Usually i write about stuff i like. Or stuff i dislike but can have some fun making fun of. Lately though, i have been bumping into all sorts of crappy movies, the kind of thing that isn’t even good for mocking. And the main offender is this atrocious abomination called “Lost River.”
Lost River? More like Lost Time. This thing is utter tripe. Not nicely cooked and spiced tripe served with beans, mind you, but raw, festering, rapidly decomposing tripe. Written and directed by some actor called Ryan Gosling, this appears to be Gosling’s lame attempt at setting himself up as a poor man’s David Lynch. If Lynch was boring as hell and bland as a glass of watered down buttermilk, his name would be Ryan Gosling. What the hell Barbara Steele is doing in this turkey, i don’t know. Maybe all that money she made as a producer has run out and she needs to pay her nursing home bills. Or maybe she’s gone senile and mistook Gosling for Mario Bava!
First, this movie is slow as molasses in an Alaskan winter. Second, it is lacking in any real resolution, as we never find out if there really was a curse on the town or not, or whether or not the curse has been lifted by the boy cutting the head off the statue at the bottom of the reservoir. And third, it is weird in a not-really-that-weird kind of way, which means that instead of freaking me out it just irritates the crap out of me with its shallowness and pretense. The “weirdness” has no real substance to it, it is only a surface attempt at seeming “different” from a wannabe “auteur” who in real life is probably about as weird as a Norman Rockwell painting! Hell, this is a movie which thinks a girl having a pet rat and therefore being nicknamed “Rat” is cool! Fake weirdness i do not need, and this movie is about as authentically weird as the average hipster – and about as deserving of existence. And don’t even get me started on the movie’s representation of men. Apart from the male lead, who is really more of a boy, they are all scum – just like in real life!
Beyond some competent cinematography, Lost River is a movie with virtually no redeeming features and proves only one thing – Gosling is a goose. I give this movie the harshest rating i can give any movie – i wish i hadn’t watched it.