Writer-director Ryan Fleck’s Sundance-minted Half Nelson is a glancingly remarkable, two-handed character study that slips up a bit in its overly impressionistic trafficking but still features a solid performance from Ryan Gosling (above), who continues to be the best kept under-25 secret in Hollywood. While tough-love mentor tales are a dime a dozen, much rarer are movies which indulge the notion — let alone proffer a glimpse — of the curative
effect of surging adolescent inquisitiveness and an unwounded (yet far
from naïve) psyche on a somehow equally or even moreso vulnerable or adrift adult. And that’s what Half Nelson attempts, so mad props for effort, at least. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.