The Nice Guys
Enjoyable retro romp, with a pair of witless private dicks (Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe) on the trail of a missing woman (Margaret Qualley) in 1970s LA.
Plenty to enjoy from writer-director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Long Kiss Goodnight), from meta nods to the period such as the wise-beyond-her-years young daughter of Gosling – Angourie Rice – to zippy dialogue.
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith
Oh by Toutatis, not again – please, no! Dammit, what can I say, the Boy likes the Obi-Wan/Anakin showdown on the lava.
Nothing this week…
Batshit mid-seventies grind house type fare, with director George Armitage (later of Grosse Pointe Blank fame) liberally borrowing elements from Westerns, Seven Samurai, thirties gangster movies and blaxploitation cinema for this barely concealed Vietnam War allegory.
A Californian boom town’s elders, faced with boisterous oil workers smashing up their community, hire a local bad boy (Kris Kristofferson) and his buddies (all Nam vets, should the allegory be too subtle for you) as police auxiliaries to shake things up. It isn’t long before they are causing more mayhem than they are stopping; a Good Brother (Jan-Michael Vincent) must then step up and make things right again.
Bernadette Peters is great as a kooky bar room singer, Paul Gleason (from The Breakfast Club) has an early turn as a sleazy hood, and Brad Dexter is wheeled out as the town’s push-over mayor, and possibly to MAKE EVERYONE REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Sheer lunacy.
Vigilante Force
A Week In Film 