Podcast: Birdman, Pride and Nightcrawler

In this episode of the podcast, Nathaniel, Nick, Joe and Katey are charmed by Pride's ensemble balancing act and political smarts. Then we're adamantly split on the merits of Birdman and but (mostly) thrilled by its craft wizardry. The acting also impresses with special attention paid to Michael Keaton's closeups, Andrea Riseborough's surprise facility with "fun" and Nick's Edward Norton problem. We wrap up with Nightcrawler's duet between eye-popping Jake Gyllenhaal (who splits opinion) and Rene Russo who deserves more good roles immediately. "Get it bitch!"

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download on iTunes tomorrow (it generally takes 24 hours to show up there). Continue the conversation in the comments! 

Birdman & Nightcrawler

Box Office Dies. Nightcrawler Shoots It.

Amir here, reporting to box office duty. It was a dead weekend at the multiplex, deader than the dead in Ouija, deader than zombies. Though it was not, strictly speaking, the worst weekend of the year – that honor belongs to the weekend of September 5th, when Guardians of the Galaxy, in its sixth week, topped the chart and the biggest new release was The Identical, a musical with Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd!!! – it was still a terrible weekend.

 

TOP DOZEN
01 NIGHTCRAWLER $10.9 NEW
02 OUIJA $10.9 (cum. $34.9)  
03 FURY $9.1 (cum. $60.4) Michael's Review
04 GONE GIRL $8.8  (cum. $136.6)  Jason's Review
05 THE BOOK OF LIFE $8.3 (cum. $40.5) Interview
06 JOHN WICK $8 (cum. $27.5) Michael's Review
07 ST. VINCENT $7.7 (cum. $19.5) Michael's Review
08 ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE... $6.4 (cum. $53.6)
09 THE JUDGE $3.4 (cum. $39.5) 
10 DRACULA UNTOLD $2.9 (cum. $52.8)
11 THE BEST OF ME $2.7 (cum. $21.9) 
12 BIRDMAN $2.5 (cum. $5) Nathaniel's Review

Nightcrawler, the critically acclaimed crime film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, opened at the top spot, but at the estimated $10.9m, it’s the lowest grossing new release to top its weekend in this entire decade so far. By all accounts, the film deserves a bigger audience, but the number isn’t exactly a surprise because a) Halloween weekend is never a great time for non-horror films and b) Gyllenhaal hasn’t really opened a film big on his own. The other new wide release Before I Go To Sleep with Nicole Kidman finished outside the top ten with 2 million. Birdman, still platforming at 231 screens now but almost cracking the top ten, maintained the best screen average for the third weekend in a row. It will surpass Iñarittu's own Biutiful and Amores Perros in total sales sometime today. 

UP NEXT: November will bring us some of the year’s biggest box office hopefuls. Here are each week’s major openings for the remainder of the month: Interstaller and Big Hero 6 (7) ; Dumb and Dumber To (14);  Hunger Games: Mockingjay (21) a sure bet to take Guardians of the Galaxy’s #1 of year throne; Penguins of Madagascar and Horrible Bosses 2 (26) -- oh, c’mon you know you’re waiting for this one! More exciting times are ahead.

What did you watch this weekend?

Meet the Contenders: Rene Russo "Nightcrawler"

Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, NIGHTCRAWLER, which is a perfectly dark treat for a Halloween opening.

Rene Russo as Nina Romina in Nightcrawler

Best Supporting Actress

Born: Rene Marie Russo was born February 17, 1954 in Burbank, California

The Role: Screenwriter Dan Gilroy (2006's The Fall, The Bourne Legacy) makes his directorial debut with Nightcrawler (which he wrote as well). The film stars a gaunt, crazy-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal (a Best Actor Contender) as Lou Bloom, an unemployed but determined man in Los Angeles that stumbles upon a career as a news journalist. He video records car crashes, home invasions, and bloody crimes, selling the footage to the local news station. Russo stars as a veteran television producer, in charge of the "vampire" shift of the lowest rated station in town. She encourages Bloom's budding career, forming a twisted relationship with him to gain viewers.

The film is also a family affair for Russo who is married to Gilroy (he also wrote two of Russo's previous films 1992's Freejack and 2005's Two for the Money) and her brother-in-law, Oscar nominated writer/director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton, Duplicity), is a producer on the film.

Click to read more ...

'Nightcrawler' and L.A. in the Digital Age

Glenn here to offer a rebuttal to my own work.

When I reviewed David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars at the New York Film Festival, I was highly critical of the film’s look. It’s the ugliest film of 2014 so far and will likely remain a recurring staple of my anti-digital rants for some time to come. Fair is fair, however, and lest I get the reputation of somebody who is strictly against digital, I wanted to sing the praises of Robert Elswit’s work on Nightcrawler. Neither a horror film as befitting its Halloween release date, nor a superhero film like many people have thought due to its title. Yet, in spite it this, the film works as both an unsettling work of urban and moral decay and a portrait of a man who, in his own eyes, is a bit of a hero.

Nightcrawler is a film that has a visual point of view, finding interesting compositions to tell a story that in the grand scheme of things is fairly conventional in its narrative beats and structure. It takes the familiar image of Los Angeles and twists it into a city where at night it becomes a muddy-skied haze. This is a film that is both gorgeous to look at and repugnant to the eye at the same time. The Los Angeles of Nightcrawler seethes and creeps and Elswit’s camera shows just what can be achieved with the medium.

Directed by Dan Gilroy - not to be confused with brothers Tony Gilroy (the film's producer and director of Michael Clayton) or John Gilroy (the editor) - it's certainly very much inspired by the form-pushing work of Dion Beebe (Team Film Experience’s Top Ten Greatest Working Cinematographers) and Paul Cameron on Michael Mann’s Collateral. I don't consider this much of an issue given that film had perhaps my favourite cinematography of the '00s, and what’s the point of groundbreaking work in the industry if it can’t be adapted and played with by future filmmakers? In a way it's the same as how another Jake Gyllenhaal film, End of Watch, appropriated the look made famous by found footage horror and supplanted it onto the streets of gangland L.A.

Despite what some people may think, I am very much capable of falling head over heels for digital camerawork. I just appreciate it when filmmakers do something with the format that you otherwise can’t with film. What’s the point of the conversion if not to do something unique that sets it apart? I have no doubt celluloid would have worked amazingly for Gilroy's film, and in fact he did film the daytime sequences on 35mm highlighting how different the two mediums can be. I enjoyed watching that disparity taken advantage of, an aesthetic choice that entirely works for Nightcrawler as it captures Gyllenhaal’s sunken face as he films the aftermath of the city’s violence, pawning his footage to bottom-of-the-barrel TV networks. Leaving my screening and I couldn’t help but think of what Maps to the Stars could’ve been if they’d had anything close to resembling Nightcrawler’s keen sense of craft. That the film is partially about the alarming ease that we can capture the world within which we exist, it makes it incredibly relevant piece of work, too.

Gotham Nominees: Boyhood vs. Birdman vs. Budapest

The Gotham Awards juried nominations have recently surplanted the ancient NBR as the first real awards nomination/wins of the film year. That it happens in October is more than a little crazy, but what'cha gonna do? The New York centric film prizes, think of it as the Spirit Awards's East Coast Cousin albeit with far fewer prizes will be held on December 1st. Since they only have six categories and four separate juries (composed of critics and programmers), multiple nods aren't as easy to come by as they are at other shows but a handful of films managed it: Boyhood, Birdman, Dear White People, Nightcrawler, and Under the Skin.

BEST FEATURE 

• BIRDMAN
• BOYHOOD
• GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
• LOVE IS STRANGE
• UNDER THE SKIN

Very happy to see the intensely moving Love is Strange, in constant danger of being undervalued, show up. Especially since it didn't show up anywhere else. 199 films were eligible for these honors.

BEST ACTRESS (they don't have lead or supporting designations)

Big year for GUGU with Belle as breakthrough and a nom for Beyond the Lights

• PATRICIA ARQUETTE, Boyhood
• SCARLETT JOHANSSON, Under the Skin
• GUGU MBATHA-RAW, Beyond the Lights
• JULIANNE MOORE, Still Alice
• MIA WASIKOWSKA, Tracks

Given that Still Alice is only getting a qualifying Oscar run and there's no proof that it will even play in NYC by the end of the year (LA is the only required theatrical run) I think it's weird to nominate Julianne Moore at the Gothams, however excellent she is in the picture. I wonder what criteria they use for eligibility?

BEST ACTOR (they don't have lead or supporting designations)

• BILL HADER, The Skeleton Twins
• ETHAN HAWKE, Boyhood
• OSCAR ISAAC, A Most Violent Year
• MICHAEL KEATON, Birdman
• MILES TELLER, Whiplash

Interesting to see Oscar Isaac show up but not Jessica Chastain when the same nominating committee chose for both categories. 

BREAKTHROUGH ACTOR OR ACTRESS

• RIZ AHMED, Nightcrawler
• MACON BLAIR, Blue Ruin
• ELLAR COLTRANE, Boyhood
• JOEY KING, Wish I Was Here
• JENNY SLATE, Obvious Child
• TESSA THOMPSON, Dear White People

Slightly odd choices by the breakthrough committee. I love Boyhood and Nightcrawler but it seems weird to single out Coltrane or Ahmed from either, not only because they aren't the MVPs but because their performances just aren't at the same accomplished level as their co-stars. 

BREAKTHROUGH DIRECTOR

• ANA LILY AMIRPOUR, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
• JAMES WARD BYRKIT, Coherence
• DAN GILROY, Nightcrawler
• ELIZA HITTMAN, It Felt Like Love
• JUSTIN SIMIEN, Dear White People

BEST DOCUMENTARY

• ACTRESS
• CITIZENFOUR
• LIFE ITSELF
• MANAKAMANA
• POINT AND SHOOT 

I haven't yet seen Life Itself (I know I know) but I increasingly suspect, based on everything I've read about it, that hero worship is really getting in the way. It's not that I don't appreciate Ebert's work or that I don't understand the need to honor him for a special life in this very specialized field. But as with Oscars view of documentary, sometimes subject matter trumps execution in terms of awardage. Critics complain when that happens. Except when it happens to a movie about a film critic ;) I reserve the right to change my mind and consider it very worthy if I see it but I just wanted to point out that this is always a real danger in awardage for all groups, not just Oscar, the effect of subject matter trumping execution.