When I saw the trailers for The Nice Guys, I knew I wanted to see that movie. Of course, I was hoping that all the funny bits weren't in the previews. And they were not. Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) directed and co-wrote the screenplay starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. The film has a definite film noir feel to it, a bit of Sam Spade, but with a scoop of 1970s Los Angeles, complete with smog. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), an enforcer for hire, meets private eye, Holland March (Ryan Gosling) under less than ideal circumstances - Healy breaks March's arm, as they are both looking for a missing girl, Amelia Kutner (Margaret Qualley) who seems to have been involved in the pornography scene and the daughter of a high powered government official (Kim Basinger). March has a teenage daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), who is forced to occasionally take on the parental role when dad tips the bottle too much. I haven't seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in several years, but I remember really liking it because of the different twists and turns, a combination of mystery and humor and the way it all seemed to tie together in the end, and seeing The Nice Guys makes me want to see it again. The Nice Guys does so many things well: even though the story takes many twists and turns, it didn't get boring or too distracting or feel like it was dragging (one of my main complaints about other movies); Crowe and Gosling have great chemistry, Crowe is a great straight man and Gosling delivers some fabulous physical comedy as well as in delivering his lines; it's easy to add a child actor and let them be precocious and annoying (another pet peeve of mine), but Rice is so good, I really enjoyed her performance. There is a bad guy who lingers below the surface until halfway through the movie (or later), John Boy (Matt Bomer), and he's kind of like a James Bond villain. I thought that that was the weakest part to me, maybe I was missing something in the casting, but I didn't buy Matt Bomer as a cold blooded killer. I'm not sure if this will be up for any awards, but I'm hoping a writing award or something. I have hopes of more movies (I'd say a television series, but I think that would dilute the 'magic'), and if Gosling and Crowe can keep the energy going, I would watch them.
5/29/16 X-Men: Apocalypse, not yet nominated
I posted a Facebook update and titled the movie "X-Men: Ponderous". I don't know about you, but when I watch super hero movies, I really want more action than talking and philosophizing. That's why I loved Captain America: Civil War so much, plenty of action mixed with a little bit of lofty dialogue. X-Men: Apocalypse had a lot more talking than action, and to me, it was really counting on you to remember what happened two years ago (or longer) in the previous X-Men movies; not that the other movies don't make the same request, but since we have shifted timelines a couple of times it can be a little confusing. There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on Magneto (Michael Fassbender), as much on him as on the character of Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). I understand that the Marvel Universe is a rich and vast place, and that the world of X-Men is just as rich, and it's probably like going to an all you can eat buffet and feeling horrible if you don't get the crab legs, and the potatoes, and the three kinds of dessert, but then feeling a different kind of horrible because you did eat everything. The movie starts ten years after X-Men: Days of Future Past, 1985, and the tensions with mutants and humans have calmed down a bit. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) runs his school for gifted children, with help from Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult); Eric Lehnsherr (Fassbender) lives in Poland with his wife and young daughter, working in a steel factory and trying to live a normal life; Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) tries to rescue mutants, including Nightcrawler. Unfortunately, the new normal is about to be a distant memory as En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse is awakened from his three millennia sleep, and he's really pissed off. He looks for a foursome to be his four horsemen and finds a young Storm, Psylocke, Angel and Magneto. As Xavier and Raven try to reconnect with Magneto and help him with his grief and anger, Charles 'meets' Apocalypse telepathically and the war begins. Oh, add Major Stryker, the mutant hating military man, who comes to the school and takes away some of the mutants, including Raven. Eventually, the younger mutants team up to fight Apocalypse and the horsemen. Scott Summers/Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver and Jean Grey work with Beast and Mystique to defeat Apocalypse. The battle is really the best part and was super awesome, but you do have to sit through over an hour of other stuff. Let me get my issue with Quicksilver off of my chest. Quicksilver appears in The Avengers: Age of Ultron with his twin sister Wanda, and they are clearly European; Quicksilver in The X-Men appears by himself and is very clearly not European, he is also the comedic relief, which does not resemble the Quicksilver with whom I am familiar. It rubs me the wrong way; maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it would have been easy to have him be European since Raven is in Europe when she meets the Nightcrawler. I would guess that the two movie franchises needed to make the Quicksilvers different since the movies didn't crossover. I did like the character of Jean Grey, this showed the power she had in later X-Men movies, and the young actress who played her, Sophie Clarke, did a fabulous job with a tough role, since Jean's powers are mental, not physical, and Jean is trying to control powers she, nor Charles, fully understands. I didn't hate the movie, it's just the same problem with the last X-Men movie, too much stuff crammed into it, bogged down with too much talking that doesn't always move the story forward. I will keep watching the movies because the good parts are worth it. I will be re-watching all the other X-Men movies over the next year, and maybe that will help with the timelines and my problems with the story lines.
p.s. Rose Byrne is back as Moira MacTaggert, Xavier's love and CIA agent; I just wasn't sure how to squeeze that into my write up.
p.p.s I also wore a superhero themed shirt to the movie. I have 8 such items.
