Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed star in ‘Nightcrawler’ (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick / Open Road Films)
“Will this be on television?” asks Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal). “Morning news. If it bleeds, it leads,” replies Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), head of a freelance camera crew who just finished filming a fiery crash on an LA highway in the dramatic thriller Nightcrawler.
Fascinated and inspired by what he witnessed Loder film, Louis decides to start his own freelance business shooting the news, covering car crashes, fires, murders, home invasions, and other chaos in the city. Hiring a homeless young man named Rick (Riz Ahmed) as his driver and navigator, Bloom sets out across Los Angeles at night with a police scanner and video camera to cover the biggest tragedies for a local television morning news team.
News Director Nina Romina (Rene Russo) appreciates his dedication and talented eye for capturing the blood-soaked, grisly realism of L.A. tragedies on camera and Bloom quickly becomes her number one freelancer, covering the biggest and bloodiest news stories for her morning newscasts. As Louis becomes more and more determined to be the best at what he does, the lines between simply covering the horrific stories and helping them become even more sensational blur and eventually disappear due to Bloom’s hunger to get to the story first and obtain coverage no other camera crew can capture.
Riveting and deeply disturbing, Nightcrawler is an intense and extremely dark journey into the madness and sensationalism that is ratings-driven television news. This is an exceptionally compelling film with a mesmerizing performance by Jake Gyllenhaal as Louis Bloom, a completely unethical, immoral, and despicable individual willing to do anything to improve his coverage of local tragedies for the morning news. It’s Gyllenhaal’s best performance of his career. From his wide-eyed stares to his body posture and the precise delivery of Bloom’s dialogue, the movie chronicles the rise of a sociopath to the top of his profession.
Rene Russo gives one of her finest performances in years as Nina, the past-her-prime news director who at first sees Louis as a talented up and coming freelancer but quickly realizes he’s the best at getting her the goriest and most intrusive ratings-winning camera coverage of horrific news stories. Nina’s both drawn to and at times repulsed by Bloom, and the scenes between Gyllenhaal and Russo sizzle with energy and sexual tension.
The production and direction of the film by Dan Gilroy is slick and flawless, capturing vividly the dark and scary side of L.A. at night. The script is rich with crisp dialogue and the action scenes of police chases and shoot-outs are thrilling.
Captivating and unsettling, Nightcrawler is an intense thriller that will have audience both fascinated and horrified by Bloom’s actions and will hopefully garner Gyllenhaal an Oscar nomination for a truly unforgettable performance.
Chloe Grace Moretz and Keira Knightley star in ‘Laggies’ (Photo Courtesy of A24)
We’re just starting to get to that point in the year when studios stop putting out mindless explosion fests and trickle in a few movies they think might garner critical acclaim. Films like Fury, Birdman, and Nightcrawler are all supposed to be in the wheelhouse of critics like myself. And while I enjoy a well-crafted cinematic experience, the movies that really keep me enamored with the industry are smaller and personal ones. Case in point, the new film from director Lynn Shelton, Laggies.
The film follows Megan (Keira Knightley) who is stuck in a rut and realizing that the circle of high school friends she’s remained a part of may not be the crowd for who she wants to be another ten years down the line. Her entire life is being determined by slow, undesired, and unmotivated momentum; whether it’s the looming marriage to her high school sweetheart, Anthony (Mark Webber), or the lack of career ambition. After a shameful discovery about her father (Jeff Garlin) exacerbates the increasingly claustrophobic idea of marriage, Megan finds a way to excuse herself from her own world for a week. She ends up crashing on the floor of Annika, a high school student (Chloë Grace Moretz) she knows only after being the random adult who bought her alcohol at a grocery store (the classic rite of passage for both underage minor and grown-up looking to pay things forward from their own experience).
The movie is confined to this week of self-discovery and the best elements of the movie are the themes of aimlessness, doubt, and realizing the value, or lack thereof, when it comes to holding onto friendships that grew apart long ago. Knightley has always done a good job of exuding melancholic reflection and she makes the character feel genuine. This is more impressive considering some of the cliché and unnecessary elements the screenplay brings to the table.
My only real complaints with the movie are an unnecessary romance between Megan and Annika’s father (Sam Rockwell) and how far Megan lets things go with Anthony considering what’s she’s been learning about herself. There seemed to be a few ways to avoid these pitfalls which were not taken, and perhaps most disappointing of all, these elements seemed to be more about pleasing a test audience than growing organically from the rest of the movie.
However, I’m willing to forgive those trite and sadly expected plot developments because the moments between Megan, Annika, and her friends are unexpectedly charming and lovely. Knightley and Moretz share a wonderful mother/sister-like chemistry and the depiction of high school students is well handled by Shelton and the cast. These are kids most of us should be able to recognize as ourselves, or our friends, at that age. Additionally, Shelton finds a way to make this unlikely friendship not feel as creepy as it probably should. On paper, this idea is a bit odd but it all makes sense on-screen.
So the $51 dollar question, is Laggies a film you should watch? Well, I think that if you are the type of person who likes more intimate character-driven films, especially the kind where the characters are trying to navigate the crossroads they find themselves at, then this is going to resonate with you. It’s definitely one of the few films of 2014 that I’ll be picking up on the home market eventually, as I can see myself re-watching it from time to time. It’s not going to win any major awards but I like it. And really, at the end of the day, there are films you “should” see and films that you want to see. This is the latter, and that’s perfectly fine with me.
GRADE: B
Laggies is rated R for language, some sexual material and teen partying.
Antonio Banderas, Tom Kenny, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbakke, Carolyn Lawrence, and Douglas Lawrence provide the voices of our favorite animated sea creatures in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water directed by Paul Tibbitt from a script by Tibbitt, Stephen Hillenburg, Jonathan Aibel, and Glenn Berger. Paramount Pictures has just released a new trailer for the 2015 animated family comedy featuring SpongeBob heading out of the ocean and onto dry land for another huge adventure.
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water will open in theaters on February 6th, 2015.
Nicole Kidman in ‘Before I Go to Sleep’ (Photo credit: Laurie Sparham / Clarius Entertainment)
Remember Memento? How about 50 First Dates? Exploring the topic of repeated memory loss has been done before in feature films, but Before I Go to Sleep is the first of the lot to actually make the audience wish they’d suffered from the same ailment as the main character after sitting through a screening.
Before I Go to Sleep leaves you longing for short-term memory loss to wipe away the 90 minutes spent watching an R-rated clunker that’s a violent, brutal, and illogical mess, not to mention a complete waste of decent performances by its A-list cast.
If you can make it through the film without nodding off, consider yourself lucky (or over-caffeinated). Adapted from S.J. Watson’s novel by writer/director Roland Joffe, the story is a loosy-goosy, “let’s not follow any rules and what the heck, let’s just throw out all of the events leading up to the last half hour as if they didn’t exist” sort of drama. Before I Go to Sleep is the type of film you walk away from shaking your head and wondering why you stuck it out to the end. Then you realize you couldn’t leave early because you held out hope the film would redeem itself in those final minutes, which, of course, it doesn’t. Plus, the combo of Mark Strong and Colin Firth working against type…or maybe not or maybe they are…forced you into sticking it out to the bitter end.
The story revolves around Christine (Nicole Kidman) who wakes up every morning next to a man she doesn’t know (Colin Firth). Apparently, she was in an accident years earlier, which left her with the inability to create new memories and her thoughtful hubby, Ben, has been filling in her missing memories every morning via photos and post-it notes. She wakes up freaked out, spends the day trying to figure out who she is and how she got in this state, eats dinner with her school teacher husband, and then falls asleep.
Sleep, wake, freak out, understand, go back to sleep, forget everything, and repeat. Day after day, month after month, year after year.
But then into her life comes Dr. Nasch (Mark Strong), a neuro-psychologist who calls her each morning and has her convinced her husband is keeping secrets from her and hasn’t even told the true story about how she came to suffer from dissociative amnesia. Ben says it was a car crash while Dr. Nasch tells her the truth: she was savagely beaten and left for dead, naked in an industrial park near an airport. Why would Ben lie about this detail if he wasn’t somehow involved? And why does he continue to withhold key facts about her life before the accident?
Ben says he loves and cherishes her, and the fact he’s stuck around to repeat her story every day for years places a check mark in the “He’s a good guy and you should believe him” box. But Dr. Nasch is very convincing, urging her to try and recall the truth of what happened that fateful night and to secretly record what she finds out each day on a camera hidden away from Ben. What’s an amnesiac to do?
Of course I won’t give away who did what to whom, but suffice it to say the contrived third act is mind-bogglingly ridiculous. It treats the audience like idiots, wasting a compelling premise and fine performances with a wrap-up that feels like it took an entire day in the theater to get to but, in actuality, was only 90 minutes from the first frame.
A death march would outrace the pace of Before I Go to Sleep, and for some reason, writer/director Joffe is unable to make the lead character, Christine, the least bit sympathetic. Because we don’t care or relate to this woman who should evoke a protective response, the film flounders without a much-needed emotional attachment to hold onto. Plus, there’s the added bonus of Kidman’s Christine seeming to have forgotten the reason why people don’t go walking willy-nilly into a busy street. Why the repeated scenes of Christine nearly being hit by cars? It’s not to throw off the audience as the accidents would be her fault since she forgot to look both ways before walking out into a street.
This isn’t Memento, though you’d be excused for believing it was loosely based on that critically acclaimed film. It’s not even as entertaining as the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler romantic comedy, also about a woman who goes to bed each night with memories and wakes up each morning starting over from scratch. What Before I Go to Sleep is is a good cure for insomnia, and it’s not good for much else.
GRADE: D
Before I Go to Sleep is rated R for some brutal violence and language.
Jake Gyllenhaal delivers one of the best performances of his career in Nightcrawler, a dramatic thriller from writer/director Dan Gilroy. And in this video courtesy of Open Road Films, Gyllenhaal talks about being able to deliver Gilroy’s dialogue and how that was actually his favorite part of making Nightcrawler. Gyllenhaal also discussed the film’s social commentary and a specific scene in which he breaks a mirror.
The Plot:
Nightcrawler is a pulse-pounding thriller set in the nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for work who discovers the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Finding a group of freelance camera crews who film crashes, fires, murder and other mayhem, Lou muscles into the cut-throat, dangerous realm of nightcrawling — where each police siren wail equals a possible windfall and victims are converted into dollars and cents. Aided by Rene Russo as Nina, a veteran of the blood-sport that is local TV news, Lou blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story.
RJ Mitte (Photo Credit: Daniel Martinez Matallana)
RJ Mitte’s been keeping busy since the end of the critically acclaimed series Breaking Bad, working on TV projects as well as film roles. But despite being busy in front of the camera as well as behind the scenes as a producer, he’s making time to work with charitable organizations, including being the spokesperson for the anti-bullying campaign #CutTheBull from Shriners Children’s Hospital. Mitte knows first-hand the effects of being bullied. As a kid, he suffered both verbal abuse and physical abuse to the point where he even had his hand broken, and now he’s determined to help people understand the importance of standing up against bullies. Mitte’s fully aware there’s no way to wipe out bullying completely, but he believes it’s important to address what can be done to help those who are the targets of bullying.
Mitte is the spokesperson for SAG, AFTRA, and Actors’ Equity “I AM PWD” (person with disability) and is a Celebrity Youth Ambassador for United Cerebral Palsy. He’s passionate about speaking out against bullying and in our exclusive interview Mitte said he’s happy it’s now a topic of conversation in wider circles. “It’s great. I find that the amount of people speaking out is increasing and it will always increase, but you’ll always have bullies,” said Mitte. “I’m so happy more and more people are speaking out, and more and more people are standing up. Speaking out is one thing, but you need to stand up; you need to make a difference. You need to go out and show people that there are people with true kindness in the world, that there are people who want to make a difference in the lives of others. That’s the reason why I feel our message is a little bit different from other people’s message because it’s all on you. It’s all about looking at the world with a positive mindset. Bullying will not affect you. It will not change who you are and you can not let other people shape you. You have to stand up because no one wants to be that first person, but if you are that first person standing up you can set the example for so many lives.”
Growing up as a person with a disability, Mitte was an easy target. And while he abhors violence, his Marine grandfather’s advice on fighting back left a lasting impression. “I don’t like to fight. I never fought but as soon as I stood up for myself and someone wanted to fight me, and I started saying, ‘Okay, let’s do this,’ as soon as I would say something like that, they would stop,” explained Mitte. “They do want to fight you, but they don’t want you to fight back. That’s not okay. That’s not okay.”
Mitte also explained that it’s important to consider the lasting effects of bullying and how those who are the targets of verbal or physical abuse need to stay true to themselves and not allow a bully to affect who they are as a person. “You cannot erase a memory, no matter how much you try and no matter how much you want to forget about it and it not be there, it’s there. It will always be there, and that’s what you have to keep in mind: how far do the effects go? As soon as someone infects you with fear, you start acting irrationally. You don’t act on who you are and what you are and then from there, you start making decisions based on that person who picked on you. ‘This is what I’m going to do when I get older. This is what I’m going to be.’ And that’s the thing, you can’t let someone manipulate you into being what you’re not because that original action was not you – that was someone else.”
Mitte says he’ll always be a voice speaking out against bullying and encouraging those who witness bullying in any form to speak out against it. “My main goal is to show people that you can stand up for what you are and who you are and not be manipulated by fear or by other people instilling their fear on you,” said Mitte. “I think it’s very important to give back. I don’t really look at it as giving back because I enjoy what I do, but I try and give back as much as possible. I think everyone should give. That’s the thing…when people of giving back, they think money or taking a week out of your life, but that’s not it. People can give back in everyday life. That’s what people need to realize.”
In addition to being a spokesman against bullying and working with organizations assisting those with disabilities, Mitte’s been busy producing the documentary film Vanished: The Tara Calico Story.
“I’ve been producing the documentary for almost five years now. We’re waiting on the justice system to catch up,” said Mitte. “We might be waiting another five years. I started producing and working with this director Melinda Esquibel, who is now my manager and has been for the last couple of years, I started working with her on this documentary because it was a mutual friend of ours. It was her sister who went missing in 1988 and a picture of her in Port St. Joe, Florida showed up in the early ’90s, she and a young boy were bound and gagged in the back of a van. We started working on this quite a few years ago and we have two interviews left, and we’re about to get those done. We’re working on it. It’s a good story about her disappearance and the people who were involved, and the family and the town that covered it up. It takes place in New Mexico. We’re lucky enough to be a part of this documentary and to help shed truth and light on a very situation. It’s a never-ending thing. We’re always moving forward and in the right direction.”
And as a fan of Breaking Bad, I had to end our interview with one Breaking Bad question. The prequel Better Call Saul is currently in production, but if there were to be a Breaking Bad sequel, what does Mitte believe Junior would be doing 10 years after the show ended? “Oh, god! I don’t know,” answered Mitte, laughing. “It could go quite a few different directions. It all depends on what happens with the prequel. That will also set things in motion in the future. It will vary depending on the situation. But I don’t know. I’m hoping he’s a badass by then. I think that’s all I can hope. I hope that he’s kicking ass, maybe on two feet, maybe on three (with a cane). I can see Junior with a pimp cane.”
Finn Wittrock as Dandy Mott in ‘American Horror Story: Freak Show’ (Photo Credit: Michele K. Short / FX)
You’re not alone if you felt a little warm and fuzzy while watching parts of the fourth episode of FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. “Edward Mordrake: Part 2” delved into the backstory of Elsa and Twisty, and I, for one, never thought I’d feel sympathy and compassion toward either character and yet the writers somehow managed to elicit both emotions.
Twisty’s sad tale explained how a clown who dedicated his life to bringing joy to children wound up a psycho killer, while Elsa’s complex backstory showed she was a victim of sadists (it’s a wonder she’s not completely insane). While episode three was a slight letdown, episode four recovered with a surprisingly emotionally engaging tale.
A Detailed Recap:
Mordrake (Wes Bentley) continues to question the freaks, driven by his visage to find one more pure freak to add to his “unhappy number.” He briefly visits Legless Suzi (Rose Siggins) and Paul the Illustrated Seal (Mat Fraser), but neither deserves to be added to his collection. Legless Suzi was left in a basket at a children’s home and ultimately ended up on the streets. Jealous, she stabbed a man in the legs. He died, and his death inspired her to perform.
Paul wanted to be a performer after spending his youth in dark theaters. He arrived in America during the Depression and couldn’t find work. Ridiculed and laughed at, he decided to create a monster by tatting himself up – with the exception of his face. He left his handsome face alone.
Mordrake rules them out before moving on to Elsa. She’s expecting him and still upset that he vanished after her performance and before they could speak. She’s mistaken him for the manager Madison the fortune teller (Emma Roberts) had predicted would come and make her a star, but she quickly realizes her mistake after seeing Mordrake’s second face and learning it’s not a Halloween prank. She screams at him that she’s not a freak, but he knows better and demands that she tells him about her darkest hour.
Wes Bentley as Mordrake (Photo by Michele K. Short / FX)
Meanwhile, Jimmy and Madison are arguing over whether they should get off the road and go through the woods on foot since they’re out after curfew. Fortunately, they’re in the right place at the right time as one of Twisty’s victims who’s been tied up has managed to get loose and is running down the road in front of Jimmy and Madison.
Twisty catches up to her and throws her over his shoulder, prepared to take her back to his hideout where the young boy and the teenage brother of the trick-or-treater (he was kidnapped in episode three) are tied up. Jimmy follows at a safe distance to see if he can save her, and Madison – reluctantly – goes after him.
Back at the carnival, Elsa attempts to flirt and charm Mordrake, but he says he’s not a man anymore. His visage wants her misery, her truth, her darkness, and he won’t leave without it. She tells her tale of her time in Berlin in 1932 when you could have any deviance you wanted. Elsa was an S&M mistress, clad in black leather but with a rule that none of her clients could touch her.
“No one puts on a show better than I do,” says Elsa. She began to attract clients as well as an audience who watched as she tortured men who were into twisted sexual fantasies. Elsa tells Mordrake she traded away her humanity “trick by trick” until she was nothing but a ghost. Her story ended before she discussed how she lost her legs, and Mordrake demanded she continues.
Back in the woods, our would-be heroes are caught by Dandy (Finn Wittrock) before they can run for help after figuring out Twisty (John Carroll Lynch) is the serial killer the town’s been hunting. “Time for the real Halloween show to begin,” Dandy says, laughing.
At the carnival, Elsa continues with her sordid story. She believed she was starring in a porn film until she realized her drinks were drugged and that she didn’t have a co-star. She was left powerless from the drugs, but not out of it enough to not feel the pain or to erase her memories of what happened next. She was tied down and her legs were cut off while the camera rolled.
The snuff film ended with the film crew leaving her for dead on the bed to bleed out. One of her clients – a soldier – saved her by rushing in the minute they left, an act Elsa will never forgive him for. The film was passed around and she was a star, but her career was over. Elsa tells Mordrake that she has beautiful legs, and now she’s ready for him to take her life. She begs him to do it when all of a sudden, Mordrake hears music playing far away. It’s Dandy in the distance putting on his crazy Halloween show for Twisty’s tied-up victims.
Dandy’s on stage welcoming them to the greatest show on earth. Madison is laid out in a box, and Dandy attempts the famous magician’s trick of sawing her in half. Jimmy somehow works his hands-free and hits Dandy. Twists claps, and Jimmy tells everyone to run. Twisty tackles Jimmy while everyone else escapes, and as he’s just about to put a knife through his chest, Mordrake appears and says, “Don’t stop now. We came for a show.”
Madison tells the others to run while she leads Dandy away from them. He trips and screams that she’s ruined his Halloween.
Mordrake is fascinated by Twisty and tells him to remove his mask. His mouth is horribly misshapen, with his jaw barely attached to his skull. Although he has a very difficult time speaking, Mordrake tells him to do his best. Twisty recalls that in 1943 he was a special children’s clown. The kids loved him, and he looked like a normal clown in a clean, white costume. But while the children loved him, the dwarves despised him. They were horribly mean to him, even convincing him that the children were accusing him of lewd behavior and had called the cops to take him to jail. Twisty was dropped on his head as a child and as a result wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and so he believed everything the dwarves were telling him.
The dwarves drove him out of their carnival, and then the rumors spread quickly around the carny circuit, forcing him to leave behind his work as a carny clown. He returned home to Jupiter to live at his now-deceased mother’s house. There, he believed he could make the kids happy by turning garbage into toys. However, the toy store proprietor laughed at his inventions and accused him of being the twisted type who does things to children. That enraged Twisty, who screamed that he was a good person before heading home and putting a shotgun in his mouth. He lived, but the wound was grievous and disturbing looking. Looking at his bandaged lower face in the mirror, he drew on a smile.
The misunderstood clown couldn’t even get work at the freak show (Jimmy turned him away). Twisty tells Mordrake that all he was trying to do was save the kids from the evil, mean freaks who were stealing them away. He created a funny show for the kidnapped boy, killed his parents as they were probably mean to him, and even kidnapped a teenage girl to be his pretty babysitter. His story was pitiful and Mordrake confessed that for the first time in history, his demon face had wept. Twisty’s the one Mordrake needs for his collection, stabbing him to death and adding him to his collection of dead freaks. After death, Twisty’s face is restored as he’s warmly welcomed by Mordrake’s group.
Dandy arrives back at the hideout and takes the mask off Twisty’s dead body. Putting it on, he’s now the new Twisty (watch out Jupiter!). He hears sirens getting closer and leaves before being able to do anything to Jimmy. Once the cops arrive, neither Jimmy nor Madison are able to describe the real face of the clown who escaped. Twisty’s dead but Dandy’s on the loose, and the cops are calling both Jimmy and Madison heroes for saving all the kidnap victims. Jimmy immediately tells the cops that the real hero is Meep who didn’t deserve to die in jail. Someone’s going to pay for the death of Meep, says Jimmy.
Jimmy and Madison return to the freak show, where everyone is eating breakfast. Madison tells Elsa Jimmy is the hero and that he caught the killer and saved everyone. Jimmy lets the gang know that Mordrake claimed his freak.
In a surprising twist, the townspeople drive up to the carnival and Elsa thinks it’s to run them out. A man asks for Jimmy and thanks him for saving his son and their town, and everyone wants to shake his hand. The little trick-or-treater whose teenage brother was kidnapped gives Jimmy homemade brownies, and soon all the townspeople are shaking hands with the freaks, giving them homemade treats and embracing them as people. Elsa’s smiling, the freaks are smiling, the townspeople are accepting the group for who they are, and Elsa invites everyone to buy a ticket to their grand performance that night at the big top.
Inside the tent, Elsa tells the Siamese twins that there are changes to the set list (they’ve been demoted to a warm-up act). Just as the set list is being discussed, Spalding (Denis O Hare) shows up and says he’s a talent scout. The show’s sold out but Elsa says she can find him a seat.
Dandy returns home with the clown’s toothy smile covering his lower face. He has a knife and the maid tells him Halloween is over and to take the clown outfit off. She insults him repeatedly and he slashes her across the neck. She falls to the floor, dead. He slowly smiles and then chuckles to himself before turning thoughtful.
The Bottom Line:
The townspeople accepting the ‘freaks’ as equals was an unexpected and jarring twist, but one that actually made sense to the overall story. With Twisty’s death and Dandy’s elevation to the role of lead psycho clown, the plot from here on out will most likely take a turn that’s less creep show/freak show and more about “freaks” who physically appear average or normal but are mentally deeply disturbed. Twisty loved children, but Dandy loves no one but himself, and the death toll may escalate with him now donning the hideous smiling mask.
Once again, the acting was first-rate in this American Horror Story: Freak Show episode. Evan Peters is emerging as one of the season’s stand-outs, and Jessica Lange’s Elsa is the most interesting character she’s played over American Horror Story’s four seasons. Episode four didn’t spend much time with Sarah Paulson’s Siamese twins and Kathy Bates was completely missing from the action, but there was a lot of content packed in this second half of a two-parter and the presence of Paulson and Bates’ characters weren’t really missed.
The poster for A24’s A Most Violent Year is deceiving. It makes the New York City of the film look calm and peaceful, in direct contrast to the movie’s title and synopsis. Written and directed by J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), the dramatic thriller stars Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, David Oyelowo, Alessandro Nivola, and Albert Brooks.
A24 will release it in LA and NY on December 31st followed by a wider release in January.
The Plot:
A Most Violent Year is a searing crime drama set in New York City during the winter of 1981, statistically the most dangerous year in the city’s history. The story plays out within a maze of rampant political and industry corruption plaguing the streets of a city in decay.
J.C. Chandor’s third feature examines one immigrant’s determined climb up a morally crooked ladder, where simmering rivalries and unprovoked attacks threaten his business, family, and – above all – his own unwavering belief in the righteousness of his path. With A Most Violent Year, Chandor journeys in a bold new direction, toward the place where best intentions yield to raw instinct and where we are most vulnerable to compromise what we know to be right.
Kirk Acevedo as Ramse and Aaron Stanford as Cole in ’12 Monkeys’ (Photo by: Ben Mark Holzberg / Syfy)
Syfy’s unveiled a new trailer for the sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys which will premiere on January 16, 2015 at 9pm ET/PT. The new series is based on the film of the same name and stars Aaron Stanford, Amanda Schull, Noah Bean, and Kirk Acevedo. Natalie Chaidez (Heroes) is the executive producer and showrunner, with Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett writing the pilot and also serving as executive producers.
Friday Night Lights‘ Jeffrey Reiner directed the pilot.
The Plot:
From Atlas Entertainment, the producers of the original theatrical film, with Universal Cable Productions, comes a thought-provoking adventure drama that tells the story of Cole (Stanford), a time traveler from the post-apocalyptic future in a high-stakes race against the clock. Utilizing a dangerous and untested method of time travel, he travels from the future to the present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will eventually decimate the human race. Exploring themes of fate, destiny, love, and the possibility of second chances, “12 Monkeys” takes place in two separate times: the apocalyptic future (2043) and the present.
In 2014, a plague is released — an airborne virus so deadly it causes the death of 93.6 percent of Earth’s human population. Does Cole have the power to change the course of history and save the lives of billions, or is mankind bound by fate?
Mistress of the Dark Elvira plays host to four Funny or Die Halloween-themed sketches. Up first, Jerry O’Connell and Rebecca Romijn are on the hunt for the perfect haunted house. Next, a stoner thinks the handyman is there to kill her.
And dozens of cameras capture absolutely nothing spooky in “Found Footage.” The last video titled “Senior Slasher” finds an elderly man visiting a sorority house on Halloween with unexpected results.
