Nightcrawler – Bitch Flicks

Academy Awards 2015 Theme Week Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Academy Awards 2015 Theme Week here.

Nightcrawler: Centering the White Fear Narrative by Lisa Bolekaja

Bloom is a lonely man who scrapes by on the underbelly of society. His white male privilege allows him to steal, beat up people, and sabotage competitors without fear of repercussions from the police. As the renowned comedian Paul Mooney would say, Bloom has “the complexion for the protection.”

Female Purity Is Some Bullshit: My Problem With Ida by Ren Jender

Religious devotion is a tricky quality to depict in any medium: so many of us have seen piety as hypocrisy both in film and in life that we’re prepared to laugh at or to dismiss deeply held religious beliefs onscreen. In work made for mostly secular audiences, filmmakers who want to show deeply religious characters have to answer the question: if piety isn’t a joke, what exactly is it?

Finding Vivian Maier: The Greatest Art Mystery of the 20th Century by Rachel Redfern

However, Vivian Maier–besides being an obvious genius–remains a mystery. Finding Vivian Maier follows the narrative mystery as we pursue the reclusive and eccentric Vivian (or her personas of Ms. Meier, Mayer, Meyer, Meyers, Maier) across the US and through the streets of the 1950s and 1960s, attempting to discover more of a woman who is still unknowable.

Sexism in Disney’s Into The Woods by Jackson Adler

It seems Disney is saying that The Baker’s Wife is a “fallen woman,” and that it is making a firm decision on how it wants the audience to interpret the affair that occurred. This is made more problematic by how the affair was shot and choreographed. In the film, Cinderella’s Prince pins The Baker’s Wife against a tree and kisses her. There is nowhere for her to escape, even if she wanted to.

A Wild Woman Alone by Ren Jender

The filmmakers (director Jean-Marc Vallée and screenwriter Nick Hornby) profess to be fans of Strayed’s work, but they were apparently so busy patting themselves on the back for not making this story of a woman alone into some kind of boy-meets-girl rom-com that they forgot to include everything else that makes the book distinctive.

Does Hating Foxcatcher Mean I Hate Men? by Robin Hitchcock

Foxcatcher is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.

Gone Girl: How to Create the Perfect Female Villain by Alize Emme

Kudos to the 20th Century Fox exec who decided to market Gone Girl (2014) as a great date movie. This is not a date movie. This is a horror story about the sensationalized pitfalls of a doomed marriage.

American Sniper: We Can Kill It for You Wholesale by Lisa Bolekaja

This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.

The Alchemy of Still Alice by Lisa Rosman

What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking.

Gone Girl: Scathing Gender Commentary While Reinforcing Rape and Domestic Violence Myths by Megan Kearns

I wish I could say that Gone Girl is a subversive feminist film exposing myriad gender biases and generating a much-needed dialogue on rape and domestic violence. Yet it reinforces dangerous myths rather than shattering them.

Big Hero 6: Woman Up by Andé Morgan

The female team members are often shown as being more capable then the males, both as combatants and as scientists. Gogo Tomago, and Honey Lemon, are two bright, young scientists who exhibit strength of mind, body, and will. During a training montage, Gogo uses the phrase “woman up” to encourage one of her teammates to do better. This was a great, subversive line because it flowed naturally from the character and the context, rather than seeming like a forced injection of faux-feminism.

Child-Eating Parents in Into the Woods and Every Children’s Story Ever by Katherine Murray

Your dad is an ogre or giant, your mom is a witch, and both of them want to kill you. Welcome to your fairy tale life.

Birdman Is Black Swan for Boys by Robin Hitchcock

Birdman bears striking similarities to Black Swan, both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage.

Am I The Only Person Incredibly Bored With This Awards Season? by Robin Hitchcock

Only one of the Best Actress nominations is from one of the Best Picture nominees, whereas four of the five Best Actor nominations are for Best Picture-nominated films. As I wrote in 2013, this trend suggests that movies with significant roles for women aren’t considered as great or important by the Academy. This year, it is even worse: four of the five Best Actresses were in movies not nominated outside of the acting categories.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Suck by Katherine Murray

So, you just saw a terrible movie and you want to tell the world about it – not so fast. How we frame our discussions about sucky movies depends on who’s listening, and whether we’ve got common ground.

Selma Backlash: Is It a Gender Issue? by Lauren Byrd

So what can women do about these smear campaigns directed at films by women? Go see films directed by women, support these filmmakers any way you can, whether it’s by filling theaters or participating in social media campaigns. We may not be able to change Academy voters’ minds, but we can continue drawing attention to gender disparities and focus on the positive changes.

Doing The Extraordinary in Two Days, One Night by Ren Jender

Women in films are even less likely to engage in this kind of dispirited struggle. Instead an actress usually plays the wife, mother, or girlfriend whose job it is to be “strong” and rub the hero’s back while he battles against his own obstacles. She talks reassuringly to him whenever he doubts himself, the exact same way Sandra’s husband does with her here.

What’s Missing from the Gone Girl Debate? Privilege! by Natalie Wilson

Gone Girl has been called misogynist, an amalgamation of negative stereotypes of women, a text that perpetuates rape culture, and a narrative that fuels Men’s Rights Acivtists’ ugly depiction of the gender equality feminists are trying to achieve. Yet, what is missing from the discussion is a focus on privilege.

Two Days, One Night: Marion Cotillard’s Insight From the New York Film Festival by Paula Schwartz

Cotillard did triple duty at the New York Film Festival Sunday to promote Two Days, One Night, which had its U.S. premiere. (The film is Belgium’s submission for best foreign film.) At 1, in jeans and a casual but chic top, Cotillard participated in a Q&A for a standing-room crowd. At 3 she changed into Dior and walked across the street to Alice Tully Hall and joined the Dardenne Brothers as they introduced ‘Two Days, One Night’ to a sold out audience, and afterward participated in a Q&A.

Where Is the Female Version of Whiplash? by Katherine Murray

I’d really like to see more introspective films about the human experience where the humans experiencing things look like me.

Boyhood (Feat. Girlhood) by Robin Hitchcock

Let’s face it, Boyhood is a gimmick movie. Richard Linklater sporadically filmed it over a twelve-year period so we could see the child actors in it actually grow-up. If you loved Michael Apted’s Up series but wanted more fiction and less wait, Boyhood is for you. But if you just love coming-of-age dramas, I’m not sure I can recommend this one.

Selma Is Now by Nijla Mu’min

In so many ways, this film reflects the current moment, while also highlighting how things have and have not changed since the King family and their allies risked their lives to secure rights for all. Scenes in the film will jolt you into the present: watching Jimmie Lee Jackson’s mother grieve in 1965 for the son she will never see again made me immediately think of the family of Tamir Rice, the young black boy who was murdered by police officers this year for toting a toy gun in Ohio. ‘Selma’ is now.

The Theory of Everything: A “Great Man” From The First Wife’s Point of View by Ren Jender

Do great women exist? The film industry still hasn’t decided. We had Frida a dozen years ago and that bio-pic about Margaret Thatcher (like Frida, directed by a woman) from a few years back–which won Meryl Streep an Oscar, but tepid reviews along with a completely irredeemable main character kept me from seeing it. Usually the women in the “great man” films are great only by osmosis, because they married or otherwise provide emotional–and other–support to great men. The actresses who play these roles win Oscars too: they make the “supporting” category a literal one. The Theory of Everything, the new bio-pic about astrophysicist (and best-selling author) Stephen Hawking seemed like it might be different since it’s based on the book written by the great man’s first wife, Jane.

Selma Shows Why We Need More Black Women Filmmakers by Janell Hobson

DuVernay has said in interviews that when she inherited Paul Webb’s screenplay, she altered it to decenter its focus on President Lyndon B. Johnson (even though the controversy surrounding the film managed to once again re-center the story on white male power and its portrayal). Rather than criticize the director for shifting her gaze away from whiteness (or for getting certain historical details wrong), it may be more useful to consider the difference a woman behind the camera—and a Black woman in particular—brings to a motion picture.

The Imitation Game and Citizenfour: Secrets Then and Now by Ren Jender

Sometimes I wish the mainstream film industry would stop making movies about queers. The rare times that a queer person is allowed to be the main character in one of its movies, as in this one, he (almost always a “he”), like the rare main character of color is usually unrealistically isolated from the community he comes from, a trope fostered from before Stonewall to the ’90s to now: we are oh-so-tragic and oh-so-alone.

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke Praise Patricia Arquette’s Performance in Boyhood by Paula Schwartz

Arquette, who is terrific as Olivia, turns in a nuanced and complex performance that is vanity free. We watch her age perceptively and slowly as her character gains wisdom but still falters. In other words, she’s the kind of three-dimensional woman we rarely see in American films.

Captain Uhura Snub: The Politics of Ava DuVernay’s Oscar by Brigit McCone

It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting Star Trek in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.

The Boxtrolls: Better Than Its “Man in a Dress” Jokes by Ren Jender

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

Colleen Attwood’s Costumes in Disney’s Into The Woods by Jackson Adler

Attwood’s designs are stunning, but they also highlight the discussions of gender roles and racial relationships in America.

The Academy’s White Noise: Silencing the Lions by Leigh Kolb

I said that I had hoped this year would be different. However, when the Academy announced its nominations, I was not surprised.

The Grand Budapest Hotel and Wes Anderson Fatigue by Robin Hitchcock

And the worst of it is that awards recognition will probably just send Wes Anderson further up his own ass, if such a thing is even possible. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to see his subsequent films until I hear that he’s finally tried something different.

The Internal Monologue of Wild: Lone Woman Walking, Lone Woman Writing by Elizabeth Kiy

In a film, as in real life, with no language to defend herself, the lone woman is a suspect. She gets stared at and scowled at and catcalled and often told that she’s making herself vulnerable, or taking unnecessary risks. In short, our culture says she’s asking for what she gets. A woman alone is unloved, uncared for and written off. In Wild, the film based on Strayed’s memoir of her months solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, she has several uncomfortable and frankly terrifying encounters.

Feminist Highlights and Fails at the 2015 Oscars by Megan Kearns

This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.

Moments of Sincerity in Otherwise Endless Oscars by Josh Ralske

What stood out were what seemed like genuine heartfelt moments. John Legend and Common delivered a spirited performance of “Glory” from snubbed director Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and an equally impassioned acceptance speech when they won, notable for its intersectionality. They brought up Hong Kong’s fight for democracy, Charlie Hebdo, and America’s shameful prison-industrial complex. “Selma is now” is a message many need to hear, including their liberal Hollywood audience.

‘Nightcrawler’: Centering the White Fear Narrative

This repost by Lisa Bolekaja appears as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Two Things:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal will be nominated for an Oscar.

2. Nightcrawler is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.

Bloom and Rick on the scene (Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed)

Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a thief, a liar, and from my observations, a man on the spectrum of some form of neurodiversity. Obsessive compulsive perhaps, or living with some form of high functioning autism. (It was fascinating to watch Gyllenhaal’s face transmit so much dubious thinking behind those intense detail-oriented eyes.) Bloom is a lonely man who scrapes by on the underbelly of society. His white male privilege allows him to steal, beat up people, and sabotage competitors without fear of repercussions from the police. As the renowned comedian Paul Mooney would say, Bloom has “the complexion for the protection.”

Bloom lives in what appears to be an average working-class L.A. neighborhood (his basic studio apartment is as meticulous as his choice of words when speaking), but his only source of income and his only real viable skill is stealing from others. To the casual observer, his freshly pressed clothes, average white guy looks, and cheap car render him almost invisible. He is perceived to be a normal white person. And this perception of “normal” is crucial to his eventual rise in the world of crime journalism—nightcrawling, capturing horrific images of the worst of humanity and selling them to the highest TV network bidder. The bloodier the images the better. These “stringer” clips of film can bring in hundreds and upwards of thousands of dollars depending on who captures the images first and uploads them to the TV station the fastest. The mantra of “if it bleeds it leads” can now be given a dollar value. And the clock is always ticking.

Bloom stumbles across a car accident on the freeway one late night, and for some inexplicable reason, decides to pull over and watch the rescue of a woman from her burning car. As some police officers try to save the woman, a freelance stringer arrives (Bill Paxton in a small but compelling role) and begins filming the rescue operation. Bloom is introduced to his new obsession, TV crime news, and in his compulsive fashion, steals a high-end bike and sells it to get his hands on a cheap video recorder. A TV news starter kit.

Boss Lady. TV producer Nina Romino (Rene Russo) showing Bloom the ropes.

Bloom sells his first piece of shaky footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a jaded veteran TV news producer who works at the lowest-rated TV station in Los Angeles. Nina tells Bloom that he has a good eye, and with this bit of encouragement (and his intense obsessive nature) Bloom sets off to take crime journalism by storm. He buys a police scanner and even hires his first crew member (Riz Ahmed in a heartbreaking role as a marginalized Guy Friday just desperate enough to endure Bloom’s reckless behavior).

Rick (Riz Ahmed) enduring the Mad Hatter that is Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Bloom is heckled by Paxton for being slow to big stories, and this disrespect spurns Bloom to be the best in the biz. Being the best means manipulating the raw footage before Nina gets her hands on it. The film moves into even darker territory when the quest to impress Nina and one up Paxton taps into Bloom’s deceitful nature: he now begins staging crime scenes by moving bodies, rearranging evidence, and omitting images to play up white fears of crime from the urban areas creeping into lily white suburbs. Nina even tells Bloom that the best stories are “A woman running down the street with her throat cut.” The implication here is a preference for white women because they illicit the most sympathy from white mainstream audiences. White news producers play up the recycled white woman in distress angle so often that it has become banal today.

Bloom creates the perfect angle to spin a story.

It’s a narrative used since the early 17^th century. This narrative provides high viewership numbers, and Nina needs high ratings or she will be sacked by her bosses. Nina is unapologetic about framing whiteness as the center of the universe and churning out fear-based stories that disrupt the sanctity of white comfort. She is so apathetic about it, that she appears to dismiss how this narrative implicates her in upholding white supremacy, patriarchy, and the erroneous belief that whiteness is the be all to end all. This makes the film brutally honest. It does not sugarcoat what all non-white Americans understand from jump: the implicit bias of the American mainstream media. The centering of whiteness and white comfort are the only stories worth telling and protecting. And I applaud that honesty in this movie. It made me angry too since I am someone who comes from the margins of society trying not to be marginalized on a daily basis. At the same time, I give serious props to the writer/director Dan Gilroy. He gives it to you straight with no chaser. As much as I grew to loathe Bloom, I was still compelled to see him through to the end. He’s a real punch in the gut. And Gyllenhaal is simply brilliant in his portrayal of a man I want to see burn for his transgressions.

Bloom having a moment after failing to please Nina with great footage.

Eventually Bloom films the biggest story of his new career, a home invasion in an exclusive suburb, with plenty of blood, guns, and bodies, including a missing baby. He arrives at the scene before the police and enters the home filming every gory detail, including the murderers who escaped before Bloom entered the house. He withholds the footage of the killers and their SUV license plate. He has plans to keep the story going by following the so-called “Horror House” murderers and setting them up for a bigger news story– a future staged police shootout he will capture on film. He will control and manipulate white public fear. Because he can.

Bloom capturing the story of his life inside the “Horror House”, and manipulating it.

When Bloom shows the pre-edited Horror House footage to Nina, I swear her face appears orgasmic as she savors every bullet hole, and every inch of blood splatter. It seriously looks like she’s getting the best sex of her life. Nina calls in the newsroom lawyer to see how much she can get away with showing on live TV. As long as the victim’s faces are pixelated and the home address isn’t given out, it’s a go.

This move spins the story into a new direction with the appearance of the police who want to confiscate all the footage of the Horror House crime scene. Nina sends them to Bloom’s home, and no-nonsense Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) is determined to solve this case. From the moment she enters Bloom’s apartment, Detective Fronteiri knows he’s a conniving liar.

Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) has no chill. She sees through Bloom’s b.s.

Later, when Bloom sets into motion the tragic events that will net him his biggest stringer payday yet, Detective Fronteiri has to concede that she can never prove Bloom’s willful obfuscation, but she lets him know that she is aware of his deceit. He withheld crucial evidence to make a name for himself. And there are chalk lines on the ground for unnecessary deaths because of this deceit. In her eyes we see that she understands that he is controlling the false narrative of events. He has painted himself as a white victim who feared for his life and safety, and only called the police when he thought some big bad Latinos were following him. In reality, he planned to capitalize on the script he had pre-written for others to play out, including the Latino bad guys. He is the puppet master who pulls the strings. Detective Fronteiri knows this but is unable to take Bloom down. And Bloom gets to prosper in the end and continue nightcrawling with a brand new crew of underlings who have no idea that he has sociopathic tendencies. He just looks like a clean cut articulate white man with ambition. Y’know, the good guy.

The core story of Nightcrawler is how the media, TV news in particular, controls and manipulates the cultural discourse that portrays whiteness and white privilege as tangible things to be protected in America. Whiteness takes preeminence over non-white individuals and cultures. Non-white individuals in news stories are always seen as the scary Other, disrupting the comfort of good white folks–especially good white folks who live within high income zip codes. Fear-based media sells and it goes hand-in-hand with the threat of white comfort. Any challenge to the white comfort narrative is an assault on the perception that whiteness is the norm. Challenges to that white comfort norm are often rendered meaningless and worse, pathological. Look at real life TV news. Black Americans like Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner et al, are victims of police violence, violent anti-Black citizens, majority white jurors with irrational fears of Black skin, and the racist court of public opinion that puts Black victims on trial with immediate character assassinations. This violence done to Black Americans is used to uphold the sanctity of white comfort, and the delusions that white privilege perpetuates. Nothing in the media is happenstance. It is created, shaped, edited, and shared on television and the internet to protect a perceived white normality. All hail Hydra, darkies be damned.

Recent cartoon depicting the irrational and dehumanizing fear whites have of Black bodies. #MikeBrown

Perceptions of fear-based news do not match reality. Recently, Rudy Giuliani (in a television debate with Professor Michael Eric Dyson) tried to conflate Black-on-Black crime as an excuse to ignore state sanctioned violence on Black bodies, many of whom are children. He failed to mention white-on-white crime, or how most violent crimes are perpetuated by loved ones people already know. He misused facts to be obtuse and to derail the #BlackLivesMatter conversation on social media, once again centering the white fear narrative, and painting Black people for the zillionth time as the monstrous Other, the boogie man that has to be kept in check by more police crackdowns on Blackness. He became part of the media-created frenzy used to frighten good suburban white folk. The perception he tried to paint didn’t match the reality of the discussion. Much like the TV producer Nina, when faced with a counter-narrative that didn’t match the story she was trying to sell, Giuliani stuck to his erroneous script to fan the flames of white centered fear. Truth is more fucked up than fiction.

The power dynamics between Bloom and Nina is an engaging interplay of sexual tension, and sexual manipulation. At the start of the film, Bloom is Nina’s subordinate, her little free-lance worker bee. Halfway through there’s a shift in the relationship, not quite equal, but Nina does treat him like a colleague. Bloom wants Nina sexually, and when he’s done his painstaking research on her career failures and her desperate need to keep her job, he calculates that he is worth more to her professionally than she lets on and uses this truth to pressure her into a date, and soon after, a sexual relationship.

Boss Lady still in charge. Angle framed so that Bloom has to look up at Nina.

Not equals, but Bloom impresses TV news producer Nina with his work ethic.

Power Dynamic shift: Nina realizes her new stringer has demands. Low angle framed so she appears to look up at Bloom.

Nina coerced into a dinner date she didn’t want to keep Bloom’s stringer hits.

One reading of this sexual coercion can be viewed as blackmail and harassment. But Rene Russo imbues Nina with a calculated agency that can also be interpreted as a woman who also knows her worth to Bloom, and uses his desire for her to get what she wants. I also sense that Nina actually finds Bloom attractive, especially when he makes demands of her. The same sexual look she gives bloody images is the same look she gives Bloom when he tries to dominate her. A lesser script would’ve used this tension as a subplot for Nina to rise above Bloom’s coercion. Instead, Nina concedes, has an off-screen relationship with him that we don’t see, and it is a stunning tête-à-tête to witness. It may very well gain Rene Russo her own Supporting Actor nod come Oscar season.

Nightcrawler is a wonderful respite from the big budget tent-pole films dominating the cinema. Original, daring, infuriating, and honest about ugly truths, I expect Jake Gyllenhaal to see his name on the Best Actor Oscar Ballot. He might even walk away with that gold statuette. And I would applaud him for it.

Jake Gyllenhaal, this film makes up for “Prince of Persia.” Expect to be nominated for an Oscar.

Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and was named an Octavia E. Butler Scholar by the Carl Brandon Society. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″ (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). An associate member of the Horror Writers Association, and a former Film Independent Fellow. She is a profesional agitator on Twitter @LisaBolekaja