Author: BRWC

When Julianne Moore won Her Academy Award for her spellbinding performance as the slowly spiralling Alice in “Still Alice” this year, few argued her deserving of such accolade but those who had witnessed her turn in Cronenberg’s latest (just a couple of months previous) wondered whether the wrong performance got the praise. Definitely less palatable for the Oscar crowd than “Still Alice”, Bruce Wagner’s incendiary and Tinsel town baiting screenplay doesn’t so much “Bite” the hand that feeds as shove it knuckle deep down it’s throat before flipping it the bile smeared bird.

Picking away at the scabs of stardom and finding delusion, obsession and a deep well of cynicism festering underneath, the contemporary touches never feeling forced or contrived, just …….of its time. It’s another one that pays dividends to not read up on too much beforehand and plays along like a Greek tragedy with a Twitter account at moments.

There’s almost a David Lynchian Echo reverberating throughout that brings to mind other movies( Brian Yuzna’s “Society” was chief for me personally) but it’s far from derivative, Mia Wasikowska’s Agatha,John Cusack’s clinical, cynical self help book author and Evan Bird’s obnoxious li’l fuck of a child star all hold their story threads together but it’s Moore’s raw Powerhouse of a performance that you’ll be remembering come the closing credits.

Another of 2014’s underrated releases was Dan Gilroy’s “Nightcrawler”, more famous for Gyllenhaal’s weight dropping than Box Office ignition, really should have got more arse-seat business. Almost a sub-genre all of it’s own-recession porn, finds our protagonist Louis Bloom searching for a job, any job and stumbling into a blood drenched vocation.

The “Nightcrawler” of title, he prowls the night listening on police scanner for roadside accidents, muggings etc to catch on camera under the “If it bleeds, it leads.” Banner, selling his material to Rene Russo’s cable news manager but as escalation kicks in, so does competition ( Bill Paxton-always welcome) and finds himself taking more creative chances to get the goods.

Played almost to bug-eyed vampiric parody, it’s truly a transformative performance that is put in and Renee Russo’s close to “Over the hill” ball-busting manager channeling more than just an echo of Faye Dunaway in “Network” and Riz Ahmed continuing to impress. In clumsier hands, we’d have a “Network-lite” With morality play trappings but what we get is a rapier-sharp swipe at the Media and our co-dependency but an unblinking stare at what once was the “American Dream” has now become waking nightmare.

Bringing to mind “Rupert Pupkin” in “The King Of Comedy”, social commentary with this much awkward black comedy flirts with being too dark at moments but it’s a steady hand that delivers this bitter a pill and you’d not want to miss a single, uncomfortable moment.

Been meaning to get around to this bad boy for a while now, proper 80’s vibe is making me feel like I’m cheating by not watching it on VHS. To say “They don’t make ’em like this anymore” would be wrong as in the last 18 months we’ve had “Blue Ruin”, “The Guest” and now Jim Mickle has been supping at the 80’s “Kool-Aid” with this little diamond in the rough.

Michael C. Hall’s character awakes to find someone in the process of a spot of home invasion and promptly guns him down. The unarmed man turns out to be the long lost son of a very angry and very handy ex-con (Sam Shepard). To go into any more detail would rob this revenge drama of many of the delights it has to offer.

A fond “Welcome back” to one Don Johnson isn’t pushing the boat out but it’s Jim Mickle’s baby, here again after “Stake Land” and “We Are What We Are” showing that although his hand for quality bloodshed still holds steady, his ability to ratchet up the tension while juggling bursts of dungeon dark humour make him one to keep an eye on for the future as well as the 80’s.