Nightcrawler - Creep Inc.

Lou Bloom: What if my problem wasn't that I don't understand people but that I don't like them? What if I was the kind of person who was obliged to hurt you for this? I mean physically. I think you'd have to believe afterward, if you could, that agreeing to participate and then backing out at the critical moment was a mistake. Because that's what I'm telling you, as clearly as I can. 

In every character-driven story there is a main character that we root for, we witness his star rising from being a nobody to a somebody. We root for him because he is the good guy; he is an honest man, a salt of the earth kind. He may be flawed but you are okay with it because he is human, after all. You want him to succeed because everybody likes to see an underdog win. Movies like Lord of War, Dallas Buyers Club , The Social Network have protagonists with a grey side, yet they win our empathy because there is something human about their imperfections, we feel for them because their intentions are good, we know that somewhere down the line they will realize their folly and try to turn over a new leaf.  But it is hard to empathize with Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) because there is nothing good about him. He is smart, ambitious and driven to an extent that is terrifying. He is twisted from the minute we see him first on screen, and yet we get attracted to him like a moth toward a flame.

Nightcrawler is an intense two-hour drama/thriller about Lou Bloom, a wayward young man who tries to get his foot in L.A’s local news agency KWLA-Channel 6, by working as a freelance video journalist. Men in this profession are called “nightcrawlers” because they roam the night in search of a good story, crawling into crime scenes armed with a video camera taping anything they could find that would sensationalize the crime. Immoral and sleazy, it is a profession where one man’s misery is another man’s fortune. This is a profession that Lou Bloom stumbles upon when he sees star nightcrawler, Joe Loder (Bill Paxton) in action. Loder refuses to take an earnest Bloom into his wings, who then decides to get into the business by buying a cheap camcorder and a police scanner.

Dan Gilroy’s story also works as a commentary on how news channels function, on how they package and manipulate crime stories to get more viewers and use fear as a tool to sell their product. Bloom in his quest to make it in the big leagues finds an admirer in Nina Romina (Rene Russo), the local TV news producer who schools him and grooms him into the job, not knowing that she’s raising a Gollum. As Bloom flowers in his newfound profession--much to the chagrin of Joe Loder--he begins to grow more ambitious, manipulating and orchestrating potential crime scenes so that he could get eyeball-grabbing footage.

Movies based on news channels often have a TRP obsessed head honcho who compromises with ethics of news broadcasting with sensationalism, Rene Russo as the news producer Nina Romina is the ringmaster who tells what to show to what to say. Cold and businesslike, Romina finds a perfect ally in Bloom, or so she thinks. Rene Russo plays the no-nonsense Romina to perfection; much like Bloom hers is a character that warrants no sympathy from us. Bill Paxton turns in a neat performance as Joe Leder, cocky and with a prima donna attitude his position as leading crime photographer is taken over by the relentless Lou Bloom.

Gilroy who has had a checkered career as a writer (The Bourne Legacy, Real Steel, The Fall) is the writer and director for Nightcrawler. Through Gilroy’s eyes, we see the darker side of L.A., a city riddled with crime. The screenplay is tight, focusing on Bloom’s ambition to rise up the ranks in L.A.’s news broadcasting industry. One of the best scenes in the movie happens inside a car when Bloom’s apprentice, Rick (Riz Ahmed), who starts out as gullible looking lad, wises up to his master’s antics and tries to extort money from him for keeping mum. Having been familiarized with the unpredictability of Bloom, you’ll be on the edge of your seat hoping Rick stops talking, because Bloom is capable of choking him to death in the blink of an eye. The way the conversation pans out is a testament to Gilroy’s skill. With majority of the scenes shot in the night, the tense scenes turn out to be more effective.

The most chilling parts of Nightcrawler involve no blood or violence, it involves Jake Gyllenhaal acting all earnest and personable—his pale face glows with colour, and his once sunken eyes start twinkling with excitement as he gets enamored with the world of late night news broadcasting. Gilroy has given Jake Gyllenhaal the role of a lifetime, and he crawls into your skin slowly and steadily.

Nightcrawler is an out-and-out Jake Gyllenhaal film, with sunken eyes that seldom blink, and an unpredictable persona about him, his portrayal of a sociopath will send shivers down your spine. Louis Bloom isn’t just a psycho who is in the business to earn a paycheck; he’s a psycho who feels is destined for greater things. He demands the best from his sole employee, having gotten a little taste of success, Lou Bloom is a deluded psycho with grand plans of starting his own company. With one of his finest roles till date, Gyllenhaal is a shoo-in for the Oscars’ contenders come the awards season. It is astounding to see the range of characters he’s portrayed over the years, from a gay cowboy (Brokeback Mountain) to an introverted cartoonist (Zodiac) to a tough-as-nails detective (Prisoners), and now all beefed up for his forthcoming project as a boxer in Southpaw, it is a shame that he is criminally underappreciated. Hopefully, a solo outing like Nightcrawler could make people sit up and take notice of his talent.

Nightcrawler is a story of flawed people who’ll do anything to get ahead in the world. There is no single character you’d feel sorry for or empathize with, yet, it is a riveting watch that keeps you hooked thanks to a splendid Jake Gyllenhaal.

Interstellar - Of Wormholes and Plotholes

Cooper: We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.

As the screen cut to black there was silence in the movie theater, a “What just happened?” expression was writ large on the faces of the audience, and as Christopher Nolan’s name appeared on the screen, there was a thunderous applause that went on for a couple of minutes. You see, it’s all in the name. Your name carries your brand, your achievements, your vision, your reputation, and if your name is Christopher Jonathan James Nolan, even more so. In the weeks that have led to the release of Interstellar, there have been more feature profiles on him than on any of the stars of the movie. All these articles celebrate his style of movie-making, of how he’s the blue-eyed wunderkind of Warner Brothers who churns out blockbusters with larger-than-life set pieces, with a story laced with philosophy and red herrings told in a tricky fashion, that in its final moments pulls the wool over the eyes of its viewers and leaves them in a frenzy, making them dissect and discuss the movie for days. Nolan’s movies could be frustrating, with a simple plot told in a complex manner, you’d want to that guy who understood the story better, the smartest guy in the audience.

We celebrate him like he were the greatest thing to have happened to motion pictures, which to an extent, is true. He is the best thing to have happened to commercial cinema in recent years, he's the reason we want to go to the movies. Not since Spielberg of the 90’s have we seen a director who is celebrated by the masses and critics alike, nor have we seen a director who enjoys carte blanche over his work. He is the most recognized movie director in the world, for someone who doesn’t own a cell phone or an email id, that’s saying a lot. His movies are flawed, and god forbid, if you mention that in your review, your comments section would be flooded with taunts that question your intelligence to death threats. We live in an era where our opinions are malleable by tweets and online articles, and if someone doesn’t conform to our opinion we strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger.

With Interstellar, Nolan makes a foray into the space opera genre. It is a story we have heard before, of a father who leaves his family behind to save the world with a promise that he will return. The premise may be similar to Armageddon, but they differ in the narrative and treatment. Within the first one hour, we’re shown that Earth is nearing extinction with corn being the only crop that could be grown, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a farmer and a has-been spaceship pilot who believes “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here”, he stumbles upon the defunct NASA that is working out of a secret base, and within the first hour of meeting them, agrees to fly the mission to search for a habitable planet for the human race. After bidding an emotional goodbye to his heartbroken daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy), promising that he will return, Cooper and his team fly across space exploring signals from NASA’s previous attempts.

Nolan has previously made run-of-the-mill stories that have hinged on scientific themes—memory (Memento), dreams (Inception)—and had yet managed to entertain the audience with innovative storytelling (Memento) and jaw-dropping action set-pieces (Inception). Interstellar is where he explores the space-time continuum with the theory of wormholes and blackhole, but it is while using the theme that the plot seems convoluted. Nolan’s movies are known to befuddle the viewer with a complicated storyline, while you try to wrap your head around the story he cleverly inserts a jaw-dropping action scene, the visual aesthetics in the scene always compensate for the complexity of the plot. But in Interstellar, there are too many complicated scientific theories that he brings into play within short intervals, while the visuals of space and the traveling through the wormhole are an immersive experience, it somehow does not make up for the gaping plot holes and convenient resolutions that he comes up with.

Even with limited screenings before the movie officially releases, the internet is set ablaze with over-analysis and explanation of scientific theories ranging from gravity to relativity to astrophysics used in the movie. The average viewer would rather be entertained than to have to go home and do their research on space-time travel to understand the plot. Not everyone in the audience would be equipped to handle the scientific mumbo-jumbo that is thrown around in liberal doses, and in some scenes with the sound mixing not right, it could be a pain to figure out what is being said. While Interstellar may blow your mind away with the visuals and the technical aspects--of which Nolan is a master--it is found wanting in the screenplay--of which Nolan is not--where some plot points go way over your head. What also ails the story is the lack of well developed characters. There are some shoddily written scenes that try to come across as thought-provoking but only end up looking manipulative.

Fresh off his Academy Award success, McConaughey plays his role with aplomb, he speaks his lines with the same calm and raspy tone that he did for a season in True Detective making it sound like you were in a class of Philosophy 101. His character is also blessed with more detail, which makes us easy to connect with, however, we cannot say the same for other characters. Michael Caine as Dr. Brand is an extension of the Michael Caine in any of Nolan’s other movies -- the wise old man who gives a direction and a sense of purpose to the hero’s journey. Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand is a weakly developed character, for someone who shares more screen time with the hero, her character doesn’t add much to the story, there comes a moment in the movie where she talks about love and how powerful of an emotion it is, instead of sounding thought-provoking and rooting for her, it only sounds manipulative and out of place in a sci-fi flick. Mackenzie Foy/Jessica Chastain as Murph is the emotional core to which Cooper wants to return to, angry at her father for having left her, but smarter beyond her age, she tries to put the pieces together. There are more lighter moments in Interstellar than in any of Nolan’s films, most of it coming from a robot named TARS. Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack has always been an integral part of Nolan's movies, making the scenes more grand. In Interstellar it is minimal yet absorbing, a departure from his more pulse-pounding works in Inception and the Batman Trilogy.

While Interstellar features Nolan’s trademark jump cuts in the final scenes of the movie that keeps building the suspense, it would seem hard to keep up for the audience once the movie becomes more scientific and enters the perplexing territory of time and space and other dimensions. Interstellar requires a suspension of disbelief, while it may be frustrating to grasp what’s happening in the movie, you’d just have to let go and be taken in by the stunning visuals. If you thought the beauty of space was jaw dropping in Gravity, Interstellar would only take it to a whole new level.

Nolan’s movies have always created a divide in the audience where a certain section calls him out as a sham that makes blockbusters with all the razzmatazz and pop-philosophy but lacking in heart, whereas there is the other section of Nolan fanboys that reads between the lines of every Nolan flick and tries to equate it with a profound philosophy. I love the rush of watching a Nolan movie in a crowded cinema hall, it leaves me perplexed yet entertained, it gives me scenes that I could take home with me. Although, I wouldn’t go all out to madly defend him, I know his movies have flaws, but at the end of the day, he leaves me entertained, and that’s all that matters. 

However, while I walked out of the theater, there wasn’t much to hold on to, all my excitement that had reached fever pitch during pre-screening was fizzled out, giving way to a bewilderment in trying to figure out what was happening after the show ended. But as the hours passed, and I kept going over it again and again in my head, I realized I needed to give it a second try in the theater, and a third try when the DVDs released.

Interstellar could be a frustrating watch or an enthralling one; it depends on the expectations you walk in with. With the scientific concepts and some gaping plot holes, it is yet another Nolan flick that would require multiple viewings to understand. But then, you wouldn’t mind, it’s Christopher Nolan after all. It’s all in the name.

Image courtesy: http://www.impawards.com/2014/interstellar_ver3.html

A World Beyond Hollywood - Part I

Ricardo Morales: If you keep going over the past, you're going to end up with a thousand pasts and no future.

I have gotten back to watching foreign language cinema only recently, I devoured close to half a dozen movies last weekend, and I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said I feel different, for that is what some movies do to you, they fill in a vacancy inside of you, and yet, at the same time leave you asking for more. I had stopped experimenting with foreign movies close to five years back when I was introduced to American television that required just an hour of investment, and was equally rewarding with engaging story lines and compelling characters.

As I had exhausted the best ones in my hard disk and was left with only the B grade shows, and with Hollywood churning out big budget blockbuster that required a viewing in the movie theaters, I looked to breathe some life into my old fetish for watching foreign language thrillers. I scourged the internet for thrillers recommended by movie lovers, and came across two cerebrally and emotionally charged movies made by countries from either side of the Indian Ocean, Argentina and South Korea.

My first part of this two-part review will deal with a taut, and edge-of-the seat drama released in the year 2009.

I had seen the French prison drama Un Prophete a couple of years back, and had unwittingly assumed it to have won the Oscars for the Best Foreign Language film, for it was a raw and violent story of a juvenile convict who grows on to be a mafia kingpin. I had never bothered to check IMDB for the details, for, Un Prophete was that good. The jury obviously had a different winner in mind, a deep, emotionally charged Argentinian drama, The Secret In Their Eyes, this was one of those rare moments where the jury was right. But you couldn’t blame them if they were wrong too, because the competition in Foreign Language category was that tough in 2010.

There are some stories that you take along with yourself long after the end-credits have rolled, long after you have closed a book and placed it in your shelf. There are some stories you fall in love with such intense fervor, that once it is over, you cannot hold yourself back from sharing it with someone. The pain and the pleasure of watching such stories leave an indelible impression on you, an experience that you’d get over only if you wrote about it for others to read, or told about it to others so that they could experience the same.

The Secret In Their Eyes is such story of a legal counselor, Benjamin Esposito. Retired from the legal profession for more than twenty years, he begins to write a novel about that one case that still haunts him, a case that had changed his life forever, a brutal rape and murder of a young newly-married wife. His journey down memory lane reintroduces him to his then boss, Irene Mendez Hastings, a woman for whom he had harbored feelings that went unreciprocated. As Esposito gets back in touch with the proverbial one-that-got-away, he begins to question the decisions he’d then made, both personally and professionally. Juan Jose Campanella , the director, takes us on an intense ride that travels between the past and the present and leaves us emotionally spent by the time the door shuts down on us.

TSITE isn’t just a murder mystery, but it is a tale of a man who grapples with the choices he had made in his past, while trying to go about finding the answers to the questions that are plaguing his present.  It is a story about second chances, and of hope. Seldom have we come across murder mysteries that are less about the murder and more about the life of the ones who are embroiled in it. TSITE is that one rare film that not just takes us into the lives and psyches and principles of those involved in it, but also, introduces us into the petty politics and class system that make the deliverance of justice that harder in their society. 

The actors are solid and make you relate to their plight, and the chemistry between Esposito and Hastings while strong and could be felt in the air, never gets the best of the two by going predictably overboard. Campanella’s pacing never makes you feel that there are any dull moments in this thriller, no words are wasted, no scene seems overdone. And the big reveal that unravels slowly and delicately like a Christmas present, is that final punch to the guts that would knock you out of your senses and leave you breathless. The Secret In Their Eyes has in its title a sense of foreboding, and much like its haunting name, the movie will stay long with you once you are done with it.

The Wolf of Wall Street - Marty's Still Got It!

 

"My name is Jordan Belfort. The year I turned 26, I made 49 million dollars, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week."

How is Martin Scorsese able to direct one brilliant movie after another even when he’s at the end of his career? This was the question that was plaguing my mind as I walked out of the theater. His energy is awe inspiring, and yet at the same time insane. You could feel the zest for film making, the itch to tell a story, the childlike enthusiasm that is present till date in Marty’s eyes sprinkled all over the screen. To make a movie out of a character who had embezzled ordinary people out of millions in stocks and shares—financial terms that may go way over the head of the average moviegoer, like yours truly—and to keep the audience involved at the same time is no mean achievement. But in Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese does that, and how!

Scorsese portrays the lead character, Jordan Belfort, as no less than a rock god. The man is a modern day snake-oil salesman, he makes a living by cheating honest and hardworking people, he is a drug addict, a wife abuser, a womanizer, and egotistical, yet, Scorsese and a brilliant Leonardo Dicaprio make us root for the bad guy. We cheer for Jordan where he dupes an unassuming, gullible, customer into buying the shares of an obscure company over a cold call, a victory that he celebrates by miming a vulgar sexual act on the other end of the line, we are left wide eyed out of amazement, and at times even in splits when he berates an honest FBI agent by rebuking his normal life as he asks him to go back to his “ugly wife”, while he shows off his ill-gotten wealth. Jordan Belfort is a man full of himself, a man intoxicated on his own success, and we are captivated by his life hook, line and sinker. 

What does that say about us as an audience? That we’d root for the bad guy as long as they are flamboyant, good-looking, incessantly cussing and bedding a bevy of beauties, because we are just the average person who could never get to live the large life of those men we see on screen?

Scorsese sells us the image of a man who has it all, a yacht, a fast car, hookers, a bungalow, all of it gotten by money fraud. He may seem like a man who would end up being a victim of his own hubris, but eventually only gets off easy. Scorsese may seem like he’s playing the devil’s advocate by glorifying the criminal exploits of Belfort, and he has been slammed by some critics for this, but this is how Belfort’s story could be told. And it is told effectively, it keeps you engrossed, it keeps you wanting for more, and not for a second does the three-hour runtime seem overbearing.

Much praise should be handed over to Terence Winter whose screenplay has the raw power and the intensity to keep you absorbed for three-hours. The movie is bereft of gun fights, and violence, but, what it does possess in large doses is the outrageous sex scenes (despite the cuts), the profane language (censoring which would only end up making the movie a silent film), and a lot of humor. Scorsese has assembled an ensemble cast where every actor is seen having a time of their lives, be it Matthew McConaughey in a cameo as the eccentric Mark Hanna who guides a greenhorn Jordan Belfort into the world of stock markets, or Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff , the drug-crazy, pill-popping right-hand man of Jordan Belfort who is border-line insane. The star of the show, however, without a doubt is Leonardo Dicaprio who throws in a career best performance as Jordan Belfort, if you were blown away by his negative role as Calvin Candie in Django, you better fasten your seatbelts in the Wolf of Wall Street, because Leo’s fantastic (which is quite an understatement) performance would make it tough for you to not jump out of your seats and hoot for him.

Oversexed, power hungry, abrasive, arrogant, misogynistic, the real Jordan Belfort may have many more detestable qualities that would not have garnered him much fans. Yet, Dicaprio lets loose the crazy hidden inside of him, we can see him enjoying the character, be it while dishing it out to people who are lesser than him in all his arrogance, or while trying to win over the affections of his wife with his boyish charm, Dicaprio is not acting like Jordan Belfort, he is Jordan Belfort.

You could draw many a parallels between The Wolf of Wall Street and Scorsese’s own gangster classic Goodfellas, the in-your-face narrative style that breaks the fourth wall which gets you sucked into the world of the protagonist from the get-go, the characters of Henry Hill and Jordan Belfort—confident, ambitious and fueled by greed—they are men who tend to reach for more than they could grasp, the usage of music in the scenes that only gets you involved even more, and the camaraderie between the protagonist and his band of merry men. The Wolf of Wall Street is the Goodfellas for this generation, you cannot have enough of it with just a one-time watch, you will watch it time and time again, you will recommend it to your friends, you will watch it with them just to see them have a great time, and you will talk about the movie till the cows come home.

After his recent movies over the years, I had assumed that Scorsese had run out of steam to make a classic like Goodfellas again, how wrong was I! The old devil still has it in him. In his latest outing the great man has collaborated with a legendary actor-in-the-making who doesn’t howl like a wolf, but roars like a lion!

Captain Phillips - A Master and a Commander

Captain Richard Phillips: You said you were a business man! Is this how you do business?

There are some movies that translate real life incidents onto the celluloid in an attempt to rake in the moolah, they “Hollywoodize” the original story by adding a lot of drama and over the top action sequences in order to connect with the audience with the premise remaining the same: ordinary men under extraordinary circumstances who come up trumps when faced with adversity. Eventually the final product ends up looking cheesy. Paul Greengrass’ latest offering Captain Phillips is a story of courage and determination where the titular character played by the ever-so-brilliant Tom Hanks is faced against Somali pirates. While there have been other action films inspired by real life that have fallen flat in keeping the audience engaged while playing to the galleries, Captain Phillips keeps the viewers emotionally involved because it brings two different worlds together in the form of their lead characters, Richard Phillips an Everyman with wife and kids from the global superpower America, and the ruthless pirate Muse from Somalia, a country torn by strife. Two men with vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds, but with one common objective : Survival.

Adapted from the book "A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea" written by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty, the film is inspired by the real life hostage situation of the Maersk Alabama hijacking. Like any other Paul Greengrass film, the movie is filmed in the trademark shaky camera that throws the viewers right into the action. Paul Greengrass has always been known to direct edge-of-the seat action sequences, The Bourne series is a testament to that, the action scenes in Captain Phillips are no less thrilling than his other films, at times they are even better. Captain Phillips isn’t just an action movie shot like a docudrama, what it also strives to be is a social commentary on the two lead characters who are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, there are bad guys doing bad things, but what Greengrass also shows us is why they  are forced to do it.

Tom Hanks is aptly cast as Richard Phillips, a bespectacled Joe Schmo who is the captain of a cargo ship cruising through calm seas one moment and ends up facing the working end of a gun in the next, Hanks’ likeability is what makes us root for him to stay alive, and as usual he plays the role of a hapless hostage with much conviction. While it is no easy task to outdo a two-time Academy Award winner like Hanks, Barkhad Abdi as the pirate leader Muse does it with menacing ease, Muse is a rebel with a cause, he is forced to wield a gun because circumstances make him do it.

While there have been other big budget movies that have come and gone this year lacking in some way or the other, Captain Phillips is a smartly made thriller which is the complete package of action and drama that will keep you engrossed.