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Gosling's 'Lost River' Reaches Detroit Friday; See What 8 Reviews Say

April 21, 2015, 4:25 PM by  Alan Stamm

If you're still eager -- or interested, at least -- to see how Detroit looks in Ryan Gosling's directing debut, you can do so in three days.

Screenings of "Lost River" are scheduled Friday through April 30 at Cinema Detroit, 3420 Cass Ave. (the former Burton School) in Midtown Detroit. Twice-nightly show times are here. Tickets are $9.

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Ryan Gosling seems "convinced he's making an instant cult classic," one reviewer writes.

The 95-minute film starring Christina Hendricks, shot here in 2013, isn't exactly a critical hit.

OK, that's being kind -- most reviewers hate it, as did advance viewers at last summer's Cannes Film Festival in France. Time magazine calls it "the 2014 festival’s most enthusiastically derided entry." (The re-edited film is 10 minutes shorter now.)

Shots fired in recent reviews, excerpted below, include "disaster," "mess," "frustrating" and "WTF."

But hey -- Detroit locations, right? And The New York Times credits Gosling with "a poetic sensibility."

"It's not for everyone," Gosling tells a Reuters news service writer. "But it has its audience. It's a very specific and personal movie, and you have to get it out there to find who it's for."

A trailer is at the end of this post. Here's a plot summary from Warner Brothers:

"Lost River" is a dark fairy tale about love, family and the fight for survival in the face of danger.

In the virtually abandoned city of Lost River, Billy (Christina Hendricks), a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld in her quest to save her childhood home and hold her family together. Her teenage son Bones (Iain De Casestecker) discovers a mystery about the origins of Lost River that triggers his curiosity and sets into motion an unexpected journey that will test his limits and the limits of those he loves.

If you care what critics say, review excerpts follow. Brace yourself.

► "Surreal charge:" Dilapidated houses, overgrown lawns and abandoned buildings give this demented fantasia a surreal charge. . . . it reveals Mr. Gosling as a filmmaker with a poetic sensibility.  -- Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times

► "LOL and WTF:" The soulful actor’s directorial debut, set in a decayed Detroit, is a mad mash-up of horror movie and Sundance attitudinizing. . . . The movie wavers between the risible and the stupefying, between LOL and WTF. -- Richard Corliss, Time

 "A mess:" "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.  -- Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times

 "So frustrating:" What makes "Lost River" so frustrating is that despite its narrative meandering and jackhammer-subtle symbolism, it’s actually beautifully shot and composed. Gosling may not be much of a writer, but he does have a great eye for hauntingly art-directed squalor. . . .He should really consider [being a] cinematographer. -- Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

►"Vanity project:" Clearly the work of someone convinced he’s making an instant cult classic, Lost River is an egregious vanity project, and yet oddly impersonal. -- Jonathan Romney, The Guardian (U.K.)

► "Disaster:" Gosling's directorial debut is an expensive-looking disaster. . . . Gosling hasn’t really made a film at all. Instead, he’s pointed a camera at some things that he seems to think belong in one, like sadism, things on fire in slow motion, beautiful actors pretending to be poor and an abandoned zoo. . . . These are supposed to combine into a pitch-dark parable about the death of the American heartlands. . . . But as things wear on you realize that’s all it is. Gosling has nothing to tell us about poverty other than that it looks, like, really cool.-- Robbie Collin, 1 star out of 5, The Telegraph (U.K.)

► "Madly derivative:" "Lost River" is a visual and aural sensory bath that shows some real flair, but feels madly derivative at every moment. . . . As beautifully presented as the imagery is, however, none of it registers deeply because it all seems like borrowed goods. -- Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter (2014 Cannes review)

► "Train wreck:" Gosling has certainly put himself out there, sans shame or apology, but train-wreck fascination will go only so far to turn this misguided passion project into an item of even remote commercial interest. -- Justin Change, Variety (2014 Cannes review)



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