It seems hard to believe now, but there was a time when Ryan Gosling was not a movie star. Plenty of people acknowledge his Mickey Mouse Club days with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, just as others recognize how hilarious he is in “Remember the Titans.” But most seem to think that he just came out of nowhere, like a gift from God, to steal their hearts in 2004’s “The Notebook.”
In actuality, though, Gosling first got his moment in the spotlight as leading man from 2001’s “The Believer.” The performance may well be the polar opposite of his stoic characters in “Drive” and “Only God Forgives.” As Danny Balint, a self-loathing Jew who turns from his upbringing to join a radical neo-Nazi cell in New York, Gosling absolutely electrifies the screen as he futilely struggles to suppress memories of his background in order to commit heinous deeds.
But “The Believer” is not my choice for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” simply because it is a great performance piece for Gosling. Though he does steal the show, Gosling is hardly all the film has to offer. “The Believer” may not quite rival “American History X,” another similar film about neo-Nazis, but it’s still a powerful examination of radicalism on both the personal and the political levels.
Writer/director Henry Bean satisfyingly delves into the psychology of Danny, looking at what might explain his volatile and unpredictable behavior. There’s never one definitive answer, though, and the only person that seems to frustrate is Danny himself. He’s a complete wild card, vacillating constantly between his desires to embrace the Jewish community that brought him up and his impulse to eradicate that same group altogether. Maybe Gosling, now Mr. Strong and Silent, ought to watch “The Believer” now to bring some of the turmoil and conflict back to his work.
It’s often easy to put a good deal of distance between ourselves and the Holocaust. In no way am I promoting this as a good development, but the continuous passage of time only amplifies our sense of removal from the era of mass extermination. Moreover, Americans in particular can see themselves as the liberators in such a genocidal scenario, not as perpetrators.
It usually takes a director two to three features to work out the kinks in their style and settle into a comfortable groove of filmmaking. That is not the case, however, for Australian director Justin Kurzel. His debut film, “The Snowtown Murders,” has the confidence and assurance of a director with far more experience under his belt.
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With flaring tensions between Israel and Palestine back on the front page, perhaps there is no better time to Dror Moreh’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Gatekeepers.” This selection for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week” is a rather unique look at the conflict from 1967 onwards, told through the eyes of six former heads of the Israeli internal security agency Shin Bet.
On the occasion of the United States’ 238th birthday, why not celebrate a lesser-trumpeted American fascination? (Not that freedom, liberty, and equality aren’t nice.). This is a value we share with pretty much the whole world, and we might have even invented it.
Xavier Dolan has had quite a run over the past few years. This May, the 25-year-old wunderkind not only cracked the official competition slate at Cannes, but also won the Jury Prize. Just five years ago, his debut feature “I Killed My Mother” announced his arrival on the international scene at the Cannes sidebar Director’s Fortnight.
I’ve always been fascinated by people on the cutting edge of their art, and even more enthralled by those who are forming just what that art will be. (Perhaps this explains my recent fascination with early film history.) One such iconoclast is Marina Abramavic, a performance artist who is pushing boundaries that don’t even exist for her medium yet.
In 2012 and 2013, whatever time I had that wasn’t devoted to studying for finals in late April and early May was devoted to cramming in some important movie watching. Around mid-April, the lineup for the Cannes Film Festival is announced, and both years promised new films for prominent directors whose filmographies I had largely (and shamefully) neglected.
Thankfully, there never seems to be any shortage of documentaries tackling the quandaries and complexities of our livable reality, but at times the sheer volume of non-fiction film can be overwhelming. Even from just a search of what’s available on Netflix, it’s hard to sort out the real deal from the TV special or the DVD extra quality material. Thankfully, the Academy Awards are pretty helpful at shining a spotlight on a selection of high quality documentaries each year.
You’ve seen biopics of complex figures, but director Todd Haynes isn’t interested in presenting his portrait of musician and cultural icon Bob Dylan like anything else ever made. His “I’m Not There” is a bold experiment, manifesting the fragmentation of Dylan’s persona by literally splitting him into six characters. This iconoclasm pays off in a rewarding and challenging experience, leading me to name the movie my pick for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”
Marshall and the Movies 
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