Ryan Gosling

Cinema has always been a potent tool to scrutinize relationships, and Derek Cianfrance’s drama is a raw example of such faculty—an unwavering dissection of a marriage, weaving rapturous memories with an unsteady present. Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling’s chemistry is an affecting, aching affair.

Continuing his sublimely minimalist collaboration with the handsome, monosyllabic Ryan Gosling after the sharkskin-sleek Drive, Refn gave us his most controversial feature: A dangerous, exoticized mash-up of Asian spirituality and iconography, pulp Shakespeare, and, of course, hyper-violence.