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. 

Edge of Tomorrow review

Tom Cruise is awesome. Stop trying to deny it.
When Edge of Tomorrow started its marketing campaign it very much came across as a run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick that was probably going to be very mediocre. The only reason I was interested in it was because of the cast and the director. Doug Liman, though he's had a few shaky movies since, is the director of the excellent first Jason Bourne film. Emily Blunt was terrific in Looper, and I was looking forward to seeing her do a science fiction flick again. Tom Cruise, despite all the hate he gets, is one of my favorite actors and I'll watch him in practically anything. Plus, Tomorrow is written by The Usual Suspects scribe Christopher McQuarrie. Sure, the trailers looked very bleak and stale. But with the people involved, how could it go wrong? The answer is, it couldn't. Edge of Tomorrow is a fun, exciting, and just really awesome movie. It's the kind of summer blockbuster fare we should be seeing in the movie theaters. It's about William Cage (Tom Cruise) for the army. Aliens have invaded Earth and he's trying to sell the war to the public. A series of events lands him unprepared in the thick of battle. Soon, he dies. But reaction with alien blood makes him relive the same day over and over when he dies. What follows is one of the best action movies of the year. Although Tom Cruise has made some impressive dramatic turns in films like Magnolia and Born on the Fourth of July, recently he's been mainly an action star. Cruise is always able to bring an air of suave badassery to his action pictures. Here, he not only carries that action star persona, but exercises his serious dramatic acting chops as well. The guy is extremely capable of carrying a movie and he shows that here. Yet, he doesn't need to carry the film on his shoulders. Emily Blunt is excellent here. She plays this sort of Joan of Arc type solider who helps Cruise's character defeat the alien onslaught. She's funny, cool, and perfectly delivers some of the films best dialogue. Of course, these great performances wouldn't be much without a script. I can enjoy a decent action flick regardless of a great script. But that doesn't mean the movie will be very good. A film with solid and believable characters and good dialogue can only be good. Edge of Tomorrow is filled with great set pieces and edge-of-your-seat action, but it has a damn good script also. Christopher McQuarrie is a more than capable screenwriter. He's done some great stuff, but he's also done some not so great stuff. This movie is him at his peak. Everything just clicks. The premise may seem a little familiar, and it is. Movies like Groundhog Day have dealt with the living the same day over and over again plot before. And the whole alien thing is nothing new. It's the way McQuarrie crafts his story and his characters that make this film seem fresh. Not only is the film tense and awesome, it's actually very funny. I found myself laughing out loud at some scenes. Weirdly enough, the comedy doesn't feel out of place at all. The terrific cast certainly helps with that also. Doug Liman hasn't really made a great movie in a number of years. Luckily, this is his comeback film. Liman seamlessly directs the action sequences. A movie like this could fall into a jumbled incoherent mess under a different director (think McG with Terminator Salvation). Liman makes it work really, really well. Edge of Tomorrow may seem like just a summer blockbuster, and that is what it is. But it's more than that. It's a good summer blockbuster. Really good. Most big movies seem like they put in human characters and emotion just because they have to. This movie seems like the characters and emotion are in there because the makers of the movie actually want them in there. It's fun and all, but it's also a solid movie on its own. I give Edge of Tomorrow 4.3 out of 5 stars. Remember, to keep up with my reviews and movie stuff in general you can follow me on Twitter @WhitsMovies and like me on Facebook at Facebook.com/WhitsMovies.