It has not been a good month for the news media in the movies I have been reviewing. In Birdman, the New York Times theater critic is shown to be unprofessional, promising to write a negative review to kill a play that she hasn’t seen. In Gone Girl, sensationalist news journalists are shown to be easily manipulated into writing a narrative that ends up covering up a ghastly crime. And now we have Nightcrawler, a movie about a petty thief who finally finds his vocation as a freelance cameraman selling footage to a local news station in Los Angeles.  There seems to be a shortage of crusading journalists this month, Kill the Messenger aside.

Continue reading →