Nightcrawler
Director: Dan Gilroy Year: 2014 Nightcrawler is a dark, society-charging, character-driven film that will land Jake Gyllenhaal a well-deserved Oscar nomination. With shades of Robert DeNiro’s Rupert Pupkin in “The King of Comedy”, Gyllenhaal’s performance is a chilling reflection of the opportunist in our information-starved society, rolling business platitudes and half-baked ideas off his tongue that allow him to rationalize his sordid behavior to himself and, shockingly, others with varying degrees of success. Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a common thief in search of a job, a life an identity he can latch on to. His leach-like desire is palpable from the first moment we see him. He is calm, too calm, for what he’s doing and the authority he’s facing. His coolness continues to give him what some might write off as beginner’s luck. But there’s more than that at play with him – he’s fearless. He has nothing to lose and a handful of self-taught, internet-based knowledge that giv...