"Nightcrawler" Review

OP-ROB RATING: STARTER

            “Nightcrawler” is the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), an unemployed man who drives around Los Angeles stealing manhole covers, fencing, and anything else he can get his hands on. While driving home one night he pulls over beside a car crash and witnesses a group of stringers film the aftermath of the accident. The whole scene intrigues him and he soon pawns a stolen bike for a video camera and a radio scanner. Soon enough Bloom follows his radio to the scene of a carjacking where he nudges past the police right up to the EMTs and gets several seconds footage of a man with blood oozing from the bullet holes in his neck. A local network newscast pays Bloom for the footage, and he is able to set up a working relationship with the morning news director at that station, Nina Romina (Rene Russo).  Bloom hires an “intern” and quickly builds a reputation as a wily freelance film producer because of his willingness to butt right into the scene of a crime.

            “Nightcrawler” really has no rhyme or reason behind it. What is does have is Jake Gyllenhaal in perhaps the most eccentric role of his life. Take a healthy looking Jake Gyllenhaal (say when he was in “Source Code”), lock him in a prison cell for six months and feed him solely gruel and get him addicted to cocaine. Unlock him, make him shave and slick his now very long hair back. Then you have Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom. “Nightcrawler” without Gyllenhaal wouldn’t survive because the audience is never forced to invest anything in the film. There are no admirable characters and no complex ideas being explored. The appeal of “Nightcrawler” is in watching Jake Gyllenhaal go completely crazy with a weirder than weird character.

            Lou Bloom is a sociopath. He cares not for the privacy of others, and will get his footage by any means possible. As mentioned before, Bloom elbows past the authorities to get close to the carjacking, which is pretty tame. However as Bloom becomes more enthralled in his work he goes so far as to alter the scene of a crime if given a chance. In one instance, he pulls a mangled body from one side of a car to the other for cinematic purposes. In another instance he arrives to a crime scene before the police, and enters a home where several people have been shot and killed. Bloom slinks through the house with his camera as if filming a horror movie, slowly panning over the freshly splattered bodies. In perhaps the strangest sequence in the movie, Bloom blackmails the female network director to have sex with him in return for the best video footage, which he could easily take to another network. We never actually see the two in the act, but the implications are far creepier than any visual could possibly be.

            The most interesting phenomenon the film explores is the practice of withholding evidence for personal gain. In the key sequence of “Nightcrawler”, when Bloom arrives at the house where a shooting has occurred, he is able to catch the perpetrators on camera, as they pull out of the house in their black suburban. Bloom sells the in-house footage, but keeps the criminals out on the street so that he can report them on his own time, and be there to film the arrest.

            While “Nightcrawler” had a flat ending and not much plot, it certainly was a thrill to watch. Next time I watch network news and see a close up of a dead body or a gruesome crime scene, I will certainly think of Lou Bloom behind the camera.

"The Jinx" Review

OP-ROB RATING: ALL-STAR

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of HBO’s mini series/documentary, “The Jinx”. The show tells the story of Robert Durst, heir to the Durst family Manhattan real estate fortune, and suspect in three different murder cases. In six episodes we are taken through the details of each murder/disappearance and some surrounding personal facts about Robert Durst himself. The key components of the series are the one-on-one interviews with Mr. Durst. In each episode Mr. Durst is able to give his own perspective on the facts of these cases, but of course it is the audience who is left to decide whether he is telling the truth, the whole truth or no truth at all. As Durst himself relays in episode four, “I did not tell the whole truth. Nobody tells the whole truth.”

            The facts of the case are interesting enough to stand alone as a captivating documentary series. The case regarding the death and dismemberment of a Mr. Morris Black is stranger than fiction could tell. As the show details thoroughly in episode one, “The Body in the Bay”, Mr. Black’s body parts were found in a bay in Galveston, Texas. One of the detectives describes lifting the torso out of the water by reaching down its throat and gripping the collarbone. In a separate case regarding Mr. Durst’s first wife, Kathleen Durst, the show guides us through what seems like a truly ambiguous disappearance and then uses specific interviews and pieces of evidence to pick apart our stance against foul play. The culminating episode involves a second interview with Bob Durst regarding a new piece of evidence linked to the murder of Susan Berman, a close friend and advocate of Durst. Durst is filmed looking at two pieces of paper, both with eerily similar handwriting. One is a letter from Mr. Durst to Susan Berman at her Beverly Hills home. The other is a note left by the murderer of Susan Berman simply stating “CADAVER” at her home address. In both letters the handwriting is arguably identical. What further cements the resemblance is the misspelling of Beverly as “Beverley” in both letters. It is at this point that Durst promptly accepts the similarities but denies writing the letter. The interview ends and Durst decides to use the restroom before going on his way. Not realizing that his microphone is hot, Durst is caught mumbling to himself, “What did I do? Killed them all, of course” and the show ends with a bang.

            Last week all of the major news sources were reporting on the show so I knew about the surprise ending before even deciding to watch episode one, and so for me it wasn’t all that surprising. However I don’t think that my prior knowledge damaged my enjoyment of the series in the least. The biggest and most disturbing surprise of “The Jinx” was Robert Durst’s likeability. Even after watching the show and knowing that there is a 99.99% chance that he murdered three people, I can honestly say that I kind of like the guy. In episode four during his trial in Galveston for the murder of Morris Black, whom he also dismembered, Durst is able to make the jury laugh hysterically. Just think about that…

            I went into “The Jinx” knowing some basic facts about the series and the life of Robert Durst, after watching the short series I feel that I know everything possible regarding the murders of which he is suspected, and more importantly something important about human nature. Which is that no matter how terrible the deed, there is always a human being behind it, and that human being might just be a quirky, witty, old eccentric millionaire who seems like a quiet guy trying to mind his own business. It just so happens that his business might be murder.

"Timbuktu" Review

OP-ROB RATING: ALL-STAR

           A couple weeks ago on the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, when the “What do we do about ISIS?” question was proposed, one of the guests on the panel, a GOP strategist named Mercedes Schlapp adamantly said, “Bomb ISIS! Bomb the hell out of them!” The militantly liberal crowd responded with a collective gasp, as did some of the members of the panel. In Hollywood that particular answer to the “What do we do about ISIS?” question may seem foreign and extreme. But in many areas of the country it is a common response, it is one that I find to be a rash and stupid solution to a very complex problem. You can’t bomb the bad guys without killing some of the good guys; that much is clear. “Timbuktu” a film written and directed by Abderrahmane Sissako seeks to take the viewer inside one of these areas that Mrs. Schlapp so bluntly proposed to “bomb the hell out of”. The film seeks to show many things, but perhaps the most important is that these areas inhabited by ISIL are filled with many types of people, lots of whom may want nothing more than to survive.

            The film takes place in Timbuktu, a town in Mali, located in Northwest Africa. It examines the effects of the town being occupied by militant Islamists donning the flag of ISIL, which actually happened in 2012 though the film does not specify that to be the time period in which it occurs. Several different characters and storylines make up the film, the most prominent of which is the story of Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed dit Pino), a cattleman living on the outskirts of the city. Kidane feeds his family by his cattle business, but his true passion is for music. Kidane spends his days with his wife and daughter, playing his guitar for them and keeping their spirits up in this time of distress. Kidane is only interested in providing for his family who he loves so dearly, and the ISIL occupation has put extreme pressure on his ability to live peacefully.

            A recurring theme in the film is that of hypocrisy amongst the occupying jihadists. They enforce absurd rules on the townspeople such as: no smoking, no music, no dancing, no soccer, and a series of dress codes including women must wear gloves and veils; men cannot wear pants with legs that touch the ground. These rules are arbitrary and ridiculous and there are several scenes showing the jihadists themselves breaking the rules whether it be sneaking cigarettes or chatting about international soccer.

            Unfortunately for the townspeople, a violation of the rules will not result in just a frown as it does for the enforcers. A woman selling fish without gloves is arrested because of her offense, a woman caught playing music is given 70 lashes, and a man and a woman caught in adultery are buried up to their heads and stoned to death for their violation of “God’s law”. Sissako shoots the scenes of brutality with vividness, showing the first and last rocks smacking against the stand-alone heads; yet he doesn’t go so far as to overdo the violence, showing just enough to make an impression on the viewer while not defining the film by the horror.

            While the film jumps around to several different storylines sporadically, some of which I found convoluted and ultimately inconclusive, the overall tone of “Timbuktu” was one of strong resistance and criticism to the Islamic radicalism that is so prevalent today. For me, the film provided what felt like a first-hand look at everyday life in an area occupied by radical Islamists. There are the bad guys, and then there is everyone else just trying to survive. Mrs. Schlapp should keep the larger group in mind next time she tries to answer the most complex situation of this decade.