The Nice Guys (2016, Shane Black)

I recently joked to a friend I wanted to claim “audacity” as a complementary phrase, but just for Stanley Kubrick. Something simple like, “Stanley Kubrick: Audacity can be a compliment.” But then she called me on it being gross.

The Nice Guys is basically, “Shane Black: Humility is for [slur we’re allowed to use because the movie’s set in 1978].” It’s never terrible, though Black’s got his usual “no, but, maybe you’re misogynistic for saying this scene or characterization is misogynist,” which gets exasperating. Especially since it’s in the Boogie Nights riff part of the movie. Nice Guys is a pseudo-noir and mostly a series of lifts from other movies, including ones Black wrote for other directors.

The film’s heroes, The Nice Guys, are soulful bruiser Russell Crowe, who hates his comically evil ex-wife and protects young women from predators, and sad drunk private investigator Ryan Gosling. Except the de facto protagonist of the movie is Angourie Rice, playing Gosling’s daughter. Since she’s a thirteen-year-old in 1978 L.A., tagging along on her dad’s job to porn parties, hunted by vicious hitmen, she’s always in danger, and the audience knows it. Gosling and Crowe forget about it at the drop of a hat, but the film’s always about reminding terrible things could happen to Rice anytime. So when she’s not around, it just means she might be in danger, which focuses the film on her.

Of all the things Black didn’t think to rip off… it’d be a fine “Veronica Mars” riff.

Gosling is bilking client Lois Smith (the film’s most successful cameo but only because the others mostly stink); she’s convinced her pornstar granddaughter is alive, even though the movie showed her dying in the first scene. You know, kind of like Lethal Weapon 1.

He’s actually doing some investigating—which the movie never shows and instead uses as gotchas from Gosling to other characters—and is pretty sure Smith really saw Margaret Qualley. Qualley knows Gosling is after her, so she hires Crowe to beat him up.

Then the actual bad guys looking for Qualley—an okay but wasted Keith David and an annoying Beau Knapp—go after Crowe, so he has to team up with Gosling (and Rice).

There are various chase scenes, drunk comedy scenes, objectified young women (it’s the seventies so it’s okay), fight scenes, kidnappings, and so on. At one point, Knapp warns the real villain of the movie isn’t even in town yet, letting Crowe know he’s got a big fight in the third act.

At some point, Nice Guys becomes just a period-action comedy instead of something else with those themes. No one gets an actual character arc, just the potential for a sequel.

Both Crowe and Gosling seem like they’re playing sidekick to the star. Of the two… Crowe’s better most of the time. Rice is fine. Her performance is more successful thanks to script and blocking, but she’s charming enough.

As the film progresses, there’s more supporting cast introduced. Kim Basinger, Matt Bomer, Yaya DaCosta. Basinger’s terrible and derails the movie. Boomer’s terrible, but because of the script and the directing, he’s just aboard while it derails. DaCosta’s got a thin part, but she’s good.

Technically, Nice Guys is solid. Black’s direction is fine—he doesn’t have a single well-directed action sequence, though, which is a problem—Philippe Rousselot’s photography is good, John Ottman and David Buckley’s music always seems like it’s just about to get good and never does. The visual stars are obviously production designer Richard Bridgland and costume designer Kym Barrett’s recreation of seventies L.A. In some ways, it’s more impressive how much they’re able to recreate, not their actual designs.

Nice Guys is fine. It’s got a whole bunch of problems, and all of them are Black’s, but it’s fine. It’s better than the Shane Black movies it rips off but not better than the other movies it rips off.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e07 – Sacrament

My favorite part of the “Mare of Easttown” finale is the unrelenting, abject mediocrity of it all. It’s a bad resolution. It goes on way too long, not doing multiple endings but instead doing a series of epilogues—including turning the series’s big “twist” (it’s not a twist if both the creators and the show are lying to the viewers multiple times throughout, a problem “Mare” flirted with briefly towards the beginning and then brought back in force more recently) into just another epilogue of an epilogue of an epilogue.

So the seventy-five minute finale is all summary. There’s the cliffhanger resolution, five minutes (the title comes up immediately on Kate Winslet this time, because she’s either about to die or kill someone, it’s high drama time), figure three minutes of end credits, maybe two and a half. The other sixty-eight minutes are summarized epilogues, catching up with the characters in the subsequent eight months. There are notable exceptions, the characters whose stories are no longer worth screen time. Lots of main cast gets a severe downgrade, mostly Angourie Rice and Jean Smart. Even characters who get promoted for the big twist, they eventually become background or less too. The best one is when Rice is so pointless to a scene she’s present but not visible for the first third of it; of course, that scene ends up being the “Martha” moment, just without Rice getting to participate (her subplots all get flushed).

It’s so nice not to have to acknowledge director Craig Zobel or writer Brad Inglesby for their middling, derivative pedestrian prestige work. Zobel doesn’t have a single good scene in the episode. He has the same idea for each one of the epilogues (everything’s got a surprise reveal, either visually or narratively). He’s not ripping off a better director anywhere here; here he’s just himself. And not good.

Ditto Inglesby. Some of the problem, unfortunately, is the acting. But Inglesby’s scenes are all bad. It’s not like Zobel could’ve directed them better. But Julianne Nicholson certainly could’ve acted them better. She gets her time in the spotlight but still not enough for an actual character arc. Winslet goes from being this transformative performance to a supporting player in her own show, agog at the events around her. Sadly, they’re also poorly acted ones when it’s Nicholson’s turn to play.

Maybe most surprising is Lele Marchitelli’s score. Marchitelli was reliable throughout the show to give it more of prestige pretense than it deserved but the music’s not effective here. Just like Zobel not being able to direct them, Inglesby being able to write them, Marchitelli can’t score the episode’s litany of summarized epilogues either.

“Mare”’s been torching its potential throughout the series, but having them bonfire it so completely in the finish… it’s not for something not to be problematic sometimes. Sometimes it’s nicer for it just to a fail.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e06 – Sore Must Be the Storm

Thanks to “Mare of Easttown,” I’ve realized a “Why did you say ‘Martha’” is just the natural extension of an “It’s not your fault.” Writer Brad Ingelsby and director Craig Zobel riff on it poorly this episode, as they reveal major characters and major character backstory details five episodes late. Sore Must Be the Storm is all about working through the secret tensions, which aren’t secrets from the characters, just secrets the show’s kept from the viewer.

Turns out “Mare” only needed to be four episodes. This episode, next episode, first episode, second episode. Nothing in between matters. Including major characters who are no longer with the show—having been replaced with guest star Gordon Clapp, who’s far less interesting as an old man character actor than I would’ve thought back in the day. Very disappointing.

There are big acting scenes for Kate Winslet this episode, as she returns to therapy of her own volition to work things out. Big revelations, which happen to perfectly coincide with her daughter having a breakdown so they can have a breakthrough together and you can use the same footage in the Emmy nomination reel for both Winslet and Angourie Rice.

Though Rice is really bad this episode. It’s not her fault as much as Ingelsby and, especially, Zobel’s. “Mare” has always been well-produced prestige but Zobel completely loses control this episode, unable to figure out how to direct his actors in actual acting scenes. Rice at last remains sympathetic. David Denman is a complete flop when he’s got to do an honest, quick scene opposite Winslet late in the episode.

Having resolved the cold case, Winslet has got her cop job back. Gets her badge in a momentous scene with chief John Douglas Thompson. All the last episode’s big events get fast resolves. Because now they’re finally going to reveal who killed Laura Palmer.

Only they’re going to be real cheap about it and drag “Mare” out another episode.

The episode’s entirely based on being surprising and twisty and every single one of Ingelsby’s tricks are rote. Some of them he’s used before on the show itself.

But at least Zobel’s okay at the twists. Even if they’re obvious. He’s also not good with the actors involved in the twists. Like Julianne Nicholson, who’s got more to do and it’s not good material and Zobel’s no help on it. Ditto Joe Tippett as her husband; he gets a bunch more too. Very unimpressive performance and Zobel’s fine with it. The prestige-y might all be gone by next episode.

Though Ruby Cruz is great this episode as the dead teen mom’s friend.

Even if she’s part of the second serving of red herring.

But, you know, Winslet’s real good. Jean Smart’s real good. Not sure those pluses are going to matter in the end though.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e05 – Illusions

“Mare of Easttown” is going to be seven episodes. Episode five here resolves at least two big subplots and positions Kate Winslet for the mother lode of character development in the next two episodes. It seems very unlikely Winslet will get any of that character development, as “Mare” is so impatient in its execution. Despite Winslet being an executive producer along side director Craig Zobel and writer Brad Ingelsby, they don’t trust her unless she has a Kramer moment every seven to nine minutes.

Kramer as in Winslet does something only Winslet can do in this part, which is usually yelling at someone or reacting to something. It’s a real bummer when they then close the episode on Winslet hearing a flashback in her head, one the audience is familiar with because Winslet’s been peeking at daughter Angourie Rice’s secret documentary project for high school about her dead brother and its made Winslet less resistant to therapy even though she was only performative in her initial resistance because she’s a narcissist with a brand.

There’s a very big finale to this episode and a lot for everyone—the audience and Winslet—to process. The audience has just found out “Mare” is even more merciless than previously implied and Winslet’s life has gotten a lot less complicated.

There are some other super-functional developments in the other plots, like dead teen mom’s baby daddy Jack Mulhern forcing her best friend, Ruby Cruz, to destroy evidence. We also find out Mulhern doesn’t have the alibi he said he had. And there’s a lot more with the suspicious deacon (James McArdle, who’s either not good enough or perfect, it’s hard to say) and then the third suspiciously behaving guy introduced a few episodes ago. He’s got some big secrets about the dead girl too.

Good scenes for Jean Smart this episode. Her trip to the hospital last time is completely forgotten, as are Winslet’s concerns about daughter Angourie Rice dating a college junior. The episode opens with a car accident and an accidental death, which provides a lot of the non-procedural drama this episode. And culminates in Winslet—still suspended from the police force and presumably qualified immunity—breaking into someone’s house and assaulting them.

It’s all good though (in fact, it’s what makes Evan Peters forgive Winslet for humiliating him on their cringe date). Winslet is the whirlwind he wants to destroy him, he keeps telling mom Deborah Hedwall, who appropriately hangs the sword of Damocles over his head whenever he starts rambling.

“Mare of Easttown” is in the finish now. There’s absolutely nothing to suggest Zobel and Ingelsby are going to close it any better than they’ve run it so far. The real question is will Winslet’s performance end up being a waste of time. The promise of “Mare” is it adding up but its creatives don’t even seem to know math exists.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e04 – Poor Sisyphus

If “Mare of Easttown” were an ensemble show, this episode would be Enid Graham’s spotlight. She gets a suspicious phone call ransoming off her daughter—Graham’s daughter is the Three Billboards daughter, versus the show’s Laura Palmer—and spends the episode fretting over stealing from her job to pay the ransom. Unfortunately, the show’s only got so many characters of a specific demographic and both director Craig Zobel and writer Brad Ingelsby are profoundly obvious, so the perpetrator is obvious. And then if it’s not obvious, they go and make it more and more obvious, then even incredibly awkward and problematic in the end.

The episode’s got time for Graham and everyone else (though Julianne Nicholson just gets to play sidekick to her family after being sidekick to Kate Winslet) because Winslet’s on the bench. No more police investigating. None. Except, wait, since the show’s going in hard on work sidekick Evan Peters being hot for Winslet, he’s obviously going to let her question witnesses with him. He’s even going to leave her alone with the witnesses so she can ask unofficial questions. Because he’s going to ask her on a date. It’s actually really cute. “Mare” does its prestige well. Like, it’s manufactured but it’s really well-done. Heirloom furniture, which is actually a far more accurate way to describe shows meant for infinite binge streaming than I intended.

Anyway.

There are journals in the current case. Are they important? We don’t know yet because in addition to Graham’s thriller arc, there’s also Angourie Rice’s “dumping my bandmate girlfriend for a college girl D.J.” arc, which ends with an actual ambulance. Why does it need an ambulance? Character development for Winslet. Again, if Zobel were at all original or if Ingelsby could admit he plots better than he writes and asked for help, “Mare” could easily be a great modern noir. The show wastes its actors even when they’re excellent—Nicholson, Peters, Jean Smart—because it’s all about Winslet doing a transformed woman thing. Winslet doesn’t walk all over the actors, she’s acting well with them–it’s just how Zobel’s shooting it. I mean, maybe it is a vanity project, but it’s not an undeserved one, further complicating it. But all this tragedy circling Winslet like sharks, it’s just to give her reaction material and reaction material is Ingelsby’s version of character development.

The episode’s got its moments. There’s a lot of good acting. It’s just… manipulative as all hell. Especially with the Room reveal at the end.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e03 – Enter Number Two

I’m distressingly in tune with Brad Ingelsby’s plotting. Just as I was thinking they were going long in not resolving last episode’s cliffhanger—in fact resolving one of the other, less important (to lead Kate Winslet) cliffhangers first—Julianne Nicholson shows up to tell Winslet her ex-husband, high school teacher David Denman, is rumored to be the father of dead teen mom Cailee Spaeny’s baby. So Winslet storms over to confront Denman—he lives in the house behind hers, which was previously theirs—and humiliate him in front of their daughter, Angourie Rice, and his new fiancée, Kate Arrington, and Arrington’s visiting son.

The scene plays like Winslet’s wrong to be upset Denman lied to her about the extent of the relationship he had with the student, regardless of whether or not he sexually abused the kid. It’s sadly hilarious how apathy is the goal for every character in “Mare” because Ingelsby can’t imagine them any other way. It’s not cynical so much as misanthropic. Actually, no, wait, it’s intentional enough to be cynical. I forgot about dead mom’s baby daddy Jack Mulhern’s parents (Jeremy Gabriel and Debbie Campbell), who are totally fine and seemingly don’t realize their son’s a shithead. Campbell’s a mom—“Mare” is all about being a mom or grandmom or great-grandmom—and there’s a humanism to her and Gabriel. It’s maybe the only example of slippage in “Mare,” which is otherwise rigidly precise in its narrative.

Simultaneous to Winslet’s investigation of ex Denman, she and sidekick Evan Peters (who has a truly great scene this episode, not quite on par with Winslet but closer than anyone else has even gazed) also start looking into Catholic deacon James McArdle, who was super suspicious last episode and now it turns out he was the last person to talk to the dead girl. “Mare”’s been fairly Catholic to this point—scenes at the church, crucifix imagery, Winslet having a cousin priest (Neal Huff)—and it goes right in on the “well, actually, the Catholic Church is an international pedophile ring” at the drop of a hat.

Now, obviously, no complaint there, but it’s a move.

The episode ends on the series’s biggest cliffhanger so far—we’re about to start part two of “Mare of Easttown;” there will undoubtedly be lots of great acting from Winslet, possibly some great acting from Peters, a fairly predictable murder mystery, and some particularly soulless soap opera stuff. If it were better, if director Craig Zobel weren’t aping better directors before him (and, well, someone rewrote Ingelsby’s scenes for him), “Mare” could be great noir.

Instead it’s watchable HBO.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e02 – Fathers

Lots happens this episode. An impressive amount of rising action, both in the case (teen mom Cailee Spaeny’s murder), Kate Winslet’s custody of her grandson (because mom Sosie Bacon is a junkie and Winslet’s son is dead), and then Winslet’s romantic subplot with Guy Pearce. We also get like three suspicious dudes, one out of the blue, one too thinly suspicious for it to really matter (maybe), and then one a Catholic priest.

Not to mention Evan Peters joining the show as Winslet’s work sidekick. See, even the police chief (a better than he needs to be because the material’s tepid John Douglas Thompson) can’t call in the forensic team until Winslet’s on the job so she can’t really talk off him. But Peters, a young turk detective from the county (Scott Turow should be proud his county versus city copper bureaucracy has so changed the genre), he’s a good sounding board. Peters is doing the earnest skinny socially awkward smart guy thing, which just makes “Mare” even more cop porn. But he’s very likable and is able to keep up with Winslet, whose dedication to the part is simultaneously performative (no pun) and sublime. It’s one of those Oscar bait performances where you can’t deny the singular achievement of the performance.

Winslet and Peters interview all the teenagers—including Winslet’s daughter, Angourie Rice, who didn’t tell her mom about seeing Spaeny right before she died—and it’s a good sequence. It’s a classy but not too classy montage sequence, showcasing the tragedy of the teens in this failed town. I’m not sure the utter lack of empathy every single teen feels for the dead girl is supposed to be part of it or if it’s another unintentional dig on the tragedy of the American dream, but it’s something. It just feels so literary. Director Craig Zobel and show creator Brad Ingelsby really do know how to make it feel prestige. Even if the plotting is so much better than the scripting.

No big montage finale, but a series of little scenes setting up more of the series, like victim’s dad, Patrick Murney, confronting his number one suspect, the baby daddy (Jack Mulhern); even though Murney’s a dangerous mess, Mulhern’s such garbage it’s hard to be sympathetic at his plight. But also Eric T. Miller threatening Winslet for arresting daughter Mackenzie Lansing for a caught-on-tape assault, which is Jim-dandy behavior in "Easttown." Winslet’s got a real humanist, progressive reaction to it, which just fits into the prestige.

And then there’s a great cliffhanger, after one and a half other solid cliffhangers.

It’s rote but a not not compelling rote. The show—the mystery, the soap—is just a showcase for Winslet’s exceptional acting.

Mare of Easttown (2021) s01e01 – Miss Lady Hawk Herself

About halfway through this episode, I couldn’t help but think… “Holy shit, are they really going to ‘Westworld’ another timeline in an HBO show?” Because even before the final third or so of the episode, which has lead Kate Winslet meeting visiting writing professor Guy Pearce in a bar talking about how his great American novel was made into a TV movie in the 1990s with Jill Eikenberry (big fail on not mentioning Michael Tucker obviously), “Mare of Easttown” feels very MFA. It feels very much like someone with an ax to grind about their writing degree got to make a TV show.

Now, show creator Brad Ingelsby does not appear to have an MFA; instead he’s got a screenwriting degree from the AFI, which… Okay, just imagine I’m throwing shade but I don’t want to be mean.

“Mare of Easttown” plays like a great adaptation of a readable crime novel about a small town female detective with an assorted supporting cast. The source novel would’ve been written by a woman, of course, while “Mare”’s writer and director (Craig Zobel, doing his best Denis Villeneuve Prisoners; must be so nice to have mise-en-scene like Photoshop filters; like, sincerely it must be so nice and it’s probably better for the content) are both dudes and very dude-y. We can’t, for instance, find out Winslet’s teenage daughter, Angourie Rice, is gay until it’s part of an “ah ha” in a montage.

This episode splits the time—the aforementioned potential “Westworlding”—between Winslet getting ready for her high school basketball anniversary celebration while bickering with her family and dodging responsibility on her own Three Billboards (which seems, at least for most of this episode, to be the A plot of the series—right up until the end), and teen mom Cailee Spaeny’s shitty life. Spaeny’s got a drunk ass dad (Patrick Murney), who’s mad he spends so much on the baby while the baby daddy (Jack Mulhern) encourages his new girlfriend, Mackenzie Lansing, to terrorize Spaeny.

Now, spoiler, it doesn’t end up being “Westworld” and we’re getting to see the tragedy of Spaeny’s last day on Earth before she can become the exclamation point in a manipulative last few minutes montage sequence (should “House M.D.” get a forever nod for these). Until then there’s at least a chance it’s backstory on Winslet’s cold case; her high school friend Enid Graham’s daughter goes missing and is suspected dead, so Graham rents out three….

Wait, wrong show.

Winslet’s story is entirely about her screwed up family life—she’s coparenting raising her grandson (they’ve got to do a big surprise on why because HBO) with ex-husband David Dunham, who moved into the house behind Winslet’s after the divorce because trendy crime novel (it’s a shame Ingelsby doesn’t write as well as he breaks ground situation), raising daughter Rice, contending with mom Jean Smart helping out, and then being the only detective in the town. This episode Winslet empathetically helps out a Black drug addict, so you know she’s a good cop. It’s seriously like they watched Three Billboards and didn’t think Frances McDormand had a point.

The acting’s mostly great. Mulhern’s a wash, particularly since Spaeny and Lansing are so good. Winslet’s amazing. There’s something strange about this show about rust belt Americans basically being tragic and pointless but beautiful in their deserved suffering—they’re on drugs and don’t go to college so come on—but it’s a British person doing the part. The scene with Winslet and Pearce flirty drunk shitting on the death of the American dream gets some layers when you think about how they’re British and Australian, respectively.

Julianne Nicholson gets second-billing as Winslet’s best friend who keeps Winslet’s alcoholism as functional as possible; it’s a so far thankless part, but she’s good. She’s able to keep up with Winslet more than anyone else except Smart.

I’m not sure there’s anywhere particularly groundbreaking they can go next—“Westworlding” or not—but it’s fine. It’s craven but it’s HBO so of course it’s craven.