IGN
While it ultimately clings to time-worn conventions, Demolition offers strong character relationships and an irreverent sense of humor. Jake Gyllenhaal especially delivers a great performance, thanks in part to co-stars Chris Cooper, Judah Lewis and Naomi Watts (in that order). Granted, the story and characters lack originality, but the film may be worth checking out for Gyllenhaal alone -- if not in a theater, then streaming at home down the line.
He made his film debut (as Billy Crystal's kid!) in City Slickers, although we first noticed him in Donnie Darko. As the titular character in Bubble Boy and the lovelorn admirer of Jennifer Aniston’s character in The Good Girl, Jake Gyllenhaal was high on our radar in the early 2000s. He’s given us a handful of superb characters that should have gotten him the highest acting honour- the Oscar, but the golden statue has always escaped his grasp.
Here are four movies that Gyllenhaal should have totally gotten the Best Actor Oscar for.
AVClub: Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition attempts to update American Beauty’s precarious mix of satire and wish fulfillment for the post-Recession era, complete with quirky voice-over, fantasy sequences, a soundtrack of generational-nostalgia signifiers and classic rock, and a WASP protagonist who shows his disaffection with privilege by applying for a working-class job and befriending gay men and surly teenagers, here merged into a single character. It even has Chris Cooper as an overbearing dad with a secret. But despite a few electric moments, the movie never makes anything of its stylized displays of frustration, ending in a whiff of narrative and emotional cop-outs. Say what you will about American Beauty, but at least it had a climax.
MTV
Death has a script. In the movies, we expect to see black suits, tossed roses, and maybe one mourner so upset they leap into the grave. Reality isn’t much different — until someone you love dies, and suddenly the script becomes a blank page.
