Dan Gilroy

News, Reviews & Features
  • Review: Velvet Buzzsaw paints a dark canvas but is worse than the sum of its p-arts

    Movie Review | Luke Whiston | 8th February 2019

    A few years ago I had a bit of an epiphany regarding my personal relationship with art (such as it is that the purpose and understanding of art as a human endeavour is the result of a complex mish-mash of evolutionary need and life experience resulting in a unique perspective held only to oneself imho). It was around the time of political unrest in a country - not going to say which one but it was one of those problematic countries you see on the news often, don't like the gays much - where a group of artists had collaborated to send a satirical message to their government which was more than likely going to see them turn up in a ditch. It was an act that made me question my complete self: would I, a comically stereotypical white man, ever do anything so profoundly brave with my creative output? I mean besides calling Nigel Farage a cock on Twitter? Probably not. I'll probably just carry on ascending to middle class via osmosis, stopping to tut whenever Netflix raise their prices by 20p so they can continue making mediocre originals.

  • Nightcrawler

    Movie Review | Ali Gray | 2nd November 2014

    There's an uncomfortable undercurrent to Dan Gilroy's seedy thriller Nightcrawler that I didn't quite identify until after the credits had rolled and the stank had worn off. The tale of a grim opportunist named Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) who weasels a career out of being the first lens on the crime scene, Nightcrawler is equal parts slick and sick, portraying the denizens of the neon-soaked Los Angeles nightlife as creepy-crawlies squirming under a rock. It's Gyllenhaal's unforgettable creation, however, that sticks in the memory: with bug eyes, sunken cheeks and a moral barometer on the fritz, I eventually realised that Lou Bloom is to paparazzi what Tony Montana is to gangsters - a totemic figurehead that suggests all you need to succeed is an excess of motivation and an absence of conscience. Filtered through this lens, Nightcrawler becomes the scariest movie you'll see all year.