Counting Down The Fourteen Best Films Of 2014
In this totally subjective game of lists, there can only be one winner.
#5: Nightcrawler, dir. Dan Gilroy
Beneath its zeitgeisty themes about self-help capitalism and media ethics, Dan Gilroy’s excellent thriller boils down to the act of looking. It begins with Jake Gyllenhaal’s uncanny eyes, enormous in a gaunt face, shifting from a preternatural glimmer to opaque pools of menace. We watch Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom, a wily animal in LA’s urban jungle, as in turn he watches and learns.
Nightcrawler is a self-consciously stylish film, teetering between cool neo-noir and boisterous satire of a society that thrives on images. The sense of impending crisis it builds suggests comparisons with other LA crime films – especially To Live and Die in L.A., Collateral and Drive. But it has a verve all its own. Nightcrawler thrills us. Then it condemns us for feeling thrilled.