For the week of February 10th, Universal Studios and Open Road Home Entertainment are bringing the thriller Nightcrawler to Blu-ray. For this film, writer-director Dan Gilroy (brother of Michael Clayton director Tony Gilroy) gets us uncomfortably close to Leo Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a socially maladjusted...well, misfit is probably the nicest thing one could say about Bloom, who gets a taste of the adrenaline-pumping exploits of Los Angeles' "nightcrawler" culture (those freelance journalists who are on sight to capture the city's worst accidents and murders) and decides that that lifestyle is the only life for him, even if he has to destroy a lot of people in the process. You'd never know Gilroy was a first-time director from his efforts. Alongside his crack team (with DP Robert Elswit and composer James Newton Howard first among equals), Gilroy escalates Bloom's pursuit of fame and fortune until it reaches a fever pitch: the climax offers some of 2014's most uncomfortably visceral cinematic moments. However, it's with mounting excitement that we realize for all its neon-tinged sense of urban violence and dread, Gilroy is making a comedy - albeit a pitch-black one - and that bitter sense of humor is Nightcrawler's biggest weakness and biggest strength. As a satire, the film falls short - Network and Wag the Dog, this is not, despite Gilroy's best efforts. Gilroy has "if it bleeds, it leads" journalism in his crosshairs, but the problem is, he's about fifteen years too late; his jaundiced view of bottom-feeding news outlets would have felt incisive during the heyday of late 1990s TV shows like "A Current Affair." That leaves Gyllenhaal to pick up the slack, and thankfully, he's more than able. As terrifying a figure as his Lou Bloom is - Gyllenhaal lost something like sixty pounds for the role, and he looks like a human bug zapper, all pallid skin and constantly plugged-in aura - he still comes off like the funhouse-mirror version of Travis Bickle. Bloom might lack most social graces and basic human empathy, both of which he explains away in the film's most chilling scene, but he's nothing if not self-motivated. He puts the "high-functioning" in "high-functioning sociopath," and whether he's angling for a corporate promotion and an unwanted sexual relationship with his boss (Rene Russo, who's never been quite this good) in the span of the same dinner conversation or casually engineering a violent gunfight and car chase to feed his media ego, Bloom radiates the dead-eyed fervor of a true believer in the most venal and corrupt parts of the American Dream. We're able to roll with Gilroy's dated premise because Gyllenhaal makes it seem so vital. It's the best role of Gyllenhaal's already impressive career, and an inspired and horrifying comic creation.
Kenneth Brown's Blu-ray review noted that the film "hinges on Gilroy and Gyllenhaal's double down presentation of Lou's self-realization, not as a traditional sociopath but as an American success story willing to do anything and everything necessary to make something of himself. A brief but crucial introduction tells us all we need to know: Lou is an unscrupulous thief, a monster of impulse (who angles for a job minutes after assaulting a security guard), and an internet-addled creature of calculation and obsession. Soon, though, Lou isn't asking for anything. He takes it. All of it. And he works so hard it almost begins to seem as if he deserves it. There's a sharp undercurrent of satire - unchecked capitalism as serial stringer; political permissiveness as ratings-driven news - and the film is cleverly devoid of empathy, moral justice and likable characters. It's a risk to be sure; a gamble that relies on its audience's eagerness to follow Gyllenhaal's high-functioning, self-made madman through a series of increasingly tense manipulations of crime scenes and co-workers. But it pays off. Bloom is a terrifying predator, yes. Unsettling and unremorseful. He's also one of modern cinema's most magnetic maniacs, making it that much more difficult to look away."
Also from Universal is Rosewater. An adaptation of journalist Maziar Bahari's harrowing memoir Then They Came For Me, this docudrama follows Bahari's capture and subsequent interrogation by the Iranian government following his controversial coverage of Iran's 2009 presidential election; Bahari (played by Gael García Bernal) finds himself in the "care" of a brutal torturer and manipulator (Kim Bodnia) whose distinctive cologne gives the film its title. In addition, Rosewater is also the directorial debut of The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, and as incongruous a pairing between subject matter and director as this might seem, Stewart has a personal connection to Bahari's story - shortly before his imprisonment, Bahari gave an interview to Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones where he joked about being a spy, except the Iranian government didn't know he was kidding and used the interview as evidence to justify their treatment of Bahari. Viewed in that light, Rosewater takes on the fabric of a mea culpa, and you can sense Stewart trying to tell the story in as respectful a fashion as possible to honor Bahari's struggle. Much of the film is atypically square and earnest for Stewart - he and DP Bobby Bukowski give the scenes where Bahari covers the election a vérité charge, and he punctuates Bahari's prison treatment with wrenching fantasy sequences where Bahari sees visions of his father (Haluk Bilginer) and sister (Golshifteh Farahani) in order to mentally escape from his punishment. Yet Rosewater does maintain an edge, and it's in Stewart's handling of the interplay between Bahari and Rosewater. These scenes form the core of the picture, and they're expectedly unsettling and raw. While Stewart downplays some of the physical violence meted against Bahari (again, the restraint feels like a solemn act of respect), he's unsparing in his depiction of Rosewater's psychological warfare, and Bodnia cuts a terrifying figure: all unentitled arrogance and barely suppressed rage at the far more worldly Bahari. But Stewart's also very canny in balancing the power dynamic between the two, and Rosewater is at its most interesting when Bahari starts figuring out how to get under his captor's skin, particularly with teasing details of Western sexual culture. Bernal's intelligence as an actor makes these scenes sing - you can see him mentally gathering up ammo against Rosewater, and he's so good you're almost able to overlook the fact that Stewart cast a Mexican actor instead of an actual Iranian - giving the film a vein of dark humor that leavens the torture and misery. While not a great film, Rosewater is a great story, and one that makes me optimistic about Jon Stewart's post-Daily Show career.
From Walt Disney Home Entertainment comes the animated favorite 101 Dalmatians. The film occupies a special place in Disney history. Not only is it one of the last films that Walt himself oversaw, but it also helped save the studio. As with the 1942 classic Dumbo, 101 Dalmatians was made on the cheap to help compensate for one of its more costly predecessors (Pinocchio and Fantasia for Dumbo; Sleeping Beauty for 101 Dalmatians) and ended up becoming one of Disney's highest earners. It's not hard to see why audiences responded so strongly to the film. While 101 Dalmatians doesn't have near the artistry of Sleeping Beauty - no Cinemascope or Renaissance-era-tapestry aesthetics here - it also never aspires to greatness. The film is simply a fleet entertainment that pits 101 adorable dogs against the comically villainous Cruella De Vil (get it?), who looks at the dogs and sees only the latest in fashion couture. That's about it, and even though the picture lacks much in the way of memorable songs or visual enchantments (the animators framed their work using a more cost-effective Xerox camera, which allowed for faster progress at the expense of the polish that Disney traditionally preferred), it gets by on pluck and speed. There's no fat on this one, just a bunch of slightly anthropomorphized dogs (Rod Taylor and Cate Bauer supply voices for Dalmatian protagonists Pongo and Perdita) and one of the studio's most iconic baddies, the sinuously evil De Vil. Now, Disney would later abuse this speed-over-style strategy, with features like The Aristocats and The Rescuers taking even greater liberties with the visual aesthetic. But in 1961, it was the right call for the right movie: an unassuming farce that achieves everything it sets out to do and little more. Nothing wrong with that.
Kenneth Brown called the film not "quite as sturdy as other Disney classics. Not unlike the children's novel on which it's based, there's a segmentation to the story that makes its lean seventy-nine-minute runtime somehow seem padded. It doesn't help that a lone song manages to wriggle into the mix. 'Cruella De Vil' may be a beloved toe-tapper, but it feels forced and out of place, particularly as no other musical numbers grace the film (several were planned, each of which was either abandoned or deleted). But it hardly matters, does it? There's a fluidity and finesse to the adventure that carries Pongo and Perdita to their pups with an effortless ease that's pure, unadulterated Golden Age Disney. Wit, surprises, unforgettable personalities, and a taught third act come together to make 101 Dalmatians the timeless animated classic it is. No, it's not perfect. But it'll warm your heart, earn a big ol' grin and leave you cheering, anxious to share the movie with your children, who, in turn, will one day share it with theirs."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is bringing Nicolas Roeg's brilliant Don't Look Now. An arthouse favorite during its theatrical run in 1973, this thriller is now considered one of the seminal films of the 1970s. In his Great Movies review, the late Roger Ebert called Don't Look Now "one of the great horror masterpieces, working not with fright, which is easy, but with dread, grief, and apprehension," all three of which elevate the picture from a routine shocker into something more unsettling. At its core, Don't Look Now is a tragedy, with Roeg documenting the profound, inescapable grief that John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) experience after the death of their young daughter. As the two retreat to Venice to try and shut out their sorrow, John begins receiving sudden, terrible visions, one of which seems to portend the spirit of his dead daughter. To be sure, Roeg knows the hallmarks of the genre inside and out (he was the DP on Roger Corman's terrific shocker The Masque of the Red Death, after all), and the quest he sends John is instantly disquieting - Roeg makes all of Venice look like Hill House from Robert Wise's The Haunting, what with its perpetually damp streets and jutting stone cobbles, and he cultivates that sense of ever-mounting dread through horror totems like waking nightmares, unreliable psychics, and an unforgettable straight-razor-wielding killer. However, Roeg's biggest horror innovation is in the film's famous elliptical editing. What might otherwise be a straightforward chiller becomes fragmented and ambiguous, as Roeg cuts together past and present almost subliminally - including a notorious sex scene that contrasts John and Laura's vigorous lovemaking (which Sutherland has long hinted was not simulated on set) with their far more banal daily routines - thus creating the effect of an unstable present that's just as porous as a dream. It's quicksand, this movie: the more you struggle, the tighter it holds you.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "The film is very effective because it links the real with the surreal and never favors one over the other. Instead, it offers different points of view that force one into a guessing mode literally until the final credits roll. Even then, after all of the scattered pieces have been properly aligned, the film remains a fascinating enigma that could be successfully deconstructed in a variety of different ways. The majority of the film takes place in Venice, Italy. This is one of a handful of films, however, where this enormously beautiful city looks incredibly unattractive, unfriendly and depressing. The long shots with the dirty canals (the scene with the rats truly sticks out), the old buildings and especially the dark streets where the girl with the red coat appears give the film that unique Gothic flavor many of the classic films about Jack the Ripper are known for. Sutherland and Christie are outstanding. There are a couple of scenes where Sutherland looks straight into the camera that are very unsettling. He has the appearance of a man who has been possessed by something, something very powerful. Christie's nervous breakdowns are also very effective. The famous explicit sex scene still looks incredibly real but inoffensive."