Quick Shots - 17/Oct/2016

Some things I've been watching....

The Nice Guys

Shane Black is continuing his little run of doing films. On the back of 'Iron Man 3', he's directed this 70s retro private eye film with a slight nod to 'LA Confidential'. Yes, it features Russell Crowe in his boofy middle-aged lumpy look but also a plastic-surgery-added Kim Basinger as the evil mother.

It's not as good as you hope it would be, even as Ryan Gosling turns in a funny little character study of a down-and-out Paper-Moon-esque thing. Of course this being a Sae Black film, the 13year old girl  is a wiseacre with the most chutzpah of any of the characters. Angourie Rice steals the show in a performance that does not lemon she's an Aussie, with echoes of both Tatum O'Neal in 'Paper Moon', and Jodie Foster in 'Taxi Driver'.

Maybe it's a film more for the studied Witterati. I liked it but Can't see it appealing to a whole lot of people.

Elvis And Nixon

This is the latest film in a sub-genre of films that features Elvis Presley as a character. Actually, it's also a new entry into the sub-genre of films where Richard Nixon is a character. Maybe the great thing here is that it masks the two genres together and you have both these larger-than-life characters sharing the screen.

Michael Shannon does a great job to evoke the somewhat off-kilter and perhaps Aspergers patient Elvis Presley. Kevin Spacey plays Nixon and it's more of a caricature than a proper attempt to bring Nixon to the screen. While Shannon's Presley seems to have genuine depth, Spacey's Nixon seems more of a parody of gestures and body language. After all, Spacey's already playing a very scary President in 'House of Cards', so the one thing we weren't going get was a naturalistic, understated, delicate performance from Spacey. The good thing is that he seems very comfortable in the Oval Office set. Oddly enough, this Oval office looks larger than the one Spacey normally works in, on 'House of Cards'.

Between the two figures, Elvis actually comes across as a better human being, for all his bizarre predilections. Nixon is forever going to be a dour dog (an that insults dogs everywhere).

Narcos, Season 2


Oh brother. This season isn't as interested in the minutiae of the druglord life as the first season it zooms along to its season-ending climax simply to get there in a hurry. It's also a season which sees Pablo Escobar on the downslope and it gets a lot less glorious than the first season. Maybe the creators felt compelled to downplay the glories of a druglord who shook a nation, but this season seemed a lot more perfunctory and that's a shame.

the good news is the show is called 'Narcos' and not 'Escobar' so presumably there's a lot more to come, to do with the CIA backing the Cali syndicate as well as the crazy right-winger kick-murder squad that take to drug trafficking.