- Nightcrawler – Jake is 100% creepy as an isolated loner who spends his time in a drab apartment listening to a police scanner to be first on the scene with his video camera. He is the videographer equivalent to an ambulance chaser, a lawyer who tries to be the first on the scene of an accident to secure potential clients. Jake lost 30 pounds to play the role of Lou Bloom, a sickly-looking, unemployed, low-level thief. His social awkwardness prohibits him from securing gainful employment, mostly because he frightens other people with his mere presence. The movie is incredibly graphic, highly disturbing, and one that will stick with you long after you are through watching it. Gyllenhaal is the highlight of this pulse-pounding thriller. He is compelling as Lou, a man who, despite his awkwardness, knows exactly what to say and when to say it, often sacrificing any possible morals his character might have for his gain.
- Brokeback Mountain – To date, this is the only movie that Gyllenhaal has been nominated for; Brokeback Mountain is a love story between Jack (Gyllenhaal) and Enis (Heath Ledger), two 20-something-year-olds who are hired for the summer to tend sheep on a Wyoming mountainside in 1963. The two fall in love and develop an ongoing relationship that lasts over the years and is a secret to everyone, including their wives. Gyllenhaal, the more outgoing and secure of the two, plays second fiddle (in a way) to Ledger, who gets most of the top scenes as he’s the one who struggles more with denying his sexual identity than Jack does. While Jack is more willing to put his love out there and risk everything, Enis tries to hold everything inside until frustration overwhelms him. It’s a heartwarming story driven by the two leads, the near-perfect direction of Ang Lee, and a score that you’ll never forget. Released in 2005, there were more moviegoers who were more tentative about seeing this movie than there would be in 2017. I did see it at the theater with my mom and, at the time, my girlfriend. I was moved by the subtlety of the movie and its overwhelming message that love is universal. The fact that some of us have to hide our true feelings because of society, religion, or whatever else is a true shame.
- Southpaw – Gaining over 50 pounds of muscle to play a boxer named Billy Hope, Gyllenhaal immersed himself in the art of boxing. No longer did he even look like the actor we knew. Instead, he looked like a burly light heavyweight athlete who, physically, looked beyond recognition. On top of the world at one point with his championship belt, Billy felt invincible. But a meaningless altercation with a rival boxer resulted in the death of his wife, and the grief he experiences as a result completely consumes him. His reckless behavior causes him to lose everything, including the custody of his daughter. This is a story of redemption, one that we’ve seen before, one that we’ve seen in the boxing ring before, but the depth of emotions that Gyllenhaal so convincingly displays has us rooting for him in ways that we do the leads in the best fighting movies, like Rocky, Cinderella Man, and Warrior.
- Brothers – If you’ve seen Brothers imagine for a second if Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire had switched roles. Imagine if Gyllenhaal experienced PTSD after being presumed dead in a war in Afghanistan. Maguire was the kind one who had moved in to raise his brother’s kids and ultimately fell in love with his brother’s wife. The movie would have worked. It might have even worked better. Gyllenhaal is great at playing the nice guy, but so is Maguire. Gyllenhaal could make an amazing villain, whereas I felt Maguire struggled with this in some regard. In any case, it’s something to think about. Gyllenhaal played the brother of Maguire in this movie. When Maguire’s character goes missing (and is thought to be dead), Gyllenhaal’s Tommy promises to watch over the wife and daughters of Maguire’s Sam. But Tommy ends up falling in love with Sam’s wife. And when Sam returns out of the blue, we have our conflict. Gyllenhaal plays the calm brother who has to balance Sam’s PTSD while trying to harness in his new feelings for Grace (Sam’s wife). Watching Gyllenhaal balance what is right for Sam and what is best for his character is worth watching.
- Love and Other Drugs -Star-crossed opposite lover Anne Hathaway, Gyllenhaal stars as a mostly immoral salesman for pharmaceutical drugs. Gyllenhaal’s Jamie is charmful, confident, and, when he needs to be, cocky. And boy, does he love a good roll in the hay. Heck, he’s selling Viagra, for crying out loud. He meets Hathaway’s Annie, a charming, eccentric woman with early Parkinson’s Disease, who is determined not to let anything slow her down, except when her debilitating disease does just that. At times funny, at other times melodramatic, the film is rather uneven in its sway of back and forth between comedy and drama. But ultimately, it’s a sweet story that forces Jamie to reflect on his life and decide what type of man he wants to be. For much of the movie, he’s smart enough to know what he wants but doesn’t always possess the maturity to achieve it. The arguments he has with Annie feel genuine because of the severity of the situation. Jamie desires to spend a long and healthy life with Annie, but that isn’t in the cards. Watching his inner turmoil and his methods of dealing with it is a joy.
- Nocturnal Animals – Gyllenhaal has so many great performances. This one was great because he played Edward, an ordinary dude who gets a raw deal with Susan (Amy Adams), the love of his life. After not speaking for several years, Edward sends her a graphic and violent novel he has written and dedicated to her. The film is told in the present day, with Susan unable to put the novel down. The lead character in the fictional novel is a family man named Tony, whose wife and daughter are kidnapped and murdered. The novel describes the incident in detail, followed by Edward’s obsession with bringing the killers to justice. As in many of his other movies, Gyllenhaal essentially plays two men. He stars as Edward, the writer and former lover of Susan, as well as Tony, the kind family man whose life is turned upside down after this unimaginable incident, turning him into a man who will abandon his entire value set to catch and kill those responsible for murdering his family. Nocturnal Animals is bizarre and layered but also completely riveting. Gyllenhaal and Adams star but share no screen time and are at the top of their games.
Movies I Watch That Inspire Me to Critique!