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Saturday Night Live, Ep. 41.07, “Ryan Gosling/Leon Bridges”

It would be hard to call Ryan Gosling an objectively good host. He is breaking throughout the show, half of his performances come off as wooden and tense, and his characters could largely be eliminated from sketches without altering them too dramatically. But damnit if Gosling isn’t just pleased as punch to be on the stage tonight.

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‘The Big Short’ has a rather large cast of big name actors

There’s nothing short about the list of big name actors in the cast for the upcoming movie by Anchorman helmer Adam McKay. Deadline reported on Tuesday that Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Brad Pitt are set to join Melissa Leo and Marisa Tomei in McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book, The Big Short: …

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Week in Review: Steve Carell joins Robert Zemeckis’s ‘Marwencol’ movie

Steve Carell has officially completed his transformation from comedic actor to a dramatic one. No one is left doubting his talents as a versatile performer. Thus, whatever he does next is highly anticipated, and this latest project might just be the perfect fit for him to show both sides of his acting range. The Wrap …

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New Projects: Chris Pratt gearing up for bootlegging drama ‘The Real McCoy’

You might’ve used the expression “The Real McCoy” and not actually known where it came from. Colloquially it refers to something being authentic, or the real deal. In fact, if someone were to name their movie after it, you might presume it was just a romantic comedy. Well, now super-mega-star Chris Pratt is set to star …

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‘My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn’ Movie Review – explores artistic failure

The Life of Nicolas Winding Refn Directed by Me might have been a more appropriate title for Liv Corfixen’s first documentary, which provides a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of her husband’s latest film Only God Forgives. Following on from his remarkable critical and commercial success with Drive, Refn is under pressure to produce more of the same and in doing so satisfy both his financial backers and his artistic ambitions. It is also the first time that Corfixen and the couple’s two daughters have joined Refn for an extended shoot abroad, creating a completely new environment in which he must balance his personal and professional lives.

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Six Actors Who Should Be Cast As Batman

In July, when Zack Snyder announced that Batman would have a role in the Man of Steel sequel, the internet went ablaze with excitement and speculation. A major issue of speculation was casting; who would play Batman? After Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney and Christian Bale each succeeded and/or failed at making …

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‘Only God Forgives’ a bizarre, excessively gory reunion for Refn and Gosling

Style oozes from every frame of Only God Forgives, tinged in red, like the blood that so frequently sprays across the screen and lands in artfully designed splatters. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling, reuniting after the cult success of 2011’s Drive, have collaborated on a truly baffling, bizarre, and gory crime drama that’s wall-to-wall striking, pretty images. Unlike Drive, however, Only God Forgives is hollow underneath all the model-like posturing and the flashes of excessive, gratuitous violence.

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Only God Forgives is This Summer’s Big Inaction Movie

Only God Forgives, the next film from Drive director Nicolas Winding-Refn, has been near the top of most film nerds most-anticipated movie lists this year, if not sitting mightily atop all of them like a cinematic gargoyle. After storming on to the North American scene in 2011, all eyes have been on the weird little bugger, waiting to see what he’d do next.

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Novelistic ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ is the first truly great film of 2013

The Place Beyond the Pines, so called for the English translation of the Mohawk word “Schenectady,” is close to a carousel in structure, one that would not be out of place at that traveling carnival where we first meet Luke in an extended tracking shot. Round and round it goes, taking the audience on an exacting, circular up-and-down ride. Cianfrance, along with co-writers Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, lets the film linger in moments, allowing it a hypnotic, novelistic pacing.

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‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ squanders a riveting first hour

After a bold narrative choice, the film’s momentum is slowly drained as the hyper ferocity of the first hour is substituted for a less than involving police procedural arc involving Cooper’s character, whose role as a blue collar policemen fails to even register on a dramatic level.

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‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ Image Gallery

[quote by=”Synopsis”] A mysterious and mythical motorcycle racer, Luke (Ryan Gosling), drives out of a traveling carnival globe of death and whizzes through the backstreets of Schenectady, New York, desperately trying to connect with a former lover, Romina, (Eva Mendes) who recently and secretly gave birth to the stunt rider’s son. In an attempt to …

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‘Gangster Squad’ an empty and ultraviolent stab at making ‘L.A. Confidential’ for a new generation

Gangster Squad Directed by Ruben Fleischer Written by Will Beall USA, 2013 At some point, an excess of style only serves to emphasize the hollowness of a story. A director like Martin Scorsese knows how to weave a sprawling tale of vice and amorality while juicing up the proceedings with verve and panache. On the …

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Inside Out 2012: ‘Keep the Lights On’; a powder Blue Valentine

Keep the Lights On Directed by Ira Sachs Written by Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias USA, 2012 Keep the Lights On tells the story of Erik Rothman (Thure Lindhardt), a gay Danish documentary filmmaker living in late 90’s New York City. While not filming, Erik likes to patron the city’s phone-sex lines, soliciting no-strings-attached one-night …

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Top 10 Hollywood Actors Still In Business

Much of our lurid film community is of the belief that America’s acting prowess died with its classic stars like Marlon Brando, James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Grace Kelly. However, I’m here to argue that America’s actors are stronger than ever and can match up toe to toe with the likes …

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Refn and Gosling’s ‘Drive’ Movie Review: A little too cool for its own good

Drive Written by Hossein Amini, from a novel by James Sallis Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn USA, 2011 In one of Albert Brooks’s first scenes in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive as b-movie-producer-turned-mobster Bernie, Brooks dismisses his former occupation’s body of work. “One critic said they were ‘European.’ I thought they were shit.” Bernie likely wouldn’t …

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‘Blue Valentine’ Soundtrack: Haunted by Ghosts of the city and the past

The news of indie favourites Grizzly Bear contributing an all-original soundtrack for the intense romantic drama Blue Valentine has been circulating on the internets for quite sometime now. Bated breaths were held, waiting for the new material to surface accompanied closely by the  also no doubt brilliant, yet heartbreakingly beautiful, film featuring Ryan Gosling and …

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