What Ryan Gosling’s favourite movies tells us about his eccentric style
As one of the most versatile, dependable, and consistent actors of his generation, Ryan Gosling‘s filmography makes it perfectly clear that there aren’t many things he can’t do. Except, it would seem, headline a blockbuster movie that doesn’t flop.
He might have the handsome looks, chiselled jawline, and ripped physique required to be an action hero, but audiences don’t seem all that interested in seeing him do it. It’s a strange phenomenon because everyone knows Gosling is one of the best in the business. They just don’t want to see him take centre stage in an explosive and expensive adventure.
The Fall Guy is the most recent example after the romantic comedy caper ended up arriving on digital and VOD after less than three weeks in cinemas, while Blade Runner 2049 bombed despite being a worthy follow-up to a classic. That’s not to mention the forgotten flop Gangster Squad and the admittedly excellent The Nice Guys, which didn’t deserve to sink without a trace under any circumstances.
Netflix’s The Gray Man did draw in plenty of viewers with Gosling in the lead role, but it wasn’t very good, and nobody knows how it would have fared on the big screen because Netflix has no interest in steering people toward anywhere other than their device of choice. On the evidence, then, folks seem to prefer it when Gosling is being weird, dark, romantic, or a combination of the three.
His three Academy Award nominations came from playing an aimlessly inspirational teacher in Half Nelson, throwing jazz hands in La La Land, and embodying a plastic plaything with no genitals in Barbie. All wildly different roles without a doubt, but merely the tip of an eclectic iceberg.
This is the same Gosling who fell in love with a sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl, allowed a fractured marriage to deteriorate further in the gut-punching Blue Valentine, casually caved in skulls for Nicolas Winding Refn in Drive and Only God Forgives, got in on the ground floor of financial collapse in The Big Short, and became the first person to set foot on the Moon in First Man.
There’s no role he won’t – or can’t, as it turns out – play. That desire to continue mixing things up can be explained at least in part by the four movies he named as his favourites to Letterboxd, three of which are timeless classic Back to the Future, inspirational underdog sports drama Rocky, and Ron Howard’s two-time Oscar-winning sci-fi Cocoon.
Then there’s No Retreat, No Surrender, the 1985 martial arts flick starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, which made the cut for Gosling “because Bruce Lee would appear to this kid in the mirror and teach him how to fight”. Seeing echoes of that in himself, the star admitted that “I love Bruce Lee and I wanted that to be my life.”
A time-travelling favourite, the definitive Hollywood sports flick, a cosmic tale of the elderly being reinvigorated by aliens, and a high-kicking exercise in wish-fulfilment. Four wildly different picks, then, but equally indicative of the way Gosling’s taste in films is echoed by his refusal to be constrained or pigeonholed by the parts he plays.
