The Nice Guys

I feel sorry for not giving this nice chill-out movie four stars, but if you’ve seen the best of Shane Black, you’d know he didn’t hit the bull’s eye with this one. The Crowe/Gosling duo is great, their catchphrases are cool and the atmosphere of 1980s L.A. might be the best since L.A. Confidential. But the plot the guys are dealing with is watery and uninteresting, barely even there. (2016-08-09)

Shane Black appeals to me just by the way he still bets on his overdubbed, voiceover-guided format even after years, but this time he just made it by a hair's breadth. The storyline scissors are very wide open and it takes almost twelve minutes to really cut with them. He unnecessarily complicates the different threads and it takes quite a few dozen minutes before it becomes clear to us who, with whom, and how. Fortunately, one weapon is hiding in this arsenal that kicks strongly as expected. It's Ryan Gosling, who again does everything to not be categorized in any way and thanks to the anti-intelligence displayed here, he reliably sent me to my knees several times. His March is so genuinely passionate and yet completely useless that it even overshadows the reliable bulldog next to him. 70% and a fourth star if I look the other way, and for how obvious it is that the central trio enjoyed this nonsense seriously and with taste. (2016-06-10)

It's a decent retro one-off, whose atmosphere and frilly 1980s LA visuals are far more engaging than the story around which the two well-acted main characters revolve. By the way, this is the kind of daughter I wanted in the new Jack Reacher and didn't get. Brilliant one-liners and great action. A bit better Starsky & Hutch, but very similar. (2016-11-06)

Starsky & Hutch by Shane Black. What's not to love? Perhaps only the disparity between the silly buddy comedy storyline loaded with one-liners (I haven't laughed so loud in the movie theater for a long time) and the regular gritty crime storyline, which is clearly only a makeweight, but for a long time is much more refined than it turned out to be eventually and in the final scene it is clearly too slow. In other words, both in terms of the story in a style like"nothing is going on" and in terms of comedy, it´s absolutely flawless. And I look forward to a sequel, the two of them get together in terms of mutual chemistry so unusually and in a unique way (after all, see for yourself. It would be terribly unfortunate not to give them proper space. However, the best movie in this department is still Zootropolis. (2016-05-24)

As in the case of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, I'm very happy with what I saw this time, but I'm going to need to see it again because the film turned into a huge mess at one point, which did still entertain me perfectly, but I was lost in it. Ryan Gosling pleasantly surprised me with his comedic talent, Shane Black with how he still manages to tear himself off the leash (like the final action scene, that's pure slapstick). And if I ever see Nixon, I’ll know what's going on. (2018-07-21)