Nightcrawler (2013)

Grimly funny and deeply unsettling, this is a masterful crime drama that dabbles with the blackest comedy imaginable. 

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) goes into business selling video footage of crime scenes to a TV network. He also has designs on their news editor, Nina (Rene Russo). But his work takes him into some extreme situations that reveal his amoral ruthlessness. 

The film expertly juggles various themes. There are the ethics of journalism’s involvement in personal tragedies, and questions about voyeurism. There’s also a brilliant strand of corporate satire, as Louis tutors and controls his assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), lecturing him on business strategy and career advancement. It amuses and appals at the same time, because Louis seems simultaneously so utterly deranged and yet brilliant. 

It’s such an intelligent and well-paced film that you are immediately swept up into the protagonist’s murky world. Nothing you could add or remove would make it any better.

The Intern (2015)

Comedy drama by Nancy Meyers, with interesting adjustments to the same formula she used for Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated. 

Robert De Niro is Ben, a 70-year-old retired widow who goes to work for an internet fashion business run by the brilliant young entrepreneur Jules (Anne Hathaway). He’s smart, wise and generous, and as her unlikely intern he eases her stress – helping her become more efficient in the office. Ultimately, he helps her with every aspect of her life – from childcare to marriage guidance. 

As always with Meyers, it’s an aspirational film obsessively focused on wealthy people and how they live. There are lovingly presented interiors of huge homes and office spaces where everything is new and expensive. The sun-dappled streets of New York also look immaculate (Meyers has a distinctive lighting style). There’s not a hint of true urban living, just as there’s virtually no one who isn’t white, rich and successful. This was made for people of a certain age and with a certain value system. 

It's slightly better than those two previous films, however, because the parts played by De Niro and Hathaway are well written, nicely observed and persuasively performed. But Rene Russo is oddly underused as the masseuse that Ben falls for. And a plot thread about Jules’ mother fizzles out completely after a silly interlude in which Ben and his colleagues break into her mother’s house to delete an e-mail sent to her in error. The other male characters are all awkward and self-consciously drawn. It’s as if an old person wanted to describe what young people are like. The strangest section comes in a hotel room scene (that seems to recall Lost in Translation) when Jules cries because she doesn’t want to be buried alone and the saintly Ben says she can be buried next to him and his former wife. It’s unclear whether this is meant to be touching or funny. I found it a little creepy. 

Despite and because of all of its jarring superficiality, The Intern is fascinating. Nancy Meyers is a highly skilled filmmaker, so it’s a shame she gets distracted by fancy kitchens.

Two for the Money (2005)

Extremely unusual drama

Al Pacino plays a charismatic gambling addict who has built a career advising other gamblers on which way to bet on American football games. He meets Matthew McConaughey, who is so talented at selecting winners that he gets it right 80% of the time. Meanwhile, Rene Russo plays Pacino’s wife, who forms part of a complicated love triangle with the two men. 

It works on lots of levels. It’s primarily a study of the relationship between the two men. But it’s also about the psychology of gambling and addiction. 

The tone is peculiar. Parts of the film feel like a comedy without jokes. There’s also a homoerotic subtext, with McConaughey’s rippling, sweaty muscles often displayed in close proximity to the adoring Pacino. 

I found it hugely watchable because the three main performances were so strong. It seemed initially trashy but acquired a kind of depth as it progressed.

Ransom (1996)

Thriller in which Mel Gibson and Rene Russo star as the wealthy parents of a boy kidnapped by Gary Sinise and his gang. Rather than pay the $2 million, Gibson's character takes matters into his own hands and creates a bounty for the kidnapper. 

It’s taut if trashy, and it keeps you engaged. Russo and Sinese are watchable, as always, but Gibson is oddly overwrought. It’s partly the character – he plays a loose cannon reckless enough to take the ransom process off-piste and gamble his son’s life in the process – but it’s partly just his odd acting. 

There’s a sort of theme about macho behaviour, with the two male characters trying to dominate each other, but it’s not entirely believable. Gibson simply isn’t convincing as a dad or husband, and he has remarkably little chemistry with Russo. In fact, his character comes across as a total weirdo. (What kind of parent thinks he knows more about kidnap strategy than the FBI?) A plot thread about him having lied to his wife promised to take the film in a more interesting direction – i.e., with the criminal exploiting their divisions to play the couple off against one another – but strangely that possibility isn’t explored beyond an initial hint. Also, it fails my standard test of a film’s quality in that the minor characters are cardboard cut-outs instead of being developed and given their own motivations.  

Slow-motion action sequences are never a good sign in a thriller, and there are too many here. I also found the black-and-white treatment applied to the closing moments a little naff and unnecessary. 

Ron Howard is usually a dependable director, but you can’t help feeling that this one somehow got away from him.

Outbreak (1995)

Disaster film detailing the outbreak of a deadly virus brought from Zaire to the USA by an infected monkey. Army virologist Dustin Hoffman and scientist Rene Russo play a divorced couple who team up again in their attempts to save the world. They are helped by Kevin Spacey but hindered by army generals played by Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland. 

It’s a fast-paced thriller that’s a little trashy but nevertheless exciting. A surprising number of helicopters feature, with James Bond-like copter chases providing some of the action. Unlike Contagion, it’s not especially illuminating in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic. The focus is more on the military response to the problem rather than individuals’ experience of it.

Script-wise it could have been stronger, but there’s so much happening, so quickly, that you don’t really notice.

Get Shorty (1995)

Clever mixture of crime and comedy, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and adapted from the excellent novel by Elmore Leonard. 

John Travolta plays Chili Palmer, a loan shark from Miami who starts getting involved in the film world after going to L.A. on a job. He meets a horror director (Gene Hackman), a famous Hollywood star (Danny DeVito) and a glamorous B-movie actor (Rene Russo). But unfortunately there are gangsters out to get him (Dennis Farina, Delroy Lindo and James Gandolfini). 

It’s punchy and witty, with the twists and turns of Leonard’s plot captured well. Travolta is perfect in the lead role, and Russo has an easy charm. They both add to the appealing quirkiness.

In the Line of Fire (1993)

Thriller starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent who tries to protect the US president from a crazed assassin (John Malkovich). He has a troubling history in that early in his career he failed to save John F. Kennedy when he was shot in 1963. Clint is assisted by his timid partner (Dylan McDermott) and by a female agent he’s initially disrespectful to (Rene Russo). 

It’s a superb and gripping drama. Eastwood delivers all of the usual tough-guy moments, but there’s a welcome sense of (self-deprecating) humour that gives this an edge. It also plays around with the notion of him being too old for this sort of work – rather than shying away from it – and extracts material from that. For example, we see him getting out of breath when he runs alongside the president’s car and that becomes a plot thread. 

Malkovich, who I really can’t stand, is his usual deeply creepy self, but it works this time because he’s playing a psychopath. Russo is excellent: her understated charm works well alongside that of the film’s star.  

Plus, it has the funniest last line of any film I’ve ever watched.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Hugely enjoyable remake of the 1968 film, with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in the Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway roles. 

The plot is fairly similar, although Crown’s playful crimes take place with valuable paintings instead of him orchestrating a bank robbery.  

Brosnan is perfect for the role: a sort of clinical charm. He’s better here than he was as James Bond, perhaps simply because the script is superior. Russo also gets it spot-on as the insurance investigator who slowly begins to fall for the man she should be incriminating. She’s stylish, sharp and sexy, always just one step behind him in their perpetual cat-and-mouse game. 

As a neat little reference to the original, Faye Dunaway returns – but as Thomas Crown’s shrink. The only problem is that the film gives no inkling as to why a man so supremely confident and perfectly accomplished might need a shrink in the first place. Denis Leary is also impressive as the Detective Michael McCann, and the progression of his relationship with Russo’s character is developed nicely. 

Whereas the original has a slightly impressionistic element, this version is crisp and precise – tightly plotted and excellently done all round. Probably the best remake I have seen.