Southpaw Movie Review

Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw is a little chaotically scripted by Kurt Sutter with plot points that are occasionally unbelievable, nonsensical, or irrelevant, but it is Fuqua’s most restrained directing effort I can recall and contains enough moral uplift that it just crosses the line of what’s worth watching as a minor diversion.

Jake Gyllenhaal is impressive as Billy Hope, the light heavyweight champion of the world. Hope (and Gyllenhaal by extension) is physically imposing with a ripped torso and biceps. He has an anger control problem that remains mostly confined to the ring. So that he garners our sympathies, he’s got a beautiful wife, Maureen (Rachel McAdams), and daughter, both of whom he adores and dotes on. Maureen doesn’t want him to keep fighting because his style allows him to endure punch after punch until he’s angry enough to pummel his opponent. His manager (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) wants him to sign a three fight deal.

Nightcrawler Movie Review

I always admired Jake Gyllenhaal’s talent as an actor. His performance in Prisoners demonstrated a real step up in his game, after which I realized he had even more to offer. But now he stars as Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler, which features a Gyllenhaal performance that blew me away like I didn’t think possible. That’s pretty impressive considering his body of work.

We first see Bloom at night, concealed in darkness. He’s clipping the metal chain link of a fence. A security guard stops him. He maintains a friendly, though slightly awkward interaction with the guard. We think he might be able to talk his way out of the situation when suddenly he attacks. Next he’s driving along, the back of his truck loaded with scrap metal, including the chain link, and his wrist bearing the watch that he spied on the guard. The minor violence of the scene leaves such an impression because this young man comes across as so unassuming and physically harmless.

From My Collection: Brokeback Mountain Movie Review

I read “The New Yorker” magazine with some regularity. Each issue has a short story included that I usually start, but don’t finish. They rarely grab hold of me. But I went back and took a look at E. Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” which first appeared in October 1997. It is an absolutely brilliant example of economy of story and character development. She squeezes more information into a single line of dialogue than other writers can get onto a page and fifty times the words. She won an O. Henry award for the story.

Enemy Movie Review

There were scattered moments in Denis Villenueve’s Prisoners that hinted at the atmosphere and experimentation he employs in Enemy. The lingering shots of trees, emptiness, or recreational vehicles were indications of a different kind of filmmaking. But where Prisoners was a fairly conventional story presented with touches of auteur sensibility, Enemy is moving toward full-blown independence. If Prisoners was dark and atmospheric, Enemy is downright funereal.

Love and Other Drugs Movie Review

Edward Zwick, who has specialized in Hollywood action movies with a message (The Siege, Glory, Blood Diamond) has returned to the genre that got him started in feature films – the romantic comedy. It’s been 24 years since About Last Night… starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, both young and sexy, and depicted in the flesh in several perfectly lit scenes. But Zwick has not lost his touch for the ups and downs (including those in the bed) of a relationship. The actors have been updated to two sexy stars of the moment – Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. The movie is Love and Other Drugs, adapted from Jamie Reidy’s book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Zwick, Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz.