Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is a schoolteacher in Brooklyn and a drug addict. When one of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps) discovers his secret they form an unlikely friendship. Half Nelson is a film about contradictions and the vice like grip drugs can hold on you, just like the wrestling move the film is named … Continue reading Half Nelson
When psychiatrist Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) takes on the caseload of an exhausted co-worker he is immediately met with the challenge of a patient determined to take their own life. Henry Lethem (Ryan Gosling) declares to Sam that he will take his own life at midnight on his birthday in a bid to mimic … Continue reading Stay
Whilst living in a care home an elderly man (James Garner) reads to a woman with dementia (Gena Rowlands). The story he tells is a romance between a young man (Ryan Gosling) and woman (Rachel McAdams) in the 1940’s whose class differences threaten their love. Despite The Notebook releasing in 2004 I have never watched … Continue reading The Notebook
When a young man named Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) murders a special needs child he is sent to a juvenile detention centre. There his teacher Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle) tries to help him to open up and explain why he would do such a thing. Meanwhile those impacted by the crime try to come … Continue reading The United States Of Leland
Two gifted High School students plan and commit a perfect murder as an intellectual expression of their freedom. What they did not account for is the seasoned detective assigned to the case. Murder by Numbers is an example of a classic crime procedural thriller that was prevalent in the 1990’s and 2000’s. The obvious pun … Continue reading Murder By Numbers
Two Jewish cousins travel to Poland to take a tour in honour of their beloved grandmother who recently died. A Real Pain is the sort of film that appears to be rather slight, but has hidden volumes. At surface level it is an odd couple comedy. David Kaplan, played by Jesse Eisenberg who also wrote … Continue reading A Real Pain
Roy Chutney (Ryan Gosling) finds himself spiralling when two personally devastating events happen back to back. First, his emotionally distant father commits suicide. Second, he is cut from the football team that gives him direction. His path to get back on track may come from local eccentric Gideon Ferguson (David Morse) who approaches him to … Continue reading The Slaughter Rule
When FBI agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) moves to Idaho it is with the intention of slowing down. A veteran of cases involving organised crime and the Ku Klux Klan has made him estranged from his wife and daughters and this step is planned to ease those tensions. But then he finds himself investigating a … Continue reading The Order
Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling) is a violent Neo-Nazi associated with skin head gangs and a movement to try to promote fascism in America. He is also Jewish and under the glare of a journalist who smells a story about this conflict. Cross cutting between Balint as a youth where he studied in the Jewish faith … Continue reading The Believer
When Almut (Florence Pugh) accidentally runs over recently divorced Tobias (Andrew Garfield) with her car they begin a relationship and fall in love. But then a cancer diagnosis for Almut will force them to make some decisions about how to get the most from their time together and what to focus on. We Live In … Continue reading We Live In Time
Phil the Bear's Film Reviews 