Nightcrawler - review

In Taxi Driver, while driving up and down the streets Travis Bickle remarks that "All the animals come out at night" and that statement is certainly true of Nightcrawler although one might not expect so many animals to be embodied within one human being.

For Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom is part shark, snake, worm, wolf and vulture.

This is a man who takes up a profession filming crime scenes to sell to news outlets and is constantly on the lookout, sniffing for blood, ready to slither and worm his way into any situation he can turn to his advantage before picking at the bodies and remains for his own sustenance.

He really is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Lou Bloom still possesses Gyllenhaal's baby blue eyes and disarming smile but his gaunt appearance and motivational business speeches make him look and sound like a sociopath who grew up reading Richard Branson's autobiography and would kick his mother down the stairs if it got him ahead in life... hmmm, almost makes him perfect for The Apprentice.

Almost by accident he stumbles head-on into the world of freelance crime journalism.
As a cameraman (played by a sleazy Bill Paxton) tells him "If it bleeds, it leads" and soon he is out searching the streets for images of destruction, despair and death that he can sell to the network news.

It is a dark satire about the media's and our own fascination with the macabre. That car crash television mentality where we see some horrific yet cannot turn away. Witness the erotic undertones to the scene where Rene Russo's news director tells Bloom she really wants his footage and demands that he give it to her.
At its core is that base level of Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in other people's pain and celebrating that you are alive and others are not.

Network prophesied this coming all the way back in 1976 and it couldn't have been more accurate.

Watching Lou Bloom ascend his crooked ladder and achieve his own twisted version of the American Dream, or is that the American Nightmare?

It is a film that will make you feel like you need a shower after seeing it but it feels really good while you are watching it, especially due to the fantastic cinematography by Robert Elswit who makes this L.A. feel like the same world that is home to Ryan Gosling's mysterious Driver in Drive or Elijah Wood's Frank in Maniac.

If you want to win the lottery, you need to make the money to buy a ticket. And writer-director Dan Gilroy, Gyllenhaal and audiences have all won the jackpot with Nightcrawler.

5 stars

Edge Of Tomorrow - review

By the end of the first act of Edge Of Tomorrow, it is clear that it isn't your typical Tom Cruise movie as it has him dying on the beach at Normandy with an alien's blood eating through his face.

Suddenly we snap back to earlier that day when Cruise wakes up again in Army custody being sent to the front line for the final battle against an alien invasion.

Stuck in a Groundhog D-Day-style time loop he is forced to relive the same day over and over again every time he dies.

It gives Cruise one of his best roles in recent years, with a character arc that sees him change from a weasely, Army PR man with a shit-eating grin to battle-hardened warrior.

After going through the five stages of grief/loss upon reliving the same situation again and again: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, he works towards a Phil Connors-style redemption and seeks to have the perfect day and defeat the enemy and break the cycle.

Surely this can't fit into the Tom Cruise plot device where he is a successful soldier who suffers from a crisis of confidence before the love of a beautiful women teaches him that he can be a great soldier again...

Well, sort of.

While he doesn't start off as a great warrior (he can't even turn the safety off on his exo-suit), he discovers that the Army's most decorated soldier Rita Vrataski aka "Full Metal Bitch" previously had the same alien power and she trains him up to become a "Full Metal Jack Reacher", part of which includes one of the best training montages since Team America which revolves around Blunt repeatedly shooting Cruise in the face.

Blunt is an forceful and intimidating presence. Cold and steely to begin with before opening up the more Cruise interacts with her character.

She will inspire a lot of women to Cosplay as The Angel of Verdun and was potentially a new strong female sci-fi icon in the mould of Ripley and Sarah Connor. Personally I would have just liked to see a bit more of her in action to provide evidence of her legendary fighting skills.

Edge Of Tomorrow is up there with Scott Pilgrim Vs The World as the best movie based on video games only they are not based on actual video games.

It unfolds like an incredibly difficult third person platform shooter that doesn't have the benefit of auto-save points. One mistake can cost you your life and you get zapped back to the start where you have to do it all over again from the very beginning.

Like a video game it can get frustrating and repetitive to begin with but it handles it with great pace and humour, particularly the interactions with Bill Paxton's gruff Sergeant Farell.

Soon advancing through the game becomes like muscle memory (Cruise and Blunt talk through the battle time and time again choreographing their movements) and you breeze through it in no time until you come up to a new section you need to master.

Each new section comes with its own challenges and the screenplay plays nicely with the audience and characters. Is this the first time they have been here or not?

Like Tom's previous venture into science fiction Oblivion, this films wears its influence on the sleeves of its exo-suits with echoes of Starship Troopers, Aliens and Source Code.

Yet unlike Oblivion, you are not constantly comparing it to the originals and it really works on its own merits right up until the end which doesn't really work with what has come before and threatens to collapse in on itself like a giant plot black hole.

If it wasn't for the misstep at the end, this really could have Edged it as the most enjoyable blockbuster of the summer. Best start over and try again!

4 stars