Life - Movie Review

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare and Olga Dihovichnaya.
Written by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa.

★★★

Yes, Life borrows from many movies that have come before. Gravity, Alien, The Thing, and a dozen other titles. But it's good at what it's doing.

Six people aboard the space station have received some samples from Mars, and within them, they find a dormant organism. It is the first proof of life beyond Earth. Nicknamed "Calvin", the organism grows from microscopic to about the size of a flower until it goes dormant. During this time, we get the wonder of discovery and get to know the people on board.

Once Calvin starts killing people, the movie kicks into high gear. Calvin only gets scarier as he gets bigger, and he feels like a very smart animal determined to kill off anything that would threaten him. It. This sinister plantlike octopus spider thing floating in zero G with everyone else.

It's not as majestic as Gravity or as scary as Alien or as thoughtful as Arrival BUT!... for what it is, it delivers on the thrills and the special effects. I wish it had been more successful at the box office. I would have watched a sequel.

Nocturnal Animals - Movie Review

Starring Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Ellie Bamber, Armie Hammer, Karl Glusman, Laura Linney, Michael Sheen and Jena Malone.
Written & Directed by Tom Ford.

★★★½

When we get the opening credits, these grotesquely obese women are dancing naked, in slow-motion, in front of a red curtain. After the actors were listed, I closed my eyes for most of the rest. Once the opening credits are over, the movie backs away, and the jarring opening does make sense in the overall story being told here.

Amy Adams plays Susan Morrow, an art gallery owner. She's wealthy but in a second marriage on its last legs. One day she receives in the mail a manuscript from his first husband, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal). The book is called "Nocturnal Animals" and he has dedicated it to her.

Susan reads the book, and we get the story-within-the-story about Tony (also Gyllenhaal), his wife Laura (Isla Fisher, who looks a lot like Adams), and their teenage daughter India. They get run off the road by some ne'er-do-wells led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and the dreadful suspense builds and builds.

As Susan gets more involved in the story, we see flashbacks of her own life. We see her and Edward when they first started dating, and when they were married, and what led to their split.

The impact of the story as a whole is one I keep thinking more and more about. This is the type of movie where you want to talk with other people about it. The acting's great. Adams and Gyllenhaal are solid. Taylor-Johnson (Godzilla), who isn't one I always enjoy, is seriously creepy here. And Michael Shannon, who shows up as a cop in the book, is just one of my favorite working actors. I'd watch him in anything.

Prisoners - Movie Review

Starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano and Melissa Leo.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve.

★★★½

This slow-burn thriller may be two-and-a-half hours long, but I was never bored nor concerned with the running time.

It features two families (Hugh Jackman & Maria Bello and Viola Davis & Terrence Howard) spending Thanksgiving together.  When a daughter from each disappears, they start to search the neighborhood, but then the teenage son remembers they were playing by a suspicious RV parked down the street, and it's now gone.

It isn't long before the investigative officer Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) locates the RV, and the driver Alex (Paul Dano).  Alex exhibits the mental acumen of a 10-year-old and the police are unable to find enough evidence to keep him. Loki (really wish they'd named him something else) pursues other avenues, but Keller (Jackman) is convinced that Alex knows something, and with each passing day, it means there's less likelihood their girls will be found alive. So he kidnaps Alex and questions him in ways that get more and more medieval.

The movie has a lot to say about vigilante justice, but it's more about the mystery, and while I was able to figure out most of it fairly early (had to wait about half an hour for Loki to notice a clue I noticed right away), it was suspenseful to watch unfold. I can only imagine what David Fincher (Zodiac, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) might have done with this material.

The acting's good all around, but this is career-best work from Jackman, getting that primal, vicious paternal instinct that would give Taken's Bryan Mills pause. (If your brain just hit a speed-bump, that is Liam Neeson's character's name.) I was also really impressed with Gyllenhaal, a man clearly struggling with his own demons that have affected him in odd ways. (He has a very distinct blink, and one where I didn't feel I needed to know why.)

It could have been tighter. I think it could have trimmed minutes here and there but the makers wanted to hang some lanterns on clues to make sure the audience didn't miss them.

End of Watch - Movie Review

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Pena, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, David Harbour, Frank Grillo, America Ferrera and Cody Horn.
Directed by David Ayer.

★★★½

David Ayer written his share about the LAPD (Training Day, Dark Blue), and here he writes and directs this one that might be the best buddy-cop movie in years.  It's not about a grizzled veteran showing a rookie the ropes, nor is it about corrupt cops shaking down drug dealers.  It's about two friends on the force, uncorrupt, just doing their job. A very dangerous job.

Gyllenhaal and Pena are the stars.  They play officers Brian Taylor and Mike Zavala, and the whole movie is what happens to them over one summer.  Most of it has that you-are-there feel to it, with about 80% of the footage coming from videocameras, iPhones, surveillance tapes, etc.  Over the course of the summer, they have run-ins with cartels heavy into drugs and human trafficking.  But they can't let it affect their jobs.  There's paperwork to be done.

Most of the movie takes place inside the squad car, watching the conversations of Brian and Mike, and Gyllenhaal and Pena have some of the best give-and-take on-screen chemistry... ever.  I really believed these guys have been best friends for years.  Career-best performances by both.

I liked how most of the plot of the movie is hidden from the main players.  They believe they're just encountering a series of events, a mix of banter in the car, and scary arrests outside the car.

Its only negative for me was the ridiculous amount of profanity.  I think Summer of Sam's wide-release record of 435 f-words is in danger.