Ryan Gosling totally deserved his Academy Award nomination for Half Nelson. But he is not alone in the movie: costar Shareeka Epps is superb. I can't get over how great her performance was. 100% Oscar worthy. 
Great direction too (that's director Ryan Fleck on the right). You should absolutely see this movie.
In Half Nelson drugs have gotten a tight grip on Ryan Gosling, who plays a school teacher. His students kinda like him, and Shareeka, also a student, lends a hand.
We have very brief, but outstanding gay content. In one class, a student talks about the assassination of Harvey Milk and how sad it is for a person to die just because of who the person is. Awesome light for the gays: A kid telling other kids that hating gays is wrong. Kudos.
Curiosities: a Half Nelson is a wrestling hold and it "is done using only one hand, by passing it under the arm of the opponent and locking the hand at the opponent's neck. Half nelsons are commonly used in amateur wrestling."
More curiosities: head over to fourfour to read Rich's post on Half Nelson (he tries to get Shareeka to laugh, it's hilarious).
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