How to Enjoy Gangster Squad

Here's how to enjoy "Gangster Squad", if you are a straight girl:

1. If you're afraid of flying: Wait to see it on a plane, and line up a whole bunch of mini-bottles of your favourite alcohol. Every time someone takes out a Tommy Gun and shoots everyone, everywhere for the next five minutes, take a shot. By 20 minutes into the movie, you'll be asleep. No more fears to deal with. Maybe you'll dream of a time where men wore suits and nice shoes everywhere...

2. If you need to get over your obsession with Ryan Gosling: Sure, he looks the same. He wears the suits and chain-smokes, sexily. But for some reason he made a character choice in this movie to raise his voice by an octave. The fuck? Gradually, gratingly, he will lose your respect. Note: this trick will not work if you are hearing impaired.

3. If you've been considering dying your hair red: You'll have 113 minutes to debates the pros and cons. Do you have Emma Stone's skin-tone? Can you keep up with the shade? Sure, it looks great in that deep ruby tone, but do you have the self-discipline to re-dye it every two weeks? You know that shit fades. And you don't even have the self-discipline to go four days without eating pizza and/or cupcakes and/or staring at your ex's new girlfriend's yoga-poses-on-the-beach facebook pictures.

4. If you need a new movie-star crush: 

Then make Anthony Mackie your new pretend boyfriend. I bet he likes puppies and eating red velvet cupcakes. You have so much in common.

5. If you need to remember why other movies are so great: Let the leads in this film make you reminisce for their better films. The following are things I said out loud during the movie to my friend, another straight girl:

"Is that really supposed to be Mickey Cohen? Do you remember LA Confidential? That was such a great movie."

"Ahh, Josh Brolin. Did you ever see No Country For Old Men? You should totally see that. Crazy good."

"Mystic River!! Sean Penn should have just quit after Mystic River"

"I really liked what Emma Stone wore in every scene of the The Help. That movie was pretty good, but mostly it made me want to go shopping with those old-timey racist white people and then tell them the future would make everything about their stupid lives look dumb and mean, except their clothing, just FYI."