Something to watch tonight: Monday 10 June

The Nice Guys (Black, 2016)

Looking for an ‘on this day’ type of post this morn­ing, I was once again dis­ap­poin­ted to find so many of my June favour­ites from the last 16 or 17 years are not avail­able online, not even for rental.

Going back to an At the Movies epis­ode from 2 June 2016, I finally found this review of the bril­liant action com­edy The Nice Guys, star­ring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling.

Seeing as Russell Crowe is back in cinemas this week with The Exorcism and Gosling’s The Fall Guy has moved to premi­um rent­al (NZ$29.99), the tim­ing couldn’t be bet­ter. As I say in my review, it “man­aged to make both me and my com­pan­ion cry with laughter in sev­er­al scenes.”

Gosling plays an alco­hol­ic private detect­ive in 1977 Los Angeles, a time of polit­ic­al and social cyn­icism, where if it was­n’t for the pet­rol ration­ing, you’d be free to fill the atmo­sphere with bird-killing smog, where big busi­ness is almost cer­tainly cor­rupt and out to get you, and gov­ern­ment is hold­ing the door open for them.

It’s every man for him­self, and one of those men is hired muscle. Jackson Healy played with delight­ful world wear­i­ness by a big boned Russell Crowe. He’s been hired to warn Gosling off an invest­ig­a­tion, which he does with a kind of resigned professionalism. 

Refer a friend

When Crowe in turn is threatened by some very heavy heav­ies look­ing for his cli­ent, he’s forced to team up with an under­stand­ably wary Gosling to try and find the mys­ter­i­ous Amelia and crack open a case that brings togeth­er the seedy yet glam­or­ous LA porn scene, an all too rarely seen Kim Basinger rep­res­ent­ing the Department of Justice, and an obscure sub­plot involving cata­lyt­ic con­vert­ers of all things.

…

The rap­port between these two per­formers, one an Oscar win­ner and one a nom­in­ee, is entirely agree­able. Crowe plays the straight man, let­ting Gosling pick up all the big laughs with bril­liant verbal and phys­ic­al com­edy. He plays a great drunk too.

Crowe is more relaxed than I’ve seen him in years, per­haps because he does­n’t have to hold his tummy in or wear one of those lycra cor­sets men of a cer­tain age have to resort to. But Crowe back on the scene as a middle-aged char­ac­ter act­or is cer­tainly some­thing to celebrate.

You can listen to the com­plete Nice Guys seg­ment here, or the whole pro­gramme (also fea­tur­ing Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass and anoth­er one of Kore-eda’s minor key mas­ter­pieces, Our Little Sister.)

Where to watch The Nice Guys

Aotearoa: Streaming on TVNZ+ (free with ads)

Australia: Streaming on Stan

Canada: Streaming on Netflix

Ireland and USA: Digital rental

UK: Streaming on MGM+

Further listening

Last Friday night at about 9.30, I settled in for anoth­er of my weekly chats with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights. We chat­ted about Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the doc­u­ment­ary Joan Baez: I am a Noise and the free stream­er Tubi which is avail­able here in New Zealand, even if Tubi don’t appear to know much about it.

I also wrote about Tubi last week for the RNZ web­site but when I men­tioned it here, it was behind the pay­wall bound­ary so not all of you will have seen it.