10 Actors Who Didn't Realise They Were In Crap Films

6. Ryan Gosling - Only God Forgives

The danger in calling a film pretentious is that those who like it, reading vague meaning into the empty pondering, can easily just say you're wrong because "you don't get it". That's what made The Tree Of Life such a barnstorming success with the critics; Terrence Malick's terribly shot meditation on everything and nothing won the Palm d'Or at Canne, the festivals highest honour, and thus those sitting on the fence had to praise it, lest they be dubbed "insufficiently evolved as a moviegoer" (a phrase actually used by Roger Ebert to brutishly defend his favourite films). Only God Forgives is a suitable companion piece to The Tree Of Life; a previously praised director (this time Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn) making a film that arguably has style, but lacks any sense of cohesion in either its plot or meaning that was booed at its premiere. The difference between the two is that there was a totally different response to Only God Forgives, with the reviews panning it. After the success they'd received with Drive, Winding Refn and actor Ryan Gosling were no doubt a little stunned. Gosling repeatedly talked in interviews about how personal and grand the film was, putting the blame on the critics for not understanding the film. Now that's pretentious.