Lost River (2015)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Lost River suggests that debuting writer-director Ryan Gosling may have a bright future as a filmmaker, but it doesn't hold together well enough to recommend on its own merit.
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Cast
as Billy
as Rat
as Bones
as Cat
as Bully
as Cab Driver
as Belladonna
as Dave
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Critic Reviews for Lost River
All Critics (70) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (21) | Rotten (49)
Everything ... is painfully obvious or patently nonsensical.
Indulgent and movie-like, Lost River is Gosling's weird, let's-do-this-thing folly. If it is a statement, it is one made by borrowing the vivid styles of the actual filmmakers he seems to admire ...
Designed to daze and confuse, and succeeding, Ryan Gosling's directorial debut is a stunner in visual terms alone.
Ryan Gosling is a tremendously talented actor, but he should really leave the storytelling to someone else.
"Lost River" is one of those weird films that I think some people will absolutely adore, grabbing on to its performances, imagery, and ideas, without really caring that they haven't been stitched together in an interesting enough way.
"Lost River" is indeed a mess, but it's the best mess possible, an evocative grab-bag of images and moods with a heartfelt sincerity and conflicting impulses of romantic melancholy and hardscrabble hopefulness.
Audience Reviews for Lost River
A shot and a miss as Ryan Gosling attempts to create a cult classic. The problem is the villains never seem villainous enough so when the final confrontation happens, it all seems anti climatic. Some high points here and there, but mostly you wait for something to happen.
Super Reviewer
Gosling creates an ominous atmosphere with a hypnotizing cinematography and a great score, but this incredibly pretentious and self-indulgent salad of influences - Lynch, Bava, Argento, Refn and so on - has a terrible sense of lack of purpose, with apparently nothing to say.
Super Reviewer
In "Lost River," Billie(Christina Hendricks) is told by Dave(Ben Mendelsohn), her bank manager, that she is in danger of losing her home, like so many around her. While there seems little chance for her to be able to come up with all the money she owes on her own, Dave does know of a place that is hiring. Meanwhile, Billie's teenage son, Bones(Iain De Caestecker), earns money by stripping wiring from abandoned properties all around town, earning the ire of Bully(Matt Smith). As a director with his first feature "Lost River," Ryan Gosling shows a remarkable eye for memorable imagery, creating a post-apocalyptic fantasia out of the urban ruins of Detroit. Sadly, his writing is not on the same high level, with random story elements floating around in purely Lynchian fashion. That's with performances to match, with Saoirse Ronan and Ben Mendelsohn(who also sings and dances) faring best.
Super Reviewer
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