Yes, the year has barely started and the crop already looks much richer than last year's (btw, The MacMahonian is hereby reversing policy on top 10 rankings: what counts is the year you saw it, not the year it was released; I mean, what's fair is fair). New addition to the current honours list: Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler.
Nightcrawler is Dan Gilroy's debut feature film. Gilroy is a late bloomer at 54, occasional author and scriptwriter, most recently of brother Tony Grilroy's The Bourne Legacy (2112), and actress Rene Russo's husband.
Nightcrawler tells the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal, magnificently wide-eyed and who The MacMahonian forthwith recommends to play Hannibal Lecter in possible future sequels) aspiring video reporter and sociopath extraordinaire, who cheerfully and murderously crosses every line of journalistic deontology in pursuit of the perfect scoop, to sell to the highest bidder (local TV news channels), task in which he is assisted, in a sort of twisted Don Quichote/Sancho Panza fashion, by Rick (Riz Ahmed) who (spoiler alert) ultimately pays with his live for the association. It's sort of like Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) meets Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
Nightcrawler's main virtue is to raise disturbing questions about what really goes on backstage before we're fed the news we're fed whilst commendably sticking to an unassuming neo-noir format. And seldom has nighttime photography, consistent with the title (by prominent director Robert Elswitt, who besides being brother Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson regular, has also worked with the likes of David Mamet and George Clooney, to name but the cool) been so essential a part and parcel of a film's body and soul since Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).
Better late than never, Dan, and keep up the (very) good work.