Lost River

This debut foray into the indie auteur arena from Ryan Gosling quietly escaped notice when it was dumped into video-on-demand release this spring—except for a few vocal critics who either lauded or heaped derision on an actor's indulgent vanity project. Lost River features many ideas within its muddled plot, as well as an outré and often arresting visual style, but none of it feels fully formed. The setting is a bombed out Detroit suburb where crumbling and deserted houses ring a brackish man-made reservoir. Also underwater—financially speaking—is a voluptuous single mom named Billy (Christina Hendricks) who takes a job at a bizarre nightclub where mysterious patrons revel to onstage spectacles of gory burlesque performance art. Billy's specialty is delicately flaying the skin from her face. Meanwhile, her teenage son Bones (Iain De Caestecker) strips copper from abandoned structures, flirts with a spooky neighbor girl called Rat (Saoirse Ronan), and tangles with a psychotic bully named Bully (Matt Smith). Gosling has fun directing his talented cast and conjures an array of haunting and sometimes ghastly images, but the moody mysticism and ominous overtones here don't really add up to a whole. Optional, at best. (T. Fry)