Nightcrawler review

Blinding neon light and thick smog choke Los Angeles. People drive along the endless labyrinth of roads and interstates to get where they are going. The destination is not important. Not now. They are oblivious to the fate that has already befell them. A bump in the road, an extra drink at dinner, a reckless teenager coming home from a house party. The sparks are visible, the screaming cuts through the thick night air, the steel on the iron horse grows hot. The car flips. All they see is red covering asphalt. How did this happen? A light shines from somewhere above, they look up. Am I dying? A face. Gaunt, focused, horrifying. Whatever it is it cannot be human. It's red eyes glare down at them like two coins made of molten lead. It is the face of the devil, and it is the hour of judgement. "If you're seeing me, you're having the worst day of your life." This devil is Louis  Bloom, the main character of Dan Gilroy's debut film, Nightcrawler. A type of  cameraman who films disasters as they happen and sells the footage to television stations. He is determined and fierce. Focus like a laser beam. Bloom has the feral look and inherent loneliness of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, but he has the sickening drive and sociopathic tendencies of Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Bloom is a hard working maniac fueled by some severely perverted ideas and a need to annihilate the competition. He's Michael Corleone with a camcorder. A malicious grim reaper stalking the streets of LA. Where there is trouble, Lou Bloom is there. With Nightcrawler, Dan Gilroy has crafted a slick, cynical, and over-the-top satire that parallels films like Network. It is massively entertaining, emanating a kinetic energy that keeps a viewer totally sucked in. It's frightening and powerful. Most of the film's muscle comes from Jake Gyllenhaal's performance as the crazed protagonist. Gyllenhaal has been steadily rising as an actor in recent years, being the standout in films like End of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy, and many others. Nightcrawler may be his best yet. Hell, I would even go as far as to say he gives the very best performance of the year. Bug eyed, emaciated, and greasy, Gyllenhaal creates a palpable persona totally his own. He owns the movie like no other actor could. Nightcrawler is a very good movie in many ways, but Gyllenhaal looms over everything like some kind of freakish God, truly inhabiting the role. He is so transcendent here, it's much easier to forgot the movies flaws, which it has a few of. This is Gilroy's first movie, and you can see him occasionally struggling. As I mentioned above, Nightcrawler is a film of many influences. At times, you can see Gilroy leaning too much on them for support. There were a few scenes that seemed directly taken out of Taxi Driver and There Will Be Blood. It's hard to ignore, and does hinder the film at times. Gilroy is working with a few themes here. Media and how we as a society treat it, the bastardization of the American Dream, and greed. He does struggle to really go in depth with some of them, and the movie definitely could have benefited from some more fleshing out. Yet, I still cannot deny how crazy, entertaining, and energetic the film is. Robert Elswit does a fantastic job with the cinematography here. The movie looks great, and there are some landscape shots of LA that are downright haunting. Oscar worthy stuff. It's a wonderfully creepy tapestry of neo-noir and character study. Gilroy has made a good film here. Gyllenhaal has made a great one. Nightcrawler portrays a dark, morally ambiguous, pre-apocalyptic world of greed and evil. It is a fear-inducing world much too close to our own. And one I wouldn't mind visiting again. 

There Will Be Blood

Towards the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film, There Will Be Blood, there is a shot that descends from the bright sun-washed Californian desert into a dark long hole filled with oil. Below, is Daniel Plainview. This is where the movie begins, in Plainview's "heart of darkness." Daniel Plainview is not a man, not in the traditional sense at least. He is a demon, a devil, a fiery being whose origins unknown. It is not wholly unbelievable that he was simply begat by the bowels of the Earth, thrown forth in some vicious gushing of oil. Daniel Plainview cannot be a man, for he is far too ruthless to be anything other than supernatural. A god made of anger, gristle, fury, and determination. He is the ultimate personification of all of the greed and evil in America, a build up of pure corruption. Yet, one cannot help but feel a sense of respect for the character of Plainview. He is a "bad person", yes. But, he got to where he is all on his own. All of the oil wells and land and money he has procured, he has procured himself. One looks at him with the same fearful admiration they would of Adolf Hitler. A man of unconscionable evil, but he's worked hard to get all that evil. One of the greatest actors of our time, Daniel Day-Lewis, portrays the character of Plainview. With a role like this, many other actors would make the character campy. Day-Lewis makes it one of the most intense and horrifying performances I have ever seen. It is a fact that he is great here, an indisputable one at that. It is a performance so good, people often overlook the other fantastic elements of the movie. There Will Be Blood, after all, is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. A filmmaker who I firmly believe is one of the best, if not THE best, person working in the movies today. There Will Be Blood is his masterpiece. A masterpiece, coming from a man who has made such films as Magnolia, Boogie Nights, and The Master is an extraordinary feat. The filmmaking on display in Blood is comparable to the best work of Stanley Kubrick. I do not make these claims lightly. Anderson began his career making brilliant character ensemble pieces. He frequently referenced his directing heroes, people like Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme. With Blood, he proves that he can make a film so purely his own. He also proved he is a true genius with filmmaking. I struggle to think of any other filmmaker who not only fully understands the human condition and how to write it but also how to film it. With There Will Be Blood, Anderson has cemented his name in the history books. At its very core, the film is about good versus evil. The pious preacher Eli Sunday (played by Paul Dano) up against the violent oil man, Daniel Plainview. In any other movie, good would prevail because goodness always rises above the evil. Yet, in real life that is not always the case. Eli Sunday may be a man of god, but his hands are far from clean. In the end, the most godly man does not win out, but the man who is most equipped. In some sense, There Will Be Blood is a perfect argument for Darwin's "survival of the fittest theory". The film takes place in between the years 1898 and 1927. An epic expanse of time that ends right at the edge of national disaster. The Great Depression. The events take place on the brink of a collapse. An apocalypse. At the end of the movie, Plainview (who at this point is near insanity) begins to scream "I am the Third Revelation! I am who the lord has chosen!" This line might be more than just ramblings of a man gone mad. Plainview is the harbinger of  the end. A horseman riding a steed made of oil, evil, and greed. He is the lord of his wide desert expanse. The very end of the film is the ultimate summation of Plainview's insane determination. It is the American Dream, like it or not. It does not come with a majestic waving of the flag over a bright blue sky, but with a bowling pin smashing down on a man's head. This is America. This is Daniel Plainview's America. Anderson does not point his finger at capitalism or at corruption in this country, he simply shows us it and laughs. With There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson has more or less crafted a perfect film. I have seen the movie three times now and I can say that with the utmost confidence. It is a cinematic landmark that will be remembered for a long time.

The Master or The Young Man and the Sea: A Deconstruction of Paul Thomas Anderson's Exquisite Masterwork

Freddie Quell is a bird of the vast, grey, and infinite sky. He drifts through life like dust motes in a shaft of afternoon light. Women, jobs, alcohol, and people in general try to pin him down. To label him, diagnose him, explain him. Put him in the cold dank prison cell we all call a purpose. Many think they have the answers to Freddie, they know what's wrong with him. Whether it be doctors, therapists, or Philip Seymour Hoffman's charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Many try, but they all fail. Quell is a character like that of some elusive and far away indecipherable message. One can try and understand him, to grasp him and fit him into a peg in society, but they will fail. When Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was released in 2012, a common criticism was that Joaquin Phoenix's character Freddie Quell did not change, evolve, or develop. He started out a confused and mumbling drunk and then stayed that way throughout the entire movie. What critics failed to realize was that Quell wasn't supposed to change. To have him develop would be completely disregarding everything the film has worked to establish. In fact, in launching this very complaint at the movie critics themselves are falling prey to the exact mistake almost every character in the film made: they tried to put Freddie under an umbrella. This is an impossible feat. He is a man so broken by the war, by life. Left with nothing to do but float drunkenly through the bottomless abyss of this here world we are all prisoner to. Freddie is the unchanging sea. Try as we might, we simply cannot chart his waters. No Captain Cook could ever penetrate through the exterior of him. Philip Seymour Hoffman's last monologue sums it all up perfectly: "Free winds and no tyranny for you, Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay no rent, free to go where you please. Then go, go to that landless latitude and good luck. If you figure a way to live without serving a master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the first in the history of the world." Freddie is a seaman, a directionless drifter who is bound by no chains, subjugated by no master. The film opens with a beautiful shot that repeats throughout the film. The flowing vibrant blue ocean. It is breathtaking simple. It is Freddie Quell himself. At another point in the beginning of the movie, Freddie lies down next to a woman he has crafted out of sand on the beach. In what I believe is the very last shot of the film, he once again lies down next to this mysterious sand mistress in an almost identical shot. He has not changed. Held down by no bride, he chooses to lie with the alluring beauty of the sea. I've often hear people complain about this movie in that it is too confusing and has little to say. Hogwash, says I. Anderson awes us and entrances us with his visuals and complex story about cults and religion. Yet, at heart The Master is truly about one man and his quest for ultimate freedom. A man so detached and broken off from the regularity of society he can only drift among the eternal waves of the Pacific. The film takes a look at the effects of war on a single man, but doesn't do it in the same formulaic way we have all seen before.  In many ways, Freddie's inherent wanderlust has made him a better person than most of the characters in the film. He, at least, is outright with his flaws of drunkenness and laziness. He does not hide behind any veneer, nor does he make himself slave to his intricacies and downsides. Everyone else in the film chains themselves to their persona's and auras of perfection they think they have. Amy Adams character looks down on Freddie as a boozer and possible criminal, but is too cold and uppity to see her own problems. Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is so trapped in his hubris and power trip he simple cannot realize that he shouldn't try to change Freddie, but that it's really himself that needs changing. The Master in this film is not Dodd, but Quell. A man who in having no master, has become the master himself. Master of living life the way he sees fit. Like an eagle flapping its wings, Freddie glides along the winds of pure freedom and easy living. He is a man out of place in time, for there is no real time for Freddie. He lives outside the boundaries of linear time. His time is an ocean, and he is commander of the ship sailing on its waves. The Master is a beautiful, somewhat misunderstood, masterpiece from the Kubrick of today. An austere and wondrous tone poem that looks at humanity for what we are. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I believe F.Scott Fitzgerald unintentionally sums up the film best.