THE 2006 CULTURAL AWARDS: The Year in Movies

6. Addictive Actors As a crackhead, alcoholic inner-city junior-high teacher who has lost the thread between his idealistic politics and screwed-up life in Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling is so raw you can read every twitch of his wiry frame, and he’s matched by Shareeka Epps as his watchful pupil and Anthony Mackie as a dealer with a paternalistic instinct to corrupt her. In Sherrybaby, Maggie Gyllenhaal is startlingly vivid as a sexpot who emerges from prison and rehab—and discovers she can hardly be a mother to her young daughter when she’s still acting like daddy’s (sexually abused) little girl. Judi Dench is another kind of addict in Notes on a Scandal: Although the movie borders on camp, her monstrously delusional crypto-lesbian obsessive (with Cate Blanchett in her sights) has a mythic force.

Source: Article from NY Mag and Picture by Dan Winters.