01. Ryan Gosling is ridiculously attractive. I think I’ve finally scrubbed the image of him on Breaker High off my brain. I wasn’t able to jump on the Gosling bandwagon after The Notebook because that movie sucked so freaking hard (even though he was attractive and brooding in that role), but after Half Nelson and now this, I am growing quite fond of him. He has a lot of really fantastic, illuminating facial expressions that say more than many of his mediocre lines allow him too.
02. Anthony Hopkins basically played his character as Hannibal Lecter, minus the unique food choices and cryptic, quip-tic clues; he’s far less interesting and far less creepy than Lecter as a result of this.
03. The scenes where Hopkins and Gosling get to square off against each other are really great; they buoy up the movie where other parts would try to drag it down. I like watching old, wizened actors face off with the young whippersnappers who are on pace to develop the same sort of acting skillz. There’s good energy in these scenes.
04. I know I’ve said before that the best serious movies always have a lot of really fantastic humour in them, and you can tell this is not one of those films because the jokes made in it are terrible. There are all these ridiculous one-liners that seem so out of place and are incredibly cringe-worthy.
05. Lovely southern California architecture.
06. I cannot understand what kind of logic Willy’s boss, Nikki, tries to use in her day to day life. She keeps going on about how precarious his situation is with the new firm and how he has to tread lightly and avoid incurring the wrath of his obviously temperamental and unstable boss, and yet… she decides to get into some semblance of a relationship him five seconds after she meets him? How does this even make any sense, especially since when we’re introduced to her, it’s specifically in the capacity of her being his boss? Lady, if you don’t want to jeopardize your own career because of the new youngling on staff? DON’T START FUCKING HIM. He’s equally responsible for this stupidity, of course, but I don’t understand how a woman who is obviously supposed to be very intelligent and cuthroat to get as high as she has in the corporate legal world can be so very stupid.
07. There was no reason for there to be a scene in which Ryan Gosling does chin-ups while not wearing a shirt, but that’s more than okay.