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Half Nelson
Idealistic inner-city junior high school teacher Dan Dunne with a drug habit forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students after she discovers his secret.
15 July 1989, Staten Island, New York City, New York, USA
7 September 1970, USA
11 July 1989, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
4 October 1972, Seoul, Korea
April 12, 2014
A fantastic merging of talents into a pure piece of art...
September 24, 2010
"Half Nelson" elegantly tiptoe around its elephant in the room: Dan's most compelling instruction to not let Drey enter the drug trade is his own destruction. That point of panic turns into something approaching penance.
October 20, 2006
The movie comes down to Gosling's spot-on performance and how we feel about it.
April 23, 2009
A sometimes subtle, sometimes bombastic (Gosling's performance ranges from brilliant to bug-eyed) parable about class, race, power, and the dialectics of family relationships.
October 06, 2006
Although the subject promises more than the film can deliver, there is compensation in Gosling's convincing, unromanticized portrayal of someone seeking escape from longing and loss that neither he nor the movie can really define.
October 30, 2006
Gosling and Epps, an unusual but effective pairing, show real commitment in their performances.
September 27, 2006
This movie... is concerned with an even greater achievement that is generally unacknowledged: how people -- flawed, miserable, frustrated people -- go to work every day and find a way to care about something beyond themselves, despite themselves.
October 07, 2006
Gosling is indeed amazing as a bewildered, depressed New York schoolteacher who is slipping into dire drug addiction; it's exactly the kind of star turn in a smaller film that Academy voters could (and should) notice.
December 15, 2010
Indie inner-city drama with drug-addict teacher.
April 22, 2009
The movie hits a stream of false notes when Dunne's students deliver oral reports on Civil Rights struggles that could only have been plagiarized. The film's ending isn't only meager, it's utterly listless.
October 18, 2008
Ryan Gosling's self-destructive teacher is easily the year's most mesmerizing character study. And he's hardly the only reason to see this film. Shareeka Epps anchors her scenes as Drey with a self-possession way beyond her years.
August 30, 2009
The filmmakers bask disingenuously in their tidy vision of border-busting healing
