Nightcrawler

A clever, low-budget potboiler in which Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sociopathic scumbag. There’s a strong and welcome opinion here about the state of TV news, but since there’s no likeable characters, it’s hard to connect with this movie on an emotional level. You watch from a distance. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it also means you leave the theater feeling kind of icky. Still, good performances all around, and it’s always nice to see Bill Paxton.

John Wick

There is something so satisfying about revenge. Something so primal and visceral. The filmmakers of John Wick understand this and skillfully tap into this primitive urge with aplomb. The filmmakers take their time, setting up Keanu’s sensitive guy – almost, but not quite, milking it. Then when the payback comes, it’s so deeply and necessarily violent. Never for a moment do you feel any sympathy for the dozens of thugs and goons Keanu wipes out on his crusade for payback. The underground world of hit-man camaraderie is also a refreshing twist on the proceedings. But it’s really the killing that matters. You can almost taste the blood. I loved this!

The Equilizer

I guess I always thought The Equalizer was about revenge and making wrong things right. There’s only a little of that here, but it’s mostly about reading books and/or shooting people and not a lot of righting wrongs. Which is too bad. Revenge is such a powerful and worthy theme, to squander that is a shame, which is what happened here. A better movie about this exact same subject, Man on Fire, also with Denzel, came out a few years ago. Check that one out instead.

Gone Girl

Any time a David Fincher movie comes out, David Fincher is the star of the movie. The actors are, for better or for worse, supporting players and the movie has visual style flying out the wazoo. But in the case of Gone Girl, it’s less of a “David Fincher” movie and much more of a “Ben Affleck” movie. Affleck has been in the movie star doghouse for a long time, and while his directing career has been going swimmingly, he hasn’t been the “star” of a big movie for a while. But he OWNS this movie and he’s pretty good in it. Yes, there is something dumb and wooden about his performance, but that’s also a big part of his character. You need to believe he’s the kind of guy who all of this stuff could happen to. It’s an old-fashioned twisty thriller and you might find yourself working out some of the logic points after the show. But it tracks, I think. Whether it does or not, it’s a fun night at the movies, albeit less “Finchery” than other Fincher movies.