kiss kiss bang bang do you like this film?

I haven't seen either.

Hell yeah I do.  Quite a bit actually.  The plots of both are pretty convoluted but the casts in both are excellent. Great chemistry and dialogue in both as well. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was the first movie where Robert Downy Jr showed he still had skills and salvage his career. 

I think The Nice Guys in particular should have done much better in theaters.  It had big time sequels potential. Ryan Gosling and Russel Crowe were a lot of fun to watch and Angourie as Goslings daughter was that rare kid actor who was believable as a kid and not some weird mini adult grown in a lab. 


I give both them a 9.   

Both get a Thumbs Down from me...

-Kiss Kiss Bang Bang = 4/10 (below average)
-Nice Guys = 5/10 (average/forgettable)

because at the end of the day movies are ultimately broke into two basic groups...

A)Movies worth re-watching (i.e. Thumbs Up)
B)Movies I won't re-watch (i.e. Thumbs Down)

p.s. for the record... only about 20% of everything I have seen, or about 1 out of every 5 movies I have seen over the long term, gets a Thumbs Up. so while that might not look good (since in a way one could claim I dislike about 80% of everything I have seen), I think it's not surprising because the vast majority of movies are ultimately forgettable and my ratings tend to reflect this fact. but with that said... I think the majority of what I have viewed is decent enough not to have wasted my time.

Yeah both films are great. Back when there was reason to get excited for a Shane Black movie.

Both films find Shane Black on prime neo-noir form.


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

It's literally like someone took America by the East Coast and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on. 

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is written and directed by Shane Black. It stars Robert Downey Jr., Val Kilmer and Michelle Monaghan. Music is by John Ottman and cinematography by Michael Barrett. 

Small time thief Harry Lockhart (Downey Jr.) is running from the police and stumbles into a movie audition and gets the part! Partnered with private detective Gay Perry (Kilmer), who is to show him the ropes for the part he's to play, things turn just a little weird when dead bodies start turning up in his life. 

Shane Black's first venture into big feature film directing is a master class of genre bending bravado. The screenplay and script bare all the hallmarks of Black, where anyone familiar with his writing work previously will know where to set expectation levels as per barbed dialogue and blitzkrieg energy. Yet this is very much one of a kind, a standalone of such dizzying thrills and shameless awareness of movie conventions, it practically begs to be visited on more than one occasion. 

To simplify it, it's a neo-noir – murder mystery – bromance – romance – comedy – actioner! OK, so not really that simple, then! Black takes a loving homage to pulp cinema and mixes it with caustic asides to the Los Angeles industry that provides him with work. How wonderful. Downey's (fabulous) Lockhart is the fulcrum, acting as antagonist, protagonist, narrator and a number of other things as Black runs him through the meta mangler. Kilmer (also fabulous) sidles up to deliver sarcasm, machismo and tongue in cheek posturing, the chemistry with Downey concrete. An odd couple pairing beautifully baring fruit, and, well, just beautiful really. 

Into the mix is the gorgeous Monaghan, who as Harry's childhood object of affection, is now a failed actress, slightly damaged, but strong and savvy, but also not, an unconditional femme fatale, but also not really! Corbin Bernsen (whose company produced the pic) files in for some joy filled has-been smarm, while sound tracking and photography sit comfortably with the nature of the beast. As a plot it's deliberately complex and convoluted, Black knows his noir onions, but he also wants to put his vibrant stamp on things, so he crowbars the comedy of The Hard Way into the hardboiled haze of The Big Sleep. And it works very well indeed. 

Violence is aplenty but very much irreverently played. Murders occur, either by design or otherwise, various body parts get assaulted and they shouldn't make for belly laughs, but they do; and not in some lame Weekend at Bernie's way either. And yet still Black has time to trickle sad themes below the surface, one in particular really hits home and forces the viewer to snap out of the frivolity for some reflection. Make no bones about it, these are damaged characters straight out of noir's dark alleyways in the 40s and 50s. So Capra meets Siodmak - Dmytryk - Mann - Tourneur - Wilder...then?  

Smarty pants film making makes for smart entertainment, see it more than once. Hell! See it annually in fact. 9/10 

The Nice Guys (2016)


Waltons, Poronography, Tricky Dicky, Hitler, Equanimity, Bumble Bees ... And Stuff! 

The Nice Guys is directed by Shane Black and Black co-writes the screenplay with Anthony Bagarozzi. It stars Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling and Angourie Rice. Music is by John Ottman and David Buckley and cinematography by Philippe Rousselot.

1977 Los Angeles and a private detective and a muscle for hire enforcer wind up on the same case looking for a missing girl. Can opposites really attract? More importantly, can they survive not just the perils of a case that gets murkier the longer it goes on? But also each other?

I don't care if Colonel Mustard did it in the study with a candlestick. I just wanna know who he did it with and get the pictures.

How wonderful to have had Shane Black back in his comfort zone and producing such a joyful buddy buddy neo-noir of considerable substance. It was eleven years since the superb Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had reminded us that Black had few peers when it came to blending high action macho twosomes who are also armed with sharp tongues to match, this was after all the guy who also penned Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout. The idea for The Nice Guys had sat in gestation for a number of years, finally it was unleashed to reward fans of his work and for those in sync with the style of film making he homages.

Much like his other buddy scriptings, we are in the company of two mismatched guys. Gosling's ex-cop Holland March is a bit goofy, afraid of the sight of blood and morally bankrupt. Crowe's muscle for hire Jackson Healy beats people up for money, but he's a stand-up guy, likes his pet fish, even has a hero streak. What binds them together is troubled family baggage, that they are both men in search of a better world, to be better men themselves, and thus Black - to give them a chance of life improvement - pitches them into the seamy underbelly of the L.A. pornography industry - with some corruption elsewhere thrown into the equation.

As a coupling March and Healy prove to be a riot. Crowe is menacing and funny with it, Gosling is affably flaky but charm personified, and thankfully both men have a knack for visual comedy (see Gosling's Lou Costello homage and Crowe's reaction to a henchman's act of fish murder). Crucially both actors can deliver killer lines, which is an absolute must for a Shane Black inspired production, for here there is never any let up, zingers are unbound. Then there is Rice (superb and actually the third lead in the play) as March's 13 year old daughter, she's got youthful zest and a killer matter of fact skill in reacting smartly to the two men currently dominating her life.

The L.A. of the 70s is expertly designed, all blink blink blinkity blink neon lighting, side-burns and disco music, dubious fashions and protest groups protesting about the most mundane of things. Then you got the pornography angle, the 70s a hot-bed (no pun intended) for the sex sells profiteers, the perfect setting for Black to trawl through it all in noir clobber. As a noir piece it has it all, femme fatales, thugs, conspiracies, voice overs and an array of colourfully odd characters (excitable and troubling henchmen, a porno Pinocchio, a young lad willing to flash the contents of his underpants for cash!). And of course there's mysteries to be solved and rocks to be upturned, all of which is played out in a whirl of stylish violence, situational comedy and fluid camera work.

Black kind of wants it all, to stay cool whilst having wry observations on the Americana of the era, and he enjoys going close to the knuckle when he can, which to some (not me) will come off as a shock value humour tactic just to ruffle feathers. It's also a minor itch that he sort of snatches from his previous works in search of reassurance - note for instance the similarities between the opening to Lethal Weapon and here with The Nice Guys. But itches be damned, so much fun and hidden dramatic depth on show here, a real treasure that makes you wish Black would stroll down neo-noir lane a bit more often. Don't believe me? Then may Richard Nixon come after you the next time you go for a swim in the pool! 9/10

I don't like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang quite as much as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang does, but it's good.

I really dug The Nice Guys, though.

I'm not sure why I only gave two movies I love a mere "7.5 or better" in my first post so I changed my rating to 9 for both.  Even though The Nice Guys is a better movie overall and some of the shine is off Kiss Kiss Bang Bang due to having seen it dozens of times I shouldn't punish KKBB with a 7.5 because of it, right?  In fact I am such a fan of KKBB I was actually surprised to discover I liked The Nice Guys better after watching it for the first time.  Gosling and Crowe are a lot more equal in their performances than RDJ and Val Kilmer.  Not that Kilmer wasn't good, RDJ was just better IMO.

A sequel to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would be great but I was actually a bit depressed when I googled Nice Guys box office immediately after watching the movie and realized it probably wasn't profitable enough to warrant a sequel. 

I saw Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a long time ago. I liked it but I don't remember much about the movie other than Val Kilmer's character being gay.