Jake Gyllenhaal is a magnetic onscreen force; everything else melts into the background during his close-ups. His ‘look’ has a beautiful sadness that lends its self to disaffected, slightly unhinged characters. He tends to pick subversive films where the disaffected and the unhinged are the heroes because the supposedly upstanding members of society running the system
One of the most entertaining performances of this weekend’s Tony Awards was of Jake Gyllenhaal and Sean Hayes singing A Whole New World from Aladdin — and almost nobody saw it. While the ceremony was filled with an action-packed schedule, Gyllenhaal and Hayes took to the stage for their bit of impromptu karaoke during the
In Demolition Jake Gyllenhaal puts out a remarkable performance as bereaved executive Davis Mitchell looking for relief when there is none in site. Driven to the edge of insanity by the sudden death of his wife, we witness his breakdown. Actually, we witness his breakdown in spades. Unlike other on-screen insanities, he does not melt
Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild, Dallas Buyers Club, and Café de Flore) has created another nearly perfect film. And he helped Jake Gyllenhaal, who has learned the value of Quebec’s gifted filmmakers, put in his strongest performance, outpacing even Nightcrawler. Bryan Sipe’s screenplay about a business executive transformed by the accidental death of his wife
Jake Gyllenhaal has found a sympathetic artistic partner in a second Quebec filmmaker, Jean-Marc Vallée, in Demolition. Gyllenhaal’s two films with Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners and Enemy) showed how far he was willing to go beyond the mainstream to find richly meaningful projects. Demolition takes him even further. It’s a stunning piece about Davis Mitchell, a
An almost fatally derivative fight flick is saved by a key performance and some good old on-screen fight hokum. This boxing tale splashes the latest hi-tech boxing sequences in front of the audience in no holds barred graphic violence but the film is saved by one key performance. Twelve year old Oona Lawrence punches through
A flighty but spectacular walk on the mean streets of the new media. Having written the screenplay for “The Bourne Legacy” and other hits, Dan Gilroy apparently decided to take the plunge and try his hand at directing. His debut with “Nightcrawler” may be one of the most spectacularly successful first efforts seen for some
Jake Gyllenhaal ‘s superb performance as a morally challenged TV news cameraman is pure minimalist intensity. His character Lou Bloom is fascinated by true crime and haunts scenes around LA. Bloom takes his cues from the news videographers he sees vying for the most graphic footage at crime and accident sites. He realises that taking up