THE NICE GUYS: Black Is the New Black

Director: Shane Black
Writers: Shane Black, Anthony Bagarozzi
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice, Matt Bomer, Margaret Qualley
Runtime: 116 mins.
2016

The worst thing I can say about The Nice Guys is that it's no Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, writer/director Shane Black's other neo-noir comedy. That film, one of my favorite meta-narrative movies, may upstage Black's latest directorial effort, but by any other reasonable metric The Nice Guys is a rousing success.

Beginning with a hauntingly beautiful scene of a child discovering a dead porn star in the wreckage of a mangled car, The Nice Guys firmly establishes itself in the seventies. Our heroes are Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a bruiser for hire who gets embroiled in detective work despite his better judgment, and Holland March (Ryan Gosling), an inept P.I. who mostly coasts by on alcohol and exploiting the elderly. The other major player is Holly March (Angourie Rice), Holland's hypercompetent daughter, only the most recent in the storied line of child actors in Shane Black action movies who manage not to be annoying at all, but are in fact quite charming. I'm going to cut off the plot summary hardly before it's even started, as I cannot remember much about the twisty narrative details. Though in this case, that's no detriment; the joy of The Nice Guys has little to do with its plot intrigue, instead putting all the eggs in the bounteous basket of how delightful Crowe and Gosling are to watch bounce off each other for an hour and a half.

They both bring their A+ game. Between this and Noah, it's great to see Crowe in the midst of a career resurgence. He's cribbing from John Goodman here, playing Healy as paunchy but vivacious. Plus, Crowe is capable of selling the hell out of the movie's isolated moments of tragedy. Meanwhile, I have been a Gosling advocate for years (Drive, Only God Forgives, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, etc. etc.), but he manages to shift into a new tier of talent in The Nice Guys, at least comedically. His physical comedy is far more committed than anything we could reasonably expect from a Hollywood A-lister. Black likes to beat the hell out of his characters, and Gosling sells every painful mishap.

All things considered, The Nice Guys is an exemplary if somewhat traditional noir. It may not transcend its own structure like the aforementioned Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but The Nice Guys sees a cavalcade of tremendous talents at the top of their game, knocking it out of the park as if it were routine to do so.

3.5 / 5  BLOBS

THE BIG SHORT: Bubble Trouble

Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Adam McKay, Charles Randolph
Cast: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt
Runtime: 130 mins.
2015

I've invented an adage. It goes like this: I don't care what a movie is about.

That's not to say content isn't important. I also don't mean to imply that I don't have preferences. If someone were to ask me to choose between a movie about a high concept sci-fi adventure and a story about the trials and tribulations of ballerinas, given only that information I would pick the former. And yet, there are very few high concept sci-fi adventures that I prefer over Black Swan. The lesson I've learned over time is to never dismiss a movie based on its subject matter. If I've heard good things about a movie from trusted resources, or if I trust the people who worked on it, I will see it regardless of the subject matter, even if the subject matter is of no interest to me. The great thing about great movies is that they will make you interested in their subject matter.

The Big Short is about the housing bubble, and subsequent financial crisis, that crippled the American (and world) economy in 2007. More specifically, it is about the men who predicted, and thereby profited from, that very crisis. Some of the best jokes in the movie are about the disconnect between the moviegoing audience and the topic. Ryan Gosling plays Jared Vennett, our narrator, who tries to guide us through the narrative while acknowledging the eye-glazing dullness of the subject matter. Not only that, but the sheer boring factor of banking and finance is integral to the plot and themes of The Big Short. How did nobody see the housing crisis coming? They were too disinterested to look.

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES: The Cone Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree

In which we still don't learn how to spell Synecdoteeodcee, New York.

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Writers: Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio, and Darius Marder
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Dane DeHaan, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Emory Cohen
Runtime: 140 mins.
2012

The Place Beyond the Pines strives to be epic with every fiber of its being. In a lot of ways, it fails. Yet it remains a textbook case of how much mileage a movie can gain from a strong start. In fact, I have to admit that I was sold from the very first shot:

We open to blackness, with an undercurrent of indistinct noise. As the title cards pass before us, we hear a new sound: a crisp, repetitive clinking noise that is vaguely reminiscent of the clanking of train cars steadily passing by. When we finally cut to our first image, we see the tattooed torso of Luke (Ryan Gosling), his hands expertly snapping a butterfly knife as he paces back and forth in a small trailer. His body language is restless, the click-clacking of the knife metronomic. He suddenly embeds the knife in a wall and leaves the trailer. The continuous shot... continues... as we follow him, a colorful fairground opening out before us, the previously dulled sounds of carnivalesque carousing now raucous and all-encompassing. The camera trails behind Luke, in a manner familiar to anybody who watched The Wrestler, or Breaking Bad. Luke passes fluorescent rides and games, pink and blue lights illuminating the night. He takes a turn into a darker, more subdued part of the fairground and heads for a tent. When he enters the tent, we are met with the sounds of revving engines, cheering fans, and an incomprehensible announcer. He heads for two other motorcyclists, and joins them on a third cycle of his own. The mounting of the cycle is the first moment we see Luke's face, a brief glimpse before he dons his helmet. Then the cyclists enter the steel cage, a metal sphere barely big enough to accommodate the three of them. The crowd erupts as the cyclists each begin circumnavigating the inside of the sphere, weaving in and out of each other's paths in daredevil fashion. The first shot ends.

Everything that is good and right about The Place Beyond the Pines is encompassed in that first shot, from the cycle of violence as represented by the click-clacking butterfly knife, to the visual coupling of Luke's identity with his motorcycle, to the long trailer-to-tent trudge that evokes an inevitable symbolic march towards danger and destruction. It's all there, and it's beautiful.

The movie never stops being beautiful, but it never recaptures the precision and economy of storytelling that the first shot offers.