Dan Gilroy
Occupation
Filmmaker
Kong: Skull Island Review
Excellent
After the success of 2014's Godzilla reboot, the Warner Bros monsters get their own franchise, continuing with this King Kong prequel. It's a ripping adventure, cleverly directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer) to resemble a snarky Apocalypse Now remake with added gigantic beasts. And the eclectic cast makes sure that there's plenty of comedy, villainy and heroics to draw the audience in.
It's 1973, and Bill (John Goodman) is taking a pair of scientists (Corey Hawkins and Jing Tian) to an uncharted island to verify reports of prehistoric creatures before the Russians can get there first. En route, they stop in Vietnam to collect a mercenary adventurer (Tom Hiddleston), a photojournalist (Brie Larson) and a helicopter squadron led by Packard (Samuel L. Jackson). But their noisy arrival on the island enrages towering monkey Kong (mo-capped by Terry Notary and Toby Kebbell, who also plays a member of the team). With their choppers grounded, the main job now is to get out of here alive. And after discovering a castaway WWII pilot (John C. Reilly), they learn that Kong is actually protecting the world from far scarier monsters.
The story is told with a blast of dry humour, weaving in lots of sharp banter along with a collection of iconic 70s rock anthems. This gung-ho approach makes the movie energetically good fun, obscuring the fact that it's not particularly deep or meaningful. There are big themes gurgling away under the surface (such as the way blind militaristic action unearths dangers far worse than the perceived enemy), but these things remain subliminal, only barely visible amid the fast-paced action and big effects mayhem. That it all leads to some heavily animated monster-vs-monster destruction is hardly surprising. But when a movie is this light on its feet and so cheerfully frenetic, the audience is really only interested in hanging on for the ride.
Continue reading: Kong: Skull Island Review
Nightcrawler - Featurette
Jake Gyllenhaal discusses the great lengths he went through to prepare for his role in the film 'Nightcrawler'. In the movie, Gyllenhaal portrays an insomniac new reporter, who creeps around recording crimes and the aftermaths thereof, selling the footage to local news networks for a living. The actor discusses how different the character was from anything he had ever done before, as well as revealing how he spent two months losing weight and staying up at night and sleeping during the day. In this featurette, actress Rene Russo and 'Four Lions' star Riz Ahmed discuss how much they admire Gyllenhaal for, not just his performance, but the lengths he went through to achieve said performance.
Continue: Nightcrawler - Featurette
Nightcrawler Offers A New Antihero In Jake Gyllenhaal's Eerily Stunning Performance
By Rich Cline in Movies / TV / Theatre on 31 October 2014
Jake Gyllenhaal has impressed with his role as Lou Bloom in 'Nightcrawler'.
Critics are comparing Jake Gyllenhaal to Robert De Niro for his committed performance in the creep-out thriller 'Nightcrawler'. This isn't just because he lost 30 pounds to play the part, or that he injured his hand by spontaneously punching a mirror on set. It's because his character is such a sympathetic monster.
Lou Bloom is an ambitious guy who is willing to do far more than it takes to be successful at something, anything. 'It was a challenge on the page', Jake Gyllenhaal says. 'It is a brilliant screenplay, but how do I bring this to life? Lou is not just a three-dimensional character. He's a six-dimensional character! He's so well-prepared, he's like the Bobby Fischer of manipulators.'
Continue reading: Nightcrawler Offers A New Antihero In Jake Gyllenhaal's Eerily Stunning Performance
Nightcrawler Review
By Rich Cline
Excellent
A gently comical undertone makes this thriller even creepier than expected, bolstered by sharp writing and directing from Dan Giloy and an especially clever performance from Jake Gyllenhaal. Comparisons to Taxi Driver have been obvious, as the lead character is a potentially dangerous sociopath on a very personal quest. And the film also taps into the current zeitgeist: how the media panders to a public that increasingly screams for blood. It's a thoroughly unnerving film that often feels more like a very grim satire than a proper thriller.
Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a loner who is desperate to make his mark on the world. Searching for something to do, he stumbles across the people who prowl the city streets after dark in search of an event they can film and sell on to a TV news outlet. Learning from a veteran (Bill Paxton), Lou gets his own camera and a police scanner and starts chasing car crashes, house fires and violent crimes all over Los Angeles. And when he finds that TV news director Nina (Rene Russo) wants to buy his footage, he hires Rick (Riz Ahmed) as an assistant, getting even more aggressive about arriving on the scene before the competition. But Lou isn't willing to settle for that, and starts manipulating the news to get even better stories.
Where this goes from here is pretty unimaginable, as Lou reveals himself to be utterly unencumbered by any hint of a moral compass. Of course, this is a central theme of the movie, as it explores the way audiences clamour for more explosive footage, which pretty much eliminates any sense of human decency in the way events are covered. Gyllenhaal portrays Lou as gaunt and hungry, but with an eerie charm that lets him get away with each audacious manoeuvre. Watching him snap at anyone who crosses him is truly terrifying. Although the way he quietly manipulates situations is even scarier.
Continue reading: Nightcrawler Review
Jake Gyllenhaal Is Sad That He'll Never Get To Do Another 'Nightcrawler' Scene
By Holly Williams in Movies / TV / Theatre on 27 October 2014
Jake Gyllenhaal loved his character's dialogue more than anything else in the film.
With his new crime thriller 'Nightcrawler', Jake Gyllenhaal put a lot of himself into bringing a particularly unsettling character to life, namely by losing a lot of weight. But what was it about this movie that drew so much commitment from him?
Jake Gyllenhaal looking gaunt in 'Nightcrawler'
Dan Gilroy's directorial debut has seen a stream of positive reviews since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2014, and that's probably down to Jake Gyllenhaal's overwhelmingly unnerving interpretation of insistent and rather ghoulish crime journalist Louis Bloom. 'Lou is a creation of the American dream', Gyllenhaal explains. 'We're all told about this conventional idea of what success is and he'll do anything for it. Ultimately, it's someone like him who becomes one of the most successful entrepreneurs in America.'
Continue reading: Jake Gyllenhaal Is Sad That He'll Never Get To Do Another 'Nightcrawler' Scene
Jake Gyllenhaal Receives High Praise For 'Nightcrawler'
By Elinor Cosgrave in Movies / TV / Theatre on 07 September 2014
'Nightcrawler' premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday (6th September) and its star Jake Gyllenhaal has been praised by critics for his depiction of a desperate and immoral crime scene journalist.
Jake Gyllenhaal's performance in Nightcrawler has been highly praised by critics ahead of the film's US and UK release.
Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.
Read More: Author Claims To Be Son Of Zodiac Killer - Remember The Movie?
Continue reading: Jake Gyllenhaal Receives High Praise For 'Nightcrawler'
Nightcrawler Trailer
Lou Bloom is a hard-working budding journalist whose deep obsession with his career has rendered him more than a little unstable. He traverses the LA streets at night, keeping an eager eye out for the frequently occuring violent crimes that swamp the darkness, and finds himself first on the scene with his camera for a series of serious incidents. It soon becomes clear that the the bloodier the crime he stumbles upon, the higher his pay rate is when he sells those first shots for the news; but that kind of exposure begins to seriously damage his mental health and general sense of morality. He decides to go for a job as a television newscaster, feeling thoroughly confident of his hard work over the years, and stands to live by his rather unnerving motto: 'If you want to win the lottery, you have to make the money to buy the ticket.'
Continue: Nightcrawler Trailer
The Bourne Legacy Review
By Rich Cline
Good
Writer Gilroy adds directing to his Bourne chores, shifting the franchise into a cerebral thriller punctuated by plodding action sequences. It's watchable, but doesn't have enough sense of character or purpose to make us care about anything that happens.
Genetically altered government agent Aaron Cross (Renner) is part of Outcome, a parallel programme to Treadstone, which created Jason Bourne. Since Bourne's antics have lifted the lid on Treadstone, Outcome director Eric (Norton) decides to terminate his programme by brutally killing everyone involved. But Aaron slips through the net, as does geneticist Marta (Weisz), whom Aaron needs for the meds that keep him going. As Eric's team hunts them down, they head to Manila to find a solution.
Continue reading: The Bourne Legacy Review
The Fall Review
Very Good
The filmmaker Tarsem (he now drops his surname, Singh, for his filmmaking credits) was last seen cross-sectioning horses, hoisting a man up by gruesome back hooks, and wandering the landscapes of a serial killer's mind in 2000's The Cell, his feature debut. For his follow-up, he's ventured into territory with a similar tendency towards ickiness. The Fall tells a story within a story, one being interpreted by an innocent child, and Tarsem does all he can to give us an honest version of this process. Little Cantica Untaru plays the child, Alexandria, in the hospital with a broken arm, and apparently the actress is not fully aware of the filmmaking process, which explains the striking naturalism in her conversations with the paralyzed Roy (Lee Pace). This leaves us unsure of Untaru's acting ability, but blissfully so, compared to the unnerving technique detectable in someone as young as Dakota Fanning.
Continue reading: The Fall Review