Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Demolition' Is Another Jean-Marc Vallée Movie That's Much Better Than It Should Be

Director Jean-Marc Vallée has once again proven his uncanny ability to make watchable films out of stories that sound like middlebrow drivel. Dallas Buyer’s Club was about a homophobic, AIDs-afflicted bullrider who meets a transvestite hustler and learns a valuable lesson (see also: a straight white savior narrative). In Wild , Reese Witherspoon plays a promiscuous intravenous drug user hiking the Pacific Crest trail in order to have cathartic moments and “walk myself back into the woman my...