Tag Archives: Jake Gyllenhaal

Scenes I Love: Brothers

Posted on by Arleigh

*spoilers*

The film Brothers, released in 2009, came and went with little fanfare, but it was a film that stuck with me when I saw it a couple years later.

It has definitely made an impression on me after seeing it again while convalescing the summer of 2019. The film deals with PTSD with soldiers coming home from the wars in the Middle East. Yet, it also does a great job of portraying of someone going through severe PTSD after experiencing a major tragedy in their life.

One doesn’t have to have been at work to experience PTSD.

Tobey Maguire does such a great job of acting as the tormented Sam Cahill that one feels discomfort at watching his performance. A performance that shows such unrestrained rage and helplessness in the midst of “drowning” in one’s trauma.

Retro Television Review: Homicide: Life On The Street 2.1 “Bop Gun”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing Homicide: Life On The Street, which aired from 1993 to 1999, on NBC!  It  can be viewed on Peacock.

This week, the second season begins with a special guest star.

Episode 2.1 “Bop Gun”

(Dir by Stephen Gyllenhaal, originally aired on January 6th, 1994)

The 2nd season of Homicide opens with a murder.  That’s not surprising, considering the name of the show and the fact that it’s taking place in Baltimore, which had (and has) one of the highest murder rates in the country.  However, this time, the victim is an innocent tourist from Iowa, gunned down because she and her family took a wrong turn and ended up in a neighborhood that was far from the wharf.  With the press in a feeding frenzy over how unsafe Baltimore is, the bosses want the shooter to be caught and sentenced quickly.

Detective Beau Felton, the primary on the case, is overjoyed.  Sitting in the squad room and joking about how the victim’s husband didn’t even know what type of gun was used in the robbery-turned-murder, Felton brags that he is going to be making so much overtime off of this case.

Unfortunately, the victim’s husband happens to be in the squad room and he overhears Felton.  Angry, tired, and still wearing a shirt stained with his wife’s blood, Robert Ellison (played by special guest star Robin Williams) demands that Felton be taken off the case.

Giardello takes Ellison into his office and explains that Felton is the primary and he can’t be replaced.  Giardello also lists all of the other murders that Felton has recently worked.  Felton deals with violent death every day.  Giardello says that Felton is going to solve the case but he’s not going to “feel” Mrs. Ellison’s death the same way that her family does.

It’s an interesting scene and undoubtedly, a realistic one.  From the very first episode, Homicide has emphasized the gallows humor that goes along with being a homicide detective in a big city.  This episode, though, marks the first time that we get to see how an outsider would react to that attitude.  Significantly, Felton never apologizes and, even after the shooter is arrested, Ellison never forgives Felton for his comments.  Whenever the two interact, it’s obvious that they don’t like each other.  But they’re forever linked by one act of violence.

Felton ends up arresting three men.  Two of them are accused of robbing the Ellison family and being accessories to the murder.  They end up with 30 years in prison.  The accused shooter is Vaughn Perkins (Lloyd Goodman), a teenager who has never had any trouble with the police and who not only tries to write Ellison a note of apology but who also pleads guilty and accepts a life sentence.  (Ellison, in another example of this show choosing realism over sentimentality, refuses to read the note.)

Kay Howard is convinced that Vaughn is covering for the other two men, saying that Vaughn just seems too quiet and meek to be a cold-blooded murderer.  At the end of the episode, she goes down to the prison and meets with Vaughn, who now goes by the name Abu Aziz.  Though he initially tries to act hard, the former Vaughn Perkins finally admits that he was holding the gun during the robbery because he thought he could “control” the situation and keep anyone from getting hurt.  But when Mrs. Ellison refused to give up a locket, he panicked and shot her.  He lost control and, in a split second, he changed the lives of everyone involved.  Feeling defeated by the sad reality of Baltimore, Kay leaves the prison and heads back to work.

When Homicide returned for a second season, it was only given a four-episode order.  With the show on the cusp of cancellation, Homicide only had four hours in which to prove itself.  Originally, Bop Gun was scheduled to be the second season finale.  NBC, wanting to take advantage of having Robin Williams as a guest star, instead decided to move the episode to the start of the season.  That was probably a good idea.  Bop Gun is a good episode that reintroduces us to squad room and also features an excellent performance from Robin Williams.  Williams could, to be honest, be a bit hit-and-miss when it came to dramatic roles but he does wonderful work here, perfectly capturing Ellison’s anger, sadness, and desperation.  He starts the episode as a stunned innocent but, by the end of it, he’s become a much more hardened individual, one who has no interest in Vaughn’s heartfelt but too little and too late apology.  Just Vaughn now has to act hard to survive in a physical prison, Ellison has had to shut off his feelings so that he can survive in his emotional prison.

(As a sidenote, Ellison’s son is played by a very young Jake Gyllenhaal, whose real-life father directed this episode.)

If the first season occasionally felt a bit too much like an insider’s view of the Homicide Department, this episode gives us the point of view of an outsider.  Through Ellison’s eyes, we are reintroduced to the detectives.  Felton may not be a great cop or even a likable human being but he gets the job done in this episode.  And while Felton will now move on to the next case, Robert Ellison will spend the rest of his life thinking about that one day in Baltimore.

Because of the holidays, this is my final Homicide review of 2024!  These reviews will return on January 5th!

 

October True Crime: Zodiac (dir by David Fincher)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was the Zodiac Killer?

That is a question that has haunted journalists, cops, and true crime fans since the late 60s.  It is known that the Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in Northern California in 1968 and 1969.  He targeted young couples, though he is also thought to have murdered on taxi driver as well.  What set Zodiac apart from other killers is that he was a prolific letter writer, who sent cards and ciphers to the police and the journalists who were reporting on his crimes.  In one of his ciphers, Zodiac claimed that he had killed 37 people.  Cartoonist Robert Graysmith later wrote two books about his personal obsession with the case.  He estimated that the Zodiac may have been responsible for hundred of murders, up through the 80s.  Of course, reading Graysmith’s first Zodiac book, it’s also easy to suspect that Graysmith reached a point where he saw the Zodiac’s hand in every unsolved murder in the San Francisco area.  Of all the unidentified serial killers in American history, Zodiac is one that most haunts us.  Zodiac was a serial killer who operated in an era when such things were still considered to be uncommon.  Much as Jack the Ripper did during the Victorian Age, Zodiac announced the arrival of a new age of evil.

Zodiac wrote about being a film fan and he was probably happy about the fact that he inspired quite a few films.  1971’s The Zodiac Killer came out while Zodiac was still sending letters to the police and cops actually staked out the theaters showing the film just to see if he  would show up.  Dirty Harry‘s Scorpio Killer was also based on Zodiac, right down to the taunting letters that he sent the mayor and again, one has to wonder if Zodiac ever showed up to watch Clint Eastwood take him down.

And, if Zodiac survived into the 21st Century, one has to wonder if he showed up in the theaters for 2007’s Zodiac.

One of the best true crime films ever made, Zodiac not only recreates the crimes of the Zodiac but it also examines the mental price of obsessing over the one unknown force of evil.  Mark Ruffalo plays Dave Toschi, the celebrity cop who nearly sacrificed his professional reputation in his search for the identity of the killer.  Jake Gyllenhaal plays cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who spends over a decade searching for the Zodiac’s identity and who loses his wife (Chloe Sevigny) in the process.  And Robert Downey, Jr. plays Paul Avery, the crime reporter to whom the Zodiac wrote and who sunk into paranoia and addiction as a result.  This is a film that is less about the Zodiac’s crime and more about how this unknown killer seemed to unleash a darkness that would come to envelope first a city and eventually an entire nation.

As one might expect from a film directed by David Fincher, Zodiac plays out like a filmed nightmare with the starkly portrayed murders being all the more disturbing because they often take place outside, where people would think they would be safe.  (The second murder is especially terrifying, as it plays out without even the sound of background music to allow us the escape of remembering that it’s only a movie.)  Fincher heightens our paranoia but having a different actor play the killer in each scene, reminding us that the Zodiac could literally be anyone.  Indeed, one of the scarier things about Zodiac is that, in the course of his investigation, Graysmith meets so many different people who seem like they could be the killer.  Even if they aren’t the Zodiac, the viewer is left with the feeling that the world is full of people who are capable of committing the same crimes.  The film becomes a journey into the heart of darkness, with the Zodiac becoming both a malevolent force and potentially your next door neighbor.  And with the film’s detailed recreation of the 60s and the 70s, the film becomes a portrait of a country on the verge of changing forever with the Zodaic and his crimes representing all the fear waiting in the future.

Again, as one might expect from a Fincher film, it’s a well-acted film, especially by Robert Downey, Jr.  Zodiac came out a year before Iron Man, when Downey was still better known for his personal troubles than for his talent.  Downey perfect captures his character’s descent into self-destruction, as he goes from being cocky and self-assured to being so paranoid that he’s carrying a gun.  (Paul Avery’s actual colleagues have disputed the film’s portrayal of Avery being mentally destroyed by the Zodiac.)  Ruffalo and Gyllenhaal also do a good job of portraying Toschi and Graysmith’s growing obsession with the case while Charles Fleischer and John Carroll Lynch both make strong (and creepy) impressions as two men who might (or might not) be the killer.

Though the film was not a success at the box office and it was totally ignored by the Academy, Zodiac has built up a strong reputation in the years since its released.  It’s inspired a whole new generation of web sleuths to search for the killer’s identity.  Personally, my favored suspect is Robert Ivan Nichols, an enigmatic engineer who abandoned his former life and changed his name to Joseph Newton Chandler III in the 70s and who committed suicide in 2002.  I think much like Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac’s identity will never be definitely known.  There have been many compelling suspects but most of the evidence seems to be circumstantial.  (That’s certainly the case when it comes to Nichols.)  The Zodiac was thought to be in his 30s or even his early 40s in 1969 so it’s doubtful that he’s still alive today.  In all probability, his identity and his motive will forever remain an unsolvable mystery.

Here’s The Trailer For The Covenant

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the trailer for Guy Ritchie’s latest film, The Covenant.

In this film, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a veteran who returns to Afghanistan to rescue his interpreter from the Taliban.  This seems like the type of film that critics are going to hate but which will be better appreciated by audiences.  Considering the number of allies that the U.S. abandoned in Afghanistan and the fact that everyone knows that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan was hardly our greatest hour, I have a feeling that we’re going to see a lot more films like The Covenant.  Just as how the 80s and the 90s were full of films about vets who returned to Vietnam to “finish the job” and rescue POWS, there’s undoubtedly going to be a lot of films about vets returning to Afghanistan and saving those who helped them from the Taliban.  For many people, the movies are going to provide the second chance that we’ll never get in a real life.

The Covenant will be released on April 21st, 2023.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Source Code!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix!  The movie?  2011’s Source Code! 

Can Jake Gyllenhaal prevent a bombing on a train?  That sound like a simple premise but, in Source Code, things get much more complicated.  This twisty sci-fi thriller from Duncan Jones was one of my favorite films of 2011 and I look forward to watching it with the Friday Night Flix crew!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Source Code is available on Prime!

See you there!

Film Review: Ambulance (dir by Michael Bay)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ambulance is the ultimate Michael Bay movie.

Obviously, whether or not that’s a good thing for you personally will depend on how you feel about Michael Bay.  As a director, Bay specializes in kinetic thrill rides, the type of films where the camera never stops moving, the characters are attractive but shallow, and every plot development is an excuse for another action sequence.  Michael Bay is hardly the first, only, or last director to put action and spectacle above characterization and a coherent storyline.  However, he might very well be the most shameless about it.  Michael Bay’s approach has not made him a favorite of the critics but it has usually proved successful with audiences.  Personally, I’ve smirked at a lot of scenes in a lot of Michael Bay films.  (I still laugh whenever I remember the slow motion shot of the children playing in front of the faded JFK campaign poster in Armageddon.)  But, in this age of self-important filmmakers, it’s hard not to appreciate a director who just wants to have a good time.

And, make no doubt about it, Ambulance is definitely a good time.  The film’s plot is simple.  Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II rob a bank.  When the robbery goes wrong, they hijack an ambulance.  In the back of the ambulance is an EMT played by Eliza Gonzalez, who is desperately trying to keep a wounded cop (Jackson White) from dying.  Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen also want to make sure that the cop doesn’t die because they know that, if they’re captured, the penalty for being a cop killer is considerably worse than the penalty for being a bad bank robber.  With the entire LAPD and the FBI in pursuit, the two men drive the ambulance through Los Angeles, trying to find a way to escape.  Essentially, Michael Bay said, “You know how everyone enjoys a chase scene?  What if we made the chase scene last for 136 minutes?”  And wisely, some people gave him money to do just that.

(Actually, that’s just the way that I like to imagine it.  Ambulance is actually a remake of a Danish film and Michael Bay originally passed on the project.  But, as they put it in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, print the legend.)

Jake Gyllenhaal may be top-billed but the star of Ambulance is definitely Michael Bay.  In many ways, there’s not much about Bay’s direction here that’s different from what he’s been doing since The Rock.  The camera moves a lot.  The images are sharp and clear.  The rapid-fire editing captures the chaos of the action scenes, occasionally at the cost of letting the audience know just who exactly is shooting at who.  But what sets apart Ambulance from other Bay films is that Michael Bay finally discovered his greatest collaborator, the drone.  Bay’s camera flies across Los Angeles, zooming over buildings and down streets and essentially making the viewer as much a part of the chase as Gyllenhaal and the cops pursuing him.  Ambulance moves with so much energy and confidence that it doesn’t matter that it’s a bit too long and that Gyllenhaal’s plan often doesn’t make much sense.  Ambulance is a thrill-ride, a film that rewards anyone who is willing to just go with it.  It’s an example of what Lucio Fulci called “pure cinema,” where the story itself is not as important as the way the director puts it all together.  I enjoyed it.  That ambulance barreling through the streets of Los Angeles was the 21st century equivalent of the speeding train that thrilled and terrified audiences during the silent era.

Unfortunately, Ambulance struggled a bit at the box office.  I’m a bit confused as to why, other than it wasn’t a part of a franchise or a sequel (like The Batman, Dr. Strange, and Top Gun: Maverick) and it didn’t have the mix of strong reviews and pop cultural cachet that led audiences to make Everything Everywhere All At Once into a hit.  Along with reviews that were more interested in criticizing Michael Bay in general as opposed to actually considering whether or not the film itslef worked, Ambulance was damaged by the fact that audiences were still getting used to the idea of leaving their homes for a night out.  I get the feeling that a lot of people looked at the commercials for Ambulance and said, “That’s something I can watch at home.”  (Admittedly, that’s what I did.)  It’s a shame that Michael Bay’s ultimate (and, I would say, best) film is also one of the few to be deemed a box office failure.  The film is currently on Peacock.  Try to watch it on the biggest screen you can find.

Spider-Man Meets Mysterio In The New Spider-Man: Far From Home Trailer

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The new trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home opens with a warning from Tom Holland.  Do not watch this trailer if you have not seen Avengers: Endgame and you want to avoid spoilers.  It should also go without saying that, if you are avoiding Endgame spoilers, do not read any further on this post.

Spoilers below:

Judging from the trailer, Spider-Man: Far From Home finds Peter Parker mourning the loss of his mentor, Tony Stark.  Looking to get away from the pressures of crime fighting and saving the world and also wanting to pursue his crush on Zendaya’s MJ, Peter joins his classmates on a trip to Europe.  Were all of Peter’s classmates from Spider-Man: Homecoming wiped out by the Snap?  According to Avengers: Endgame, bringing everyone back did not change anything that happened over the previous five years.  Peter got lucky that MJ apparently wasn’t around to graduate high school and move away while he was non-existent.

Peter may want to escape from it all but Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury has other ideas.  Judging from the trailer, it appears that Peter has replaced Tony with three new mentors, Nick Fury, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau, making the transition over from the Iron Man films), and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio.  Of course, anyone who is familiar with Mysterio’s history knows that Peter should be careful about trusting him.

The trailer also introduces the concept of the Multiverse.  With all the questions that Endgame raised about time travel and alternate realities, the Multiverse is surely going to be an important factor moving forward.  For instance, it may explain how there’s both a Loki TV show and a Black Widow movie in production when both of those characters were apparently very dead at the end of Avengers: Endgame.

Spider-Man: Far From Home opens on July 2nd.

 

6 Actors Who Will Soon Hopefully Win Their First Oscar

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Remember how, an hour ago, I listed 6 actresses who I hope will soon get the role for which they’ll win their first Oscar?

Well, now it’s time to look at 6 actors for whom I have the same hope.  Some of the actors listed below have been nominated in the past.  Some of them have not.  Some of them will probably win an Oscar at some point in their career.  And some of them, sadly, probably will not.

However, what all six of them have in common is that all six of them deserve at least one more opportunity to take home a gold statuette.

Ethan Hawke

I’m still stunned by the fact that Ethan Hawke wasn’t, at the very least, nominated for his performance in First Reformed.  It was certainly one of the best performance of the year and probably one of the best of his career.  Ethan Hawke has been nominated a total of four times (twice for supporting actor and twice for adapted screenplay) but has yet to win.  Hopefully, that will someday change for both him and his frequent director, Richard Linklater.

Jake Gyllenhaal

How the Hell was Jake Gyllenhaal not nominated for Nightcrawler?  Ever since Donnie Darko, Gyllenhaal has been one of the most enjoyably unpredictable actors around.  He’s even managed to become a star even though it’s obvious that the mainstream film industry has no idea what to do with his eccentric persona.  While Gyllenhaal can occasionally be miscast (as evidenced by films like Demolition and Love and Other Drugs), both Nightcrawler and Stronger showed just how special an actor Gyllenhaal can be.

Ryan Renolds

The next time you find yourself enjoying an R-rated comic book movie that features nudity, profanity, and grotesque ultra-violence, you better take a few minutes to thank Ryan Reynolds.  Reynolds will probably never win an Oscar for playing Deadpool but just imagine the acceptance speech he would give if he did.

Hugh Jackman

Amazingly, the multi-talented Hugh Jackman has only one nomination, for his performance in Les Miserables.  He probably deserved a nomination for his performance in Logan, though that film has the misfortune to be released before Black Panther legitimized the idea of a comic book film as a genuine Oscar contender.  Jackman seems like he’s destined to win an Oscar someday.  Hopefully, in the future, he’ll chose better films than The Front Runner.

Kyle Chandler

Despite appearing in several best picture nominees and giving an award-worthy performance in The Spectacular Now, Kyle Chandler has never received an Oscar nomination.  It’s hard not to feel that the right role is somewhere out there, waiting for him.  Someday, someone will write the perfect script about a small-town sheriff solving the biggest case of his career and the next thing you know, Kyle Chandler will be accepting his first Oscar.

Giovanni Lombardo Radice

Someday, someone is going to write a great role for the greatest living Italian horror actor, Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

Spider-Man: Far From Home Teaser and International Trailers

Posted on by Arleigh

spider-man far from home

Spider-Man: Homecoming was the Spider-Man that fans have been waiting for. It was able to balance the character of Peter Parker and his alter-ego of Spider-Man. Where the Sam Raimi version was able to make the former stand-out at the cost of the Spider-Man alter, the Marc Webb version swapped the two dynamics. Webb’s version had a great Spider-Man but had a Peter Parker whose moral compass was a bit skewed.

Jon Watt’s Spider-Man and Peter Parker were a nice balance. It helped that the character was now free (to a degree) to play in the huge cinematic sandbox that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Last we saw Spider-Man and Peter Parker, he was dusted just like half the living things in the universe following the Thanos Snap. The question that gets brought up whenever Spider-man: Far From Home, the sequel to Spider-Man: Homecoming, gets talked about is does this film take away from the emotional sucker punch that was Avengers: Infinity War and it’s upcoming sequel, Avengers: Endgame.

From this teaser trailer and it’s international version has shown, the question still remains as both teasers mention nothing about the Avengers and keeps the timeline of the film vague enough to make one wonder if this sequel happens before Avengers: Infinity War.

I guess fans will find out on July 5, 2019 when the film is released worldwide.

….and here’s the International Teaser trailer

Trailer: Velvet Buzzsaw

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

A few years ago, Dan Gilroy, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Rene Russo excited film viewers everywhere when they collaborated on Nightcrawler, a portrait of a psychologically damaged man who proves to be quite adept at playing the media game.  The combination of Gillroy’s atmospheric direction and satirical script with Gyllenhaal’s wonderfully unhinged lead performance made for an incendiary and prophetic film.  Just why exactly Nightcrawler was totally snubbed by the Academy continues to be one of the most perplexing mysteries in recent Oscar history.  Despite strong support from the critics, not even Gyllenhaal picked up a nomination.

Dan Gilroy followed Nightcrawler up with Roman Israel, Esq., which was as forgettable as Nightcrawler was memorable but which still managed to accomplish what Nightcrawler didn’t.  It received an Oscar nomination for its leading man.  One gets the feeling that nomination had more to do with Denzel Washington’s reputation for award-worthy work than for anything that actually happened in the movie.  Gyllenhaal went on to give award-worthy performances in films like Southpaw and Stronger but the Academy has continued to snub him.  As for Russo, she’s only appeared in three films post-Nightcrawler and none of them were worthy of her talents.

Well, this year, Gyllenhaal, Russo, Gilroy, and Nightcrawler‘s cinematographer, Robert Elswit, have reunited for Velvet Buzzsaw!  That’s right, they’ve got the band together again!  The film appears to be a mix of horror film and an art world satire.  As the film’s plot description puts it: After a series of paintings by an unknown artist are discovered, a supernatural force enacts revenge on those who have allowed their greed to get in the way of art.  The trailer would seem to suggest that paintings themselves are coming to life to enact revenge on sell-outs, everywhere.  The idea of haunted paintings has been explored by everyone from Oscar Wilde to H.P. Lovecraft to Lucio Fulci and I look forward to seeing what type of spin Gilroy puts on it.

Along with Russo and Gyllenhaal, this film also features John Malkovich.  Honestly, I don’t think you can do an art world satire without finding a role for Malkovich.  Much as how Bill Paxton simply belonged in Nightcrawler, it seems that Malkovich would just belong in Velvet Buzzsaw.

Velvet Buzzsaw will be playing at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and it will be officially released by Netflix on February 1st!  I get the feeling that we’re either going to love it or we’re going to hate it.  I don’t think there’s going to be much in-between.

Check out the trailer below!