thoughts on Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Louis Bloom, who stumbles onto a career as a "nightcrawler," showing up at crime scenes with a video camera to get footage to sell to the local news.  This is more consistently lucrative than what he was doing before, which early scenes establish was mainly stealing things and selling them to pawn shops.  Even at its best, "nightcrawling" is a pretty skeezy profession, as it involves waiting around all night for the police scanner to alert you to crimes and then hauling ass to make it to the scene before your competitors.  However, Louis quickly takes it to the next level.  He moves a dead body before the ambulance gets there to get a better shot.  He blackmails the news director at the TV station he sells footage to (Nina Romina, played by Rene Russo) into sleeping with him.  He cuts the brake lines on his top competitor's van.  Before long, he is basically staging crime scenes-- withholding information from police and revealing it at just such a time that it is likely to erupt in a particularly violent way.  Some of the people at Nina's station think showing some of this footage is unethical, but Nina is desperate for ratings.  The cops are on to Louis, but they can't prove anything.  The worse Louis behaves, the more he is rewarded.

Louis is a disgusting character, and it's disturbing to watch him commit more and more heinous atrocities with a calm smile on his face.  He is not charming, exactly, but he can talk his way out of or into almost anything.  Gyllenhaal and Russo both give excellent performances.  It's not an enjoyable movie, exactly; I felt a little like I was going to be sick afterwards.  However, it is somewhat fascinating to see how far he will go and how much he will get away with.

thoughts on Into the Woods

James Corden and Emily Blunt star as the baker and his wife, who learn that the reason that they haven't been able to conceive a child is that a witch (Meryl Streep) has put a curse on their home.  To reverse the curse, they have to go into the woods to get a cow as white as milk; a golden slipper; a red cape; and hair as yellow as straw.  This provides the set-up for a story that weaves together characters and plot details from Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel, ultimately culminating in the main characters trying to save their village from the wife of the giant at the top of the beanstalk.

It's all incredibly well-done, with songs and the baker and his wife providing the connection between the separate stories.  All of the actors give solid performances, with Chris Pine stealing the show as Prince Charming.  It's a well-acted, magical twist on familiar fairy tales.