Something to watch tonight: Half Nelson

With Ryan Gosling win­ning plaudits for his star-turn as a juni­or high school teach­er who saves the galaxy, an arrival in my mail­box reminded me of a pre­vi­ous per­form­ance by Gosling as a juni­or high school teach­er, one whose prob­lems are much more earthbound.

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Half Nelson has just been released on Blu-ray by Imprint Films¹, and it encour­aged me to revis­it my ori­gin­al review from 2007:

A very wel­come return from the Festival is Half Nelson, a beau­ti­fully acted char­ac­ter study about a gif­ted school teach­er (Ryan Gosling) with a drug prob­lem and the unlikely friend­ship he forms with one of his stu­dents, played by new­comer Shareeka Epps. They are both lonely and mis­un­der­stood and for a short while they make a con­nec­tion (even if it is mostly unspoken).

Of all the young lead­ing men around at the moment (many of whom also seem to be named Ryan) Gosling is the real deal. It’s no acci­dent that Peter Jackson has cast him as the fath­er in The Lovely Bones des­pite being about ten years too young for the role. On this evid­ence he’ll be fine.

I was quite the sooth­say­er in those days but per­haps it was inev­it­able that Gosling would be fired from The Lovely Bones for turn­ing up in Wellington with a meth­od act­or’s weight gain.

Half Nelson was also a pre­dict­or of tal­ent that would be fed into the fran­chise machine – Boden and Fleck went on to make Captain Marvel in 2019, sup­port­ing act­or Anthony Mackie is now Captain America and Gosling is mak­ing a Star War.

Also in that October 2007 Capital Times review: Paul Verhoeven’s war­time melo­drama, Black Book, enjoy­able Jamie Foxx vehicle, The Kingdom (I described it as “CSI: Saudi”) and Scarlet Johansson in The Nanny Diaries.

Where to watch Half Nelson

Physical Media: Blu-ray from Imprint Films

Aotearoa: Not cur­rently avail­able online

Australia: Streaming on SBS

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video

Ireland: Streaming on RakutenTV (free with ads)

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Fubo or AMC+

UK: Streaming on Prime Video, RakutenTV (free with ads) or the Icon chan­nel on Prime Video

1. Interestingly, the Aussie web­site has the release date as 29 October 2025 but it has only just made it across the ditch. With a lim­ited run of only 1500 cop­ies, maybe we are only get­ting the final few. ↩︎