Nightcrawler

Extraordinary X-Men #1 will probably be seen as energetically drawn and colored sacrilege by both long time X-Men fans and ones, who jumped on with Bendis’ work. And for new fans, it’s darkness for darkness’ sake as the X-Men’s outsider metaphor is drowned out by the Inhumans and turned into yet another post-apocalyptic story. Lemire also makes a few stumbles in his plotting, like having characters tell about an upcoming mystery involving Cyclops and a cure for mutant disease instead of seeding compelling visual clues or starting to build arcs for characters. And his final page cliffhanger, which was probably meant to be the triumphant return of a “dead” X-Men, falls flat because it already happened in a Secret Wars tie-in. This is one is probably on editorial though. Even though Humberto Ramos’ manga influenced, yet wide-screen art adds some pep to the X-Men’s powers and fight scenes to go along with Edgar Delgado’s bold color palette, Extraordinary X-Men #1 is a misstep for the franchise in plotting, themes, and characterization.

Ultimate X-Men #7-9 goes for a more political look at the well-worn “mutant as a metaphor for oppressed minorities” story by making the formerly shady Weapon X folks completely aligned with the US government even if members of the government and military want to shut them down.

It’s impressive enough that most actors can go from role to role in quick succession. But the world likes to freak out when that transition is visible. With the release of the new boxing film Southpaw last weekend, the internet has been filled with videos and gifs of Jake Gyllenhaal’s transformation into a boxer. It took …

2015 is finally here and so are the Oscars and actual Awards Season. No more of this speculation and hype machine stuff around movies that haven’t come out yet or guilds that haven’t had their say. Oscar voting ends today, January 8, and nominations are revealed bright and early on January 15, one week from …

15. The Immigrant  – If one were to rank the films of 2014 based solely on innovation, The Immigrant would probably end up near the bottom. Writer-director James Gray’s languid melodrama tells the tumultuous story of a resilient Polish woman looking to find a slice of the American Dream, without much in the way of …

40. Night Moves Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved …

On the face of it, 2014 has been a rather strange year for film, a step down from an annum of classics and simultaneously a slalom dodge into the realms of adventure and discord. Here I take a look at five movies and the four lessons they taught us in 2014, for better or for worse.

The 2015 Film Independent Spirit Award nominations came out this morning and unsurprisingly there are a lot of names here that won’t be on an Oscar handicappers list. Birdman is arguably the biggest film on this list – and it leads the field with nominations for Best Feature, Best Director, Best Male, Best Supporting Male and …

One of the most self-defining and effective shots in Nightcrawler is also one of its most simply constructed. The camera is beneath the front window of a car, but the position isn’t revealed until the next shot when it cuts away to a wider revealing angle. Lou Bloom’s mug is in center frame, and there …

Dan Gilroy’s latest, Nightcrawler, has a lot on its troubled mind. It intertwines our national obsessions with voyeurism and stardom into a sociopathic nightmare from which you can’t awaken. At its churning center is the mesmerizing performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, who charms you with his infectious intensity, even as he ruthlessly manipulates everyone and everything around him. As the blood flows and the crimes accumulate, Gilroy traps us behind the camera as his passive accomplices. Welcome to the world of the Nightcrawler. Showering after you leave is highly recommended.

The movie journalist is always caught up in scandal, gossip and invasions of privacy. Though plenty of movies have been made about authors, poets, and other writers, the physical act of writing and editing rarely makes it into Hollywood journalism. Thankfully, the more sensational aspects of media have made for scathing satire and commentary, loathsome …

Nightcrawler, the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy, has a strong kinship with Sidney Lumet’s Network. Both take a satirical view of broadcast journalism, portraying the profession as a cold-blooded environment where sensationalism takes center stage. If there is one difference that separates the newer film from its 1976 predecessor, though, it is that the former possesses none of the latter’s biting wit. Nightcrawler is incredibly heavy-handed with its message, and the satirical dialogue is far from profound.

The Hype Cycle is News Editor Brian Welk’s roundup of industry news, reviews and predictions of everything Oscar, boiled down into weekly power rankings of the buzziest and most likely contenders in this year’s awards season. This article is Part 2 of this week’s Hype Cycle column. Read Part 1 from yesterday.  7. Foxcatcher and …

The lineup for the second wave of films at 2014’s 10th Annual Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas has arrived, and with it a potential Oscar contender, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. The film, a pulpy crime film about an embedded journalist (Jake Gyllenhaal), will make its U.S. premiere at the festival with Director and Writer Gilroy in …

Monsters are a symbol of man’s fears, used by story tellers all over the world and in every medium. Monsters represent the dangers we face as a species both real (predators and nature) and speculative ( the supernatural). We have a biological imperative, a survival instinct to fear that which is inhuman. The most frequent …

Writer: Chris Claremont Artist: Todd Nauck Colorist: Rachelle Rosenberg Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit Standard Cover by Chris Samnee with Matthew Wilson Published by Marvel Comics Nightcrawler #1 sees the return to the X-Men Universe of both Nightcrawler, the teleporting fuzzy elf who first debuted in Giant Size X-Men #1 back in 1975, and Chris Claremont, …