“Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s a saying we’ve all heard before. The grunge band Green Day wrote an iconic song about it in the mid-1990s. I’ll alter the quote a little in saying that The Nice Guys finishes last. This was not my favorite movie. I knew that I would probably feel this way going into the film, but I was willing to sacrifice the two hours because it starred two of my favorite actors in Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, Drive) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind). Despite its 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had no faith in this movie. Its style wasn’t my favorite. Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) style for directing this movie was similar to that of Joel and Ethan Coen in that it blended comedy, drama, action, dark comedy, crime (both organized and unorganized), and even small bits of horror to try to come up with a unique idea. Was The Nice Guys a unique idea? No, not really?
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Category Archives: Stuart Blumberg
Thanks For Sharing (2013)
Stuart Blumberg’s Thanks For Sharing is a much softer and more humane look at the trials and tribulations of sexual addiction than is Steve McQueen’s 2011 Shame. Both movies broach this once taboo topic with relatively deep character studies. While both films tell fairly compelling stories, neither earned much at the box office. Together, the two movies generated just over $4 million domestically. I think that fact that these two movies were both made over two years and the two attracted stars like Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim Robbins, Michael Fassbender, and Carey Mulligan shows that there are those in Hollywood who want to bring the issue come to light even if the general public is still a little reluctant to make it to the theater to check out these movies on the big screen.
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