I have a confession to make. After a long and fierce hatred of a certain movie star, I have changed my tune. I, in front of my friends and God, declare that I like Ryan Gosling.

There were many things for me to hate. The fact that he doesn’t look as tall as he actually is. The fact that he’s Canadian. I mean, the fact that I was hating on a short, Canadian man is basically my right as an American male. BUILD A WALL!! Keep the Canucks out! And you don’t even have to build it that high!

And this schlub is the standard for being attractive?

Hang on while I swoon.

Or this?

Oooooo I can really see how one would fall for the meth-head look. Come on ladies, get your shit together.

As you can see, I’ve built myself a pretty solid case for disliking the guy. Canadian, short, bum. QED. But then, I saw The Nice Guys this weekend. And this guy?

This is a guy I’m in on. Gosling in The Nice Guys is a 100 emoji raised to the power of a fire emoji. Dude is electric. This is a Gosling I can get behind (and who wouldn’t want to, amirite?!). He’s a hilarious, drunk asshole who is completely ridiculous, yet has still has goddamn swagger. Every time he wasn’t on the screen I thought, “Where’s Gosling? I need more of him. Give me all of The Gosling!”

You should go see The Nice Guys. It’s dope. Gosling’s the best, Russell Crowe is great, and the whole movie, top to bottom, is a blasty blast. You owe it to yourself to have some fun.

Recap of the weekend:

AWWWWW YEAH!!!! Guess who’s in motherfuckin’ first? This guy! And I don’t care if I’ve played before and you haven’t. I gave you all a chance to get at least 3 weeks of practice in. But no, you just wrote me off like you always do. Stupid Rhys and his stupid ideas. Well now I’m winning by $10 million. Suck it! I went all in on Captain America: Civil War ($20M) using it 6 times, coupling it with my new favorite movie, The Nice Guys ($8.3M), and Zootopia ($1.1M).

Other notes:

• I have no idea whose team is whose, except for Tanya and Danielle, because they didn’t pick team names.
• Of course Tanya would be good at this. She’s like a summer movie savant. In fact, she was the only one to get the Best Performer of the Week, Love & Friendship ($3.2M). If she had not filled out her lineup willy nilly, picking A Bigger Splash ($520K), Barbershop: The Next Cut ($320K) and Mother’s Day ($298K), but instead just gone L&F 4 times, she’d be sitting in the lead by about $4 million.
• Back Row Funny Business and Moviefonebone picked the exact same lineup, but considering their lineups consisted of 4 of the top 6 most picked movies that week, it’s not that crazy,
• Danielle and 60% of the time, I win everytime went all in on Angry Birds and got pooped on. Both had Angry Birds ($24.6M), Captain America, Neighbors 2 ($11.4M), The Jungle Book ($9.5M) and The Nice Guys in the front end of their lineups. Angry Birds just didn’t make enough money to warrant the $606 FML Bux price tag.
• Best Cineplex:
  • X-Men: Apocalypse ($79.8M) x1 / Captain America: Civil War ($20M) x1 / The Jungle Book ($9.5M) x1 / Love & Friendship* ($3.2M) x 5 = $140,094,243

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2MM bonus

Coming Attractions

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows ($750)

Michael Bay has a PhD in ruining characters from our childhood. So far he’s destroyed Transformers (average Rotten Tomatoes score of all 4 movies is 35%) and created these weird looking, stupid Ninja Turtles. I bet he’s got something to do with the oddly large boobs on the suits in new Power Rangers movie. Why not stop there? How bout Thundercats? Or He-Man? Or M.A.S.K.? Or even Captain Planet? Just create a piece of hot garbage movie for every cartoon I enjoyed in my youth.* He even took time out of his busy schedule to ruin a classic RUN-DMC song for this trailer.

*If I were to go back and watch these shows, I know for sure they’d be bad. But the point remains that Michael Bay hasn’t been involved in a good movie since The Rock. 

This movie looks horrible. Just freaking terrible. Reviews, not surprisingly, are awful. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 31%. The first one made $65 million in its opening weekend and that one was rated 22%, so this one could produce regardless of its bad reviews. That said, Box Office Pro says the buzz for this one has been bad, noting “that less than half the Twitter buzz over the last week than its predecessor.” They predict it to pull in a less than spectacular $27 million. Even if it does better than that, at $750 FML Bux this one feels too risky for me.

Me Before You ($184)

This one’s your pretty standard love story plot: Daenarys Targaryen is hired to take care of crippled Finnick Odair. She’s quirky. He’s a grump. They fall in love. Her dragons burn him alive. What, you didn’t watch all the way to the end?

Reviews are mediocre, scored at 50%. Reviews describe it as the sap-fest that the trailer makes it out to be. But the Box Office Guy on FML points out that there is “a solid precedent of female driven movies doing solid business in June” including The Fault in Our Stars ($48M), The Proposal ($33M), The Lake House ($17M), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (13.2M), The Notebook ($18M), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ($23M) and those movies averaged 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Predictions are around $16 million which combined with the $184 price point is a good value. I’m all over this one. High risk, high reward baby!!

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping ($108)

I laughed out loud (the kids call it, LOLing) twice during this trailer. Once when his album was called “Thriller, Also” and then during the interview where he goes, “We’re like McCartney and… Kanye.” I also enjoyed the Adam Levine holograms grinding on each other.

I think this looks thoroughly enjoyable and pretty funny. I can’t wait to watch this on HBO some day next year when I’m home sick. Reviewers feel pretty much the same way (not the staying home from work part). It’s got a score of 79% and the reviews say its funny and fun, but you’ll probably forget about it as soon as you walk out of the theater.

Box Office Mojo and Box Office Pro both have estimates around $5 million, which makes this one’s price too high for this guy.

The Lobster ($24)

*Technically this movie has been out for a few weeks, but it’s getting more of a nationwide release this weekend and this is the first week it’s available on FML.

What really can you say about a movie where a guy goes to a retreat to find love, but if he doesn’t fall in love, he turns into a lobster? Apparently, you can say it’s great. It’s got a score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It made $750K last week in 116 theaters. It’s now been expanded into 550 theaters. I think it could make $1.5M – $2M, and at $24 it’s got serious best performer bonus potential.

Shade of the Week

Be sure to set your lineups…er cineplexes by noon!