Nolan Fans

Lost River-

Gosling claims to have referenced The Goonies more than something like The Tree of Life, but the resemblance to these other movies, intentional or not, is constant and clear. It’s an objective, categorical similarity. Lost River lifts images, editing, plotting, and just about anything you can think of from other movies. It’s derivative, but its imitations are anything but numbing. I say with pleasure that Lost River is the opposite of boring, and that there’s a palpable excitement to experience a filmmaker clearly excited by his own material whatever flaws it may contain. So easily could the messy impressionistic structure have been tedious, but what appears to be raw talent refrains that from becoming true. Lost River reveals an over-eager director churning milk into butter, a talent with enough promise that I get hungry for the future. That is to say, it's not successful on its own merits so much as 90 minutes of all the things Gosling has proven he can do right. If his first foray into film is only a shadow, it’s a shadow with personality.

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