-Motion-Sickness (MPMS list here) should take whatever measures possible because the cameras swing wildly throughout. In fact, those of you with that infirmity may want to wait until the DVD release in February 2015. It is still playing locally, however.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences agree with us this time, averaging 95% and 87%, respectively.