“Nightcrawler”: What’s Up with the 2015 Awards Race

Directed by: Dan Gilroy Written by: Dan Gilroy Main Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, and Riz Ahmed, among others… Past Oscar relations: Gyllenhaal is a former Academy Award nominee, cited in Best Supporting Actor for Brokeback Mountain Today we have another article in this particular series of mine concerning certain 2014 releases hoping to compete for some sort of actual Oscar attention as a contender at the upcoming 2015 ceremony. Next up for here for us is a nifty little thriller in Nightcrawler that’s hoping to translate its very solid festival run and use that buzz in order to appeal to the Academy, potentially getting some attention in a few different categories. Does it have any chance? Well, let me get into that a bit now below… This movie is a thriller set within the world of news reporting…well, sort of. We follow a potential sociopath as he discovers the industry of filming crime scenes and selling them to morning news programs. He takes to it like a fish to water and soon is making a name for himself in the business, by any means necessary. Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the lead role, with a solid supporting cast that includes Rene Russo, Bill Paxton, Riz Ahmed, and Ann Cusack, to name a few. Dan Gilroy writes and directs. Ever since it debuted on the fall festival circuit, it’s been winning people over. Now, can it do the same with Academy members? What this film has going in its favor is the strong performances, mainly the lead one from Gyllenhaal, which is startlingly good. He’s easily worthy of an Oscar nomination in Best Actor, though with a crowded year like this one, no one is assured of anything. That being said, it’s a distinctive enough performance that it could definitely stand out in the crowd. Especially if Gyllenhaal catches on during the precursors and becomes someone to watch in Best Actor, that can only help the chances of the movie in Best Supporting Actress for Russo and Best Original Screenplay for Gilroy. The flick is unlike anything else in the race, which never hurts. Working against Nightcrawler is that it’s potentially going to be deemed by voters as too cool for school. It’s a unique film, but it could suffer the same fate as Drive, getting pigeonholed as something slick and not worthy of a voter’s attention. They were wrong then, and they’d be wrong now [...]