There were TV appearances preceding his film career, including “Young Hercules” in the ’90s. The next step would be to rip a hole across the screen as Danny Balint, the neo-Nazi skinhead and self-loathing Jew who goes through a savage and heartbreaking experience coming to terms with his hatred. In a powerhouse performance, a 21-year-old baby-faced, hairless ingenue seethed with rage and hostility. The film is based on the true story of Daniel Burros, a klansman who killed himself after a reporter outed his Jewish roots on the cover of the New York Times in 1965. Without this film, there might not have been a career for Gosling.
Inserting himself into the Hollywood machine after smashing the indie scene, Gosling took a prominent supporting role in this thriller with Sandra Bullock. We watch Bullock play a detective investigating the murder of a middle-aged woman by two high schoolers. Gosling is charming, manipulative, and scarily commanding in this performance.
Hope you don’t mind if I skip “The Notebook.” Gosling has that covered, anyway, and who hasn’t seen the three-hanky gushfest yet? I’d rather guide you to Gosling’s best work, his Oscar-nominated role in “Half Nelson.” Like Brando’s Stanley Kowalski or Streep’s Sophie, Gosling’s Dan Dunne must have come from all the pain and compassion Gosling could muster from his 25 years. We watch as a drug-addled, depressed history teacher in a low-income area of Brooklyn becomes a very unorthodox kind of saint when he takes the troubled 13-year-old Drey (Shareeka Epps) under his wing. That’s all on this film –it’s mandatory viewing.
What can be done about Lars Lindstrom? He lives behind his brother’s and sister-in-law’s house, is isolated and shy, and recoils at the touch of other human beings…yet he is weirdly sweet. Solution: a wheelchair-bound, life-sized, half-Brazilian, half-Danish blow-up doll named Bianca. Sounds like a logical first step to a good story, right? You have no idea how lovely, hilarious, and melancholy this film is, especially when Lars’s wacky community accepts Bianca as his “girlfriend.”
Ryan Gosling is one half of a rock duo who sings love songs about ghosts. They’re called Dead Man’s Bones. They’re based in Los Angeles. Here is a music video on Youtube. It’s as good as any Gosling feature film performance. Enjoy yourselves.
Another journey into the painful heart of Ryan Gosling’s astonishing vulnerability, this time in Derek Cianfrance’s unforgiving end-of-a-great-love story “Blue Valentine.” Dean meets Cindy (Oscar nominee Michelle Williams), and charms her with his fitness, his energy, his swooning love. Flash forward (and backwards, continuously) several years. Dean is overweight, unmotivated, and Cindy is feeling very differently about the life they’ve built. It’s a downer, really, but its power is in its realism. Watching Dean and Cindy disintegrate is often like watching two pitbulls rip at each other’s necks, and certainly it’s watching two world-class actors lay their hearts on the table.
You’re not bored for a moment in Nicholas Windig Refn’s Cannes Film Festival sensation “Drive.” Gosling is as commanding and memorable as ever, barely uttering a word in the role of Driver, who’s in love with the downtrodden beauty Irene (Carey Mulligan), but is also caught up in his job of being a very skilled getaway driver. Both activities lead to some explosive and artful action scenes.
Did you like this movie? Romantic comedies don’t all have to be about shutting down the frontal lobe. “Crazy Stupid Love” brings us an amazing cast (Steve Carrell, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore), plots that are practical and rollicking, and a chronically shirtless Ryan Gosling. He plays Jacob, a lady killer who shells out advice to less confident folk like the heartbroken Cal (Carrell). We watch when he meets Hannah (Stone), and falls in love. The movie is full of people you’d like to have as your friends, and Gosling, who you might like to have as your boyfriend.
For those interested in the underbelly of politics, here’s a movie about betrayal and backstabbing that exist in a presidential campaign. Directed by and starring George Clooney, it also features Gosling as Stephen Meyers, head of Mike Morris’s presidential campaign. This fascinating movie is reflective of things we all know, but rarely acknowledge about the leaders of our country.
Some bad reviews plagued this actually great film, a family melo-crime drama about two men whose lives intersect. Luke is a former motorcycle racer who begins a streak of bank robberies to support his estranged lover (Eva Mendes) and their baby. Avery is a dedicated police officer who is after those committing the robberies. Directed by “Blue Valentine” auteur Derek Cianfrance, the film goes back to the dreams of high school and the shattered dreams of adulthood.
