Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams Headline State of Play, a Solidly-Crafted Political Thriller

In my opinion, Russell Crowe is at his best playing morally complicated figures as prone to darkness as they are helping people. When he's playing a straightforward biopic protagonist in something like A Beautiful Mind, I just can't buy him. Even his lead performance as the action hero in Gladiator doesn't quite work for me. But put Crowe in Noah, The Nice Guys or the 2009 movie State of Play, suddenly we're cooking with gas. Crowe's genuinely gifted at portraying rough and tumble figures who seem to have leaped out of reality rather than a studio executive's cliche-ridden idea of what a "tough guy" is.  There's actual menace and unpredictability to his best performances and he's even able to imbue a distinctly different personality to, say, his version of Noah compared to his Nice Guys role.

Writer/Director Joel Edgerton Manages To Find Humanity To Accompany On-Screen Torment In Boy Erased

After his directorial debut, The Gift, proved to be a surprise success, Joel Edgerton decided to follow that project up with a classic sophomore directorial effort move: it was time to get serious. It was time to deliver an "artsy" motion picture that proved to the world that Edgerton was no one-trick pony, no, this was a guy who was capable of creating powerful art in addition to fun genre fare. The result of this drive to deliver a more serious-minded feature is Boy Erased, which really aims for the full nine years in terms of dark storytelling material by covering the experience of a gay teenager going to a conversion camp designed to "correct" his sexuality.

Despite Being About A Real-Life Genius, A Beautiful Mind Is A Pretty Thoughtless Movie

Russell Crowe has had quite the odd career hasn't he? Now, he's a famous actor, no one would ever deny that, but after headlining two back-to-back Best Picture winners (Gladiator and the subject of this review, A Beautiful Mind) and scoring a Best Actor win, the guy starred in two big projects (Master And Commander: Far Side of The World and Cinderella Man) that underperformed financially and then headlined the box office dud A Good Year in November 2006. In the nearly twelve years since then, he's only starred in a handful of movies and mostly stuck to supporting roles. Not an odd career trajectory at all for a leading man to shift into supporting roles, it just feels, to me anyway, like Crowe's time as a leading man came and went in the blink of an eye given how buzzy he was at the start of the century.

Gladiator Is Straightforward To A Fault

Aside from them both being Best Picture winners, it's doubtful anyone would ever think to compare Gladiator and Driving Miss Daisy, but that's just what I'm going to be doing today. Obviously, both films differ greatly in terms of story, tone and types of characters they explore, but both are feature films that I've watched for the first time recently that are amiable endeavors that also can't help but feel like they're a little basic, they stick to tried-and-true storytelling & characters too heavily and in the process feel like they're eschewing the chance to carve out their own identity, though at least Gladiator does have the distinction of reviving the swords-and-sandals genre in a big way at the dawn of the 21st century.

Where To Even Begin With The Cinematic Cataclysm That Is The Mummy?

The Mummy is so much fun, I really was shocked by how well-made it was. Sure, it gets more than a little obsessed with generic CGI mayhem, but The Mummy is a ton of fun, with strong lead performances that make casual conversations between the characters super entertaining, I'd totally recommend giving the 1999 version of The Mummy a watch! The 2017 take on The Mummy on the other hand....there's no easy way to put it, so lemme rip this band-aid right off and just say it: The Mummy is a full on disaster, a film that can't be counted on to deliver solid scares, originality or competent action. If you told this movie to go make two pieces of toast, I'm sure it would end up burning down the entire house in the process, that's how massively incompetent it is.

The Nice Guys Review

Ryan Gosling may be one of the most exceptional leading men in American cinema today. I say that without hesitation, namely due to the guys talent and his versatility, two traits that typically go hand-in-hand. Who else could play a Confident (with a capital C) expert on romance in Crazy, Stupid, Love, a mostly silent driver in Drive and a manic Wall Street heavyweight in The Big Short all with the same level of authenticity and major success? In the new Shane Black effort The Nice Guys, Gosling gets to flaunt his comedic muscles to noteworthy opulence. It's almost not fair to see one of the most chiseled good-looking dudes on the planet also reveal himself to be also be gifted in the areas of slapstick comedy and comedic timing. How'd this one guy get so lucky in his talents??