Nightcrawler (2014)

Nightcrawler (2014)

Director: Dan Gilroy

Cast: Jake Gyllenhal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton

Nightcrawler came out of nowhere for me, I had no idea who was behind it, who made it, who wrote it, I didn’t even know it was in production. But then I saw a trailer and I was immediately hooked. The premise alone got me; the idea of a guy who takes matters into his own hands and starts filming things that happen on the streets, capturing footage of moments on the spot, seconds after they’d happened, or sometimes as they are happening, sometimes getting there before the cops or the fire men themselves, it just seemed like a very original concept to me. I mean, speaking about the media, we all know how news is manipulated to shape the way the masses perceive things. I personally despise how the media is always fear mongering. Example, I turned on the television the other day and right there in words that caught practically half of the screen where the words ‘Fear’ and ‘Ebola’, with no other words on the screen. I was like wow, that’s what their selling now. That’s what they want people to fear now, but is this an actual epidemic? Or are they deviating the publics attention from things that really matter in the world? A few months down the line it’ll be some other fear; the trick is to keep us in a state of panic without focusing on things that are truly important. So a film in which someone wants to capture the news himself seemed so interesting to me. Did Nightcrawler deliver the goods? 

The story focuses on Louis Bloom, a common thief with delusions of grandeur. Louis is a smart guy, he educates himself by reading a lot, the problem is that he’s kind of nuts. Actually, the guy is full blown nuts. He’s the kind of guy that a few minutes into the conversation, you realize he’s completely bonkers, but boy, what a character! So anyhow, when we first meet him he’s stealing manholes and watches to sell them for scraps, until he stumbles upon this guy who films video footage so he can sell it to the local news channel. Suddenly, like an epiphany, Louis realizes that he can make more money doing this as well. So he gets himself a camera and starts shooting footage of car accidents and fires, with the footage being as graphic as possible. Soon he starts making some money and growing. He starts to get ambitious, how far is he willing to go to make it the top?

One thing I like about movies like this one is how they feel like a jolt of electricity because they speak the truth because they aim their guns at something that’s happening in society, something that’s real.  The media is of course being controlled, so is music and films, this is probably why most films are so watered down and silly, the Motion Picture Association of America holds a firm grip on the type of films that are being released in cinemas, same goes for the news we see in the newspapers and on television. They focus only on certain things, on things they want us to think about. There’s this amazing scene in Nightcrawler in which the producer of the news show (played by Rene Russo) is feeding the news anchors the words that they have to emphasize during their broadcast. The word fear and panic popped up more than once. The question that popped in my head was: just how much of what news anchors say are their own words? The answer is zero, they read everything. Everything is filtered, chosen for them. But this is just one of the themes the film addresses, we’re talking about a very layered film here.

A few movies came to mind while watching this one, but one of the first ones to pop up was of course Taxi Driver (1976), because the main character is a loner roaming the streets at night, slowly going insane because of society and the way things are. But unlike Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Louis Bloom doesn't try to change the world, instead, like a vampire, he wants to feed off of it. What kind of person is society breeding? Louis Bloom is a good example, here’s a desperate character without a formal education, but willing to learn and do what he’s got to do to survive in this crazy world. He’s ambitious, but ambition and greed have corrupted his soul, so here we have a guy willing to do anything to make it to the top, even if what he has to do is morally unacceptable. But then you get to thinking, arent these the kind of people that make it to the top anyways? Louis Bloom builds his own small enterprise, he becomes the boss of his own imaginary corporation, and he treats his only employee the way most big corporations treat their employees, like shit; with little benefits or remuneration for their work, yet exploiting them as much as possible. So in a strange way, Louis becomes the mirror image of corporate America. You think Louis Bloom is wrong in the way he treats people? Then you think most big corporations are, because to me they are one and the same in this movie.

How awesome is Jake Gyllenhal in this movie? I’d say his performance is Oscar worthy stuff, I hope he gets it. It’s one of those career defining pieces, where the actor will never be the same after it, so here’s hoping. It’s been interesting seeing Gyllenhal grow as an actor. I’ve been following his career since his early days, when he blew me away with Donnie Darko (2001). Gyllenhal, you’ve come a long way baby, many kudos to you for this performance, hopefully we’ll see you Oscar night. So anyhow, his performance will blow you away, or send chills down your spine. You might even find yourself cheering him on at one point? At others you’ll totally despise him, at others you might pity him, he’s a very ambiguous character with many sides to him. Certainly not someone we want to emulate, but at the same time, you have to admit his character does say certain truths about life and the world we live in; is Louis Bloom a mad prophet of our times? You be the judge. 

The way it was shot, and the way it looks, Nightcrawler has this weird thing about it, it feels like a film from the 70’s. It’s also like a film from the 70’s because it reminded me of that time when movies weren’t worried about being politically correct and were more concerned with saying something that matters, something relevant about society. The 70’s were a time when movies still had an edge to them, and Nightcrawler has that edge. It speaks of the desperate times we’re living in, where people are struggling to “make it”, struggling to dig themselves out of the proverbial hole, doing anything necessary to make ends meet. Sad part is that it’s the economy and the way society is constructed that pushes people to live this way. I enjoyed that rawness about Nightcrawler; it feels real, genuine and alive. It reminded me a bit of Sydney Lumet’s Network (1976) because it has to do with the dissemination of news to the masses and because it speaks the truth about the dog eat dog world we’re living in. If we’re not careful, we’ll turn into Louise Bloom, a desperate individual, willing to step on anybody to make it to the top.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Freejack (1992)

Title: Freejack (1992)

Director: Geoff Murphy

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, Mick Jagger, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Banks, David Johansen, Amanda Plummer, Esai Morales

Freejack has an interesting idea behind it: rich people from the future steal bodies from the past seconds before they are about to die so that they can use these bodies to transfer their own consciousness into them and get a second chance at life, in a new body. So I guess we could say that in the future, rich people have discovered the secret to immortality. But what happens when one of these bodies resists being lobotomized and is fully aware of what’s being done to them? This is the premise for Freejack, a film based on the novel Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley. So yeah, interesting premise for a film, did the filmmakers pull it off well? Or is this another botched adaptation?

I haven’t read the novel, so I couldn’t tell you how well it translates from book to film, but I will say that the film has some interesting ideas behind it while still delivering some action. This is essentially a chase film, the kind of film in which characters are always running, jumping and escaping certain death. In that sense, Freejack is never a boring film. The film attempts also to infuse the proceedings with a hint of comedy, by this I don’t mean that it is ‘hardy har har funny’ but it certainly does have its fare share of one liners. Emilio Estevez plays Alex Furlong, the man on the run. While watching this film I couldn’t help and compare it a bit to Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1989), which in my opinion is the film that Freejack is trying to imitate, at least in tone. The problem is that nobody could imitate Paul Verhoeven’s acidic sense of humor and so Freejack just comes off as goofy, primarily because its leading man doesn’t seem to be taking things too seriously, he seems to be having a good old time with all these people chasing him and cars exploding around him. The film has this uneven tone to it, is it funny? Is it serious? I guess the only guy to blame for this would be Geoff Murphy, the films director.

I don’t know whose idea it was to put Emilio Estevez in the starring role, but in my book he just doesn’t pull of a convincing leading man, he looks like somebody who’s just goofing around the set rather than somebody who is running for his life. I guess the only reason Emilio Estevez is on this movie is because he’d worked before with Geoff Murphy on Young Guns II (1990). But I could definitely see somebody else on the title role, somebody with a little more ‘gravitas’, cause Estevez just doesn’t have them. In terms of supporting actors the film is solid; we get Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo and we even get Mick Jagger as a lackey and New York Dolls front man David Johansen in a small role. But with such a solid cast, where Freejack failed was in choosing Estevez as the leading man. He seems more suited for a silly comedy like Loaded Weapon 1 (1993) than a science fiction film like this one.

The good thing about Freejack is that it has plenty of action sequences, the only problem is that it suffers from what a lot of action films from the 80’s suffered from: the chase sequences feel like a check list of every car stunt known to man. So you're like 'oh they're doing the car flipping over and exploding trick', they definetly have a been there done that feel to them at times. Now imagine that with Emilio Estevez pulling a one liner every time a car explodes and you get the jist of the kind of action sequences you can expect from Freejack. Still, some of the car stunts are pretty cool, however unbelievable.

On the cyberpunk side of things we get the dilapidated society, with rich people living in luxury and the poor living extreme poverty. We get the element of transferring human consciousness into a computer and then using modern technology to transfer a consciousness into a new human body. So there’s that common element seen in many Cyberpunk films of the ‘ghost in the machine’, an idea that was recently seen in Transcendence (2014) and also in Johnny Mnemonic (1994). Cool part about this whole ghost in the machine business is that it lends itself for some cool computer graphics and compositions which might feel a bit dated, but I’ll be honest, still look pretty cool by today’s standards. We also get that idea that big corporations have taken over the world, which is a staple of cyberpunk cinema, the big company is the big bad guy.

Another fault the film has is that cars that are supposed to look ‘futuristic’ , don’t. This is something that so many low to medium budget sci-fi films suffer from, the cheap or clunky looking cars. Last time I remember seeing it was on Equilibrium (2002). The problem is that they convert existing cars by adding a couple of panels and a coat of paint. Then voila!, they call them futuristic, but god, on this one it’s so blatantly obvious that they are not. Not to the director: painting a military vehicle red does not make it futuristic! So yeah, you get these clunky looking cars, which are not cool. These are the times when I miss Syd Mead or Jean Giraud doing the conceptual designs. Conceptual designs are so important in a science fiction film, if you don’t pay attention to conceptual design, where the artist designs elements from the film to make them look functional and cool at the same time, well, you get the clunkiness. I mean, look at the cars in freaking Blade Runner! The freaking Spinners are so awesome! I wanted a Spinner! But I do not want any of the cars in Freejack. In the end, Freejack is a fun, fast paced films that has a couple of hiccups along the way but is still a fun watch in my book. I like those scenes with Emilio Estevez and Anthony Hopkins battling for their respective minds! Just don’t expect a masterpiece and you’ll be fine, this one is a glorified b-movie all the way!

Rating: 3 out of 5 

THOR (2011)

Title: Thor (2011)

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Chris Hemsworth, Stellan Skarsgard, Kat Dennings, Rene Russo

Review:

Thor is the second big summer movie of 2011 (first one was Fast Five) and honestly it’s one of the ones I was most looking forward to seeing. I’ve been a life long comic book fan and I love all things related to the wonderful world of sequential art, I love comics as an art form almost as much as I love movies. When we get down to it, comics and films are extremely similar in many ways. In Thor’s case, I was curious to see how they would translate all the cosmic grandness of the city of Asgard and the Gods that inhabit it. The previews gave me a good sign, I liked what I saw, and the fact that Keneth Branagh was directing the film gave me good vibes since Branagh is a director that has made films that can be considered some of the best films based on Shakespeare’s most important works like Hamlet (1996) and Henry V (1989) among others. So the film was in the hands of a guy who understood drama and stories about family feuds between royalty. The cast was shaping up to be nothing short of impressive, Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins? Awesome! Plus this Chris Hemsworth guy really looked the part! Still, the question remained: how would all this translate to the world of films? Would the transition be a smooth one? Would it work?

Thor and his brother Loki

Story wise, Thor sticks pretty close to the kind of stories we could find in Marvel’s comic books, mainly, the eternal fight between Thor and his brother Loki. On this film we first meet Thor when he is about to be crowned King of Asgard by his father, King Odin, played by Anthony Hopkins. Problem comes when the Frost Giants of Jutenheim decided to crash the party and steal the Casket of Ancient Winters, an ancient relic that is the source of the Frost Giants chilling powers. Thankfully, the Frost Giants are stopped before they manage to steal the trinket. The event ignites an anger in Thor who from that point on wants to do nothing more then go to Jutenheim and kick the Frost Giants collective asses! Odin advices against it, because he being the wise King that he is, would rather preserve the truce between both kingdoms instead of starting another war. Thor doesn’t agree with that course of action and so he convinces some of his warrior friends to go to Jutenheim anyways to stir up some trouble. When Odin hears of Thor’s disobedience, the Mighty Odin’s anger is stirred and so he ends up not naming Thor King of Asgard after all! Instead, he rids Thor of his god like powers, takes away his magic hammer (called Mjolnir) and banishes Thor to earth. Odin hopes that this banishment will teach Thor a lesson or two on humility and what makes a good king. Will Thor learn his lesson? And what evil scheme does his envious brother Loki have in mind?

So finally I got to see Thor, sadly, it was not all I hoped it would be. Mind you, I didn’t think it was an awful movie, I just thought it was kind of a disjointed tale. Not all together, kind of a mish mash of ideas not well strung together. Maybe what this movie suffered from was having too much story to tell in too little time. The story is epic in scale, yet at times you feel that things are happening way too fast, as if the movie was going through some beats to simply keep things going at a brisk pace, so the kiddies won’t get bored with lots of babbling. I have to admit, I didn’t like how fast the movie was going. I mean, the film had everything it needs to be epic, the story deals with Gods! Unfortunately, the film doesn’t give us any breathing room and because things happen so fast, events just don’t come off as believable. To me this was meant to be the Gone with the Wind of superhero movies, you know, a grand old tale taking its time to hit those beats, but with some character development, some depth. Instead, things happen briskly and fast, you don’t have time to absorb it all. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the first Marvel movie suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder! Movie goes something like this: Thor’s going to be King! Boom! Bad guys crash the party! Boom! Thor is banished! Boom! Thor learns humility! Boom! Thor gets his powers back! Boom! He goes back to Asgard to kick ass! Boom! Movie is over! Boom! Boom! Boom! We go from one beat to the next in a very unbelievable pace. I mean, yeah most films cut a few corners here and there to go through their story, but this one was ridiculous.

Yet, in spite of this the movie has many positive things going for it. First up, Chris Hemsworth as Thor was the best choice they could have made, I mean the guy IS Thor! He’s plays the role with the right level of arrogance, but at the same time, he’s got a likability to him. A lot of what makes the character work is the wardrobe which is excellent, they really nailed the look for Thor. He looks like he could have leapt off the comic book page and on to the screen, literally. Same goes for the wardrobe of the Gods, impressive stuff! Cool looking helmets, awesome capes, armor with muscles…I mean these guys look powerful, and at times, the design of their armor reminded me of something Jack Kirby (comic artist legend) could have cooked up himself. Actually, he did cook these characters up back in the 60’s when the first issue of Thor was printed. He worked alongside Stan Lee in creating these stories based on the Norse God of Thunder. By the way, Stan Lee has a hilarious ‘blink or you’ll miss it’ cameo in the film.

In terms of art direction, the film excels as well. I mean, I loved the way Odin’s throne room looked! In fact all of Asgard looks appropriately gargantuan. A city filled with huge glistening statues and steps upon steps upon steps! Loved how everything is so spacious and gigantic, pretty impressive film in terms of art direction. Same goes for the visual effects which were pretty astounding. In fact, in spite of the films flaws, I think I will be seeing it again simply to enjoy its visual flair. Aactually, the films art direction and all those scenes with Thor fighting other Gods reminded me of those scenes from Master of the Universe (1987) that took place in Eternia, that was a film that also had Gods fighting each other over ultimate power.

These Marvel films have all enjoyed a connectivity to them. They all end up connecting with each other somehow, like one big cinematic comic book! This one is no different. On this one they mention Tony Stark and Bruce Banner a.k.a. The Hulk. We get to see the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. trying to make sense of Thor and his Hammer, plus, as in most of these Marvel movies, Samuel L. Jackson shows up as Nick Fury. We even get to very quickly meet Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) a character we will no doubt be seeing a lot more of in the upcoming The Avengers film which is being filmed as I type this. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you guys to stay after the credits role for that extra tacked on ending that connects us to The Avengers, which should be premiering summer 2012 if the world doesn’t end first! That was a joke by the way. But seriously folks, that Avengers movie better be something awesome, they’ve been hyping it in every single one of these Marvel movies!

Natalie Portman plays Jane Foster, an astrophysicist who discovers Thor when he first falls from Asgard. This isn’t the performance of her life, but I’m sure you guys weren’t expecting that either. I wish they would have given her a meatier role on this film, something more intense, something that involved her a bit more in the proceedings. She deserved something more dramatic and intense. Unfortunately, she gets lost in the shuffle between Asgard and Earth and all the Gods. Same can be said for Kat Dennings. She’s cute as hell, but her character is only in the film to make facebook and IPod “jokes”. Honestly, she’s one of the most worthless characters in the whole film.

Kenneth Branagh directs a scene

My final word on Thor is that it was a good superhero movie that could have been better had it not been shy with its running time. Sadly, many of these summer movies gotta play by that rule of making the film short enough to squeeze as many showings as possible in a day. The studios gotta squeeze these films for all the can and a short running time assures them that a film will make as much money as it can in theaters. In the end, that’s the only problem I had with this flick which is kind of weird because Thor is a film that comes to us from a director who knows a thing or two about character development in films. If only he hadn’t succumbed to the pressures of making fast paced film to please the studio! Still, its worth the price of admission for the spectacle it offers. 

Rating: 4 out of 5