Blue Valentine (2010)
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.
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12 films that influenced Blue Valentine
What critics say influenced Blue Valentine
Gosling gives a class in Method acting, and his more physical performance - cigarette dangling from his mouth, bald spot, paint-spattered pants - is reminiscent of De Niro circa "Mean Streets."
In the 60s and 70s John Cassavetes worked in this kind of territory, in pictures like Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and Husbands.
Taking a page, or maybe a full novella, from John Cassavetes' kitchen-sink melodramas, Blue Valentine amplifies the intensity a notch or two above the expected; it leaves the actors looking bruised and exhausted, like Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands at the end of Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence.
And certainly Scorsese has worked in this sort of mood; while watching Raging Bull , Steven Spielberg said he was like "an intruder."
It becomes a scary study in the woundedness of defensive manhood Raging Bull meets COPS.
Williams particularly is exemplary: I thought Gosling's performance at times has a touch of ego: he may well have been watching early Di Niro performances in such films as Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver.
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An improvised song-and-dance routine is the film’s most charming, reminiscent of John Carney’s great 2006 Dublin-set romance “Once” and a nice break from “Blue Valentine’s” indie score by Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear.
A great film about relationships—such as the recent Another Year , or the considerably less recent Shoot the Moon —conveys a sense of the casual and the incidental.
Other movies -- such as Shoot the Moon -- have dealt with love gone wrong before, but Blue Valentine almost makes you feel like youre spying on the couple in question.
Director Derek Cianfrance has crafted a modern-day "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
This drama revolves around the relationship between Dean (Ryan Gosling from "Fracture," "Half Nelson" and "The Notebook") and Cindy (Michelle Williams from "Shutter Island" and "Brokeback Mountain"), a contemporary married working-class couple.
Michelle Williams continues to impress and astonish as an actor, her work in this, as well as in previous films like 2005's " Brokeback Mountain " and 2007's " Wendy and Lucy ," never less than truthful.
To some audiences, Michelle Williams was a bright blond diversion in the middle of Shutter Island; Synecdoche, New York; I'm Not There; and Brokeback Mountain.
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Williams particularly is exemplary: I thought Gosling's performance at times has a touch of ego: he may well have been watching early Di Niro performances in such films as Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver.
Gosling is a hot-dog actor of unlimited potential who has clearly watched Taxi Driver too many times.
His solution: Drop the kid at her grandparents' and book a night in the "Future Room," decorated like a pornographic version of " Star Wars ."