Imagine you’re speaking to Ryan Gosling in a dark cellar room with a single chair, a table and a light bulb hanging from a cord, and he’s somehow slipped into a very candid mood…cough it up, no holds barred. And you ask him “of the 26 or 27 films you’ve made since Remember The Titans, how many are you seriously proud of? How many hold up honorably and beautifully?”

If i were in Gosling’s shoes, I would name the following 7 films: The Believer, Blue Valentine, The Driver, The Big Short, The Nice Guys, La La Land, Barbie.

The other 19 or 20 Gosling films are decent, not bad, passable, problematic, disappointing, underwhelming, painful: Remember the Titans, Murder by Numbers, The Slaughter Rule, The United States of Leland, The Notebook, Stay, Half Nelson, Fracture, Lars and the Real Girl, All Good Things, Crazy, Stupid, Lovem, The Ides of March, The Place Beyond the Pines, Gangster Squad, Only God Forgives, Lost River, Song to Song, Blade Runner, First Man, The Gray Man.

So 7 out of 27 or roughly 25% good and 75% problematic in one way or another. That’s not a terrible average. It’s probably an inevitable one.