Backdrop fallback

Half Nelson

Half Nelson

Share

Half Nelson

"Secrets don't let go."

2006

1h 47m

6.6(973 votes)

Drama

Overview

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end disastrously or provide a catalyst of hope.

Links & Resources

Website IMDbView

Social & External

Production Companies

Hunting Lane Films

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling

Dan Dunne

Shareeka Epps

Shareeka Epps

Drey

Anthony Mackie

Anthony Mackie

Frank

Jeff Lima

Jeff Lima

Roodly

Monique Gabriela Curnen

Monique Gabriela Curnen

Isabel

Tina Holmes

Tina Holmes

Rachel

Nathan Corbett

Nathan Corbett

Terrance

Tyra Kwao-Vovo

Stacy

Rosemary Ledee

Gina

Tristan Mack Wilds

Tristan Mack Wilds

Jamal

Creative team

Directed by: Ryan Fleck
Written by: Ryan Fleck
Anna Boden
Produced by: Lynette Howell Taylor
Rosanne Korenberg

Similar Movies

Brian's Song

Brian's Song

Based on the real-life relationship between teammates Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers and the bond established when Piccolo discovers that he is dying.

The Program

The Program

Several players from different backgrounds try to cope with the pressures of playing football at a major university. Each deals with the pressure differently, some turn to drinking, others to drugs, and some to studying.

The Elementary School

The Elementary School

The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.

All the Right Moves

All the Right Moves

Sensitive study of a headstrong high school football star who dreams of getting out of his small Western Pennsylvania steel town with a football scholarship. His equally ambitious coach aims at a college position, resulting in a clash which could crush the player's dreams.

Poison Ivy 2: Lily

Poison Ivy 2: Lily

A young and naive college art student becomes obsessed with assuming the identity and personality of a departed coed who used to live in her room, and in so doing causes complications that result in two men, a student and her art professor, lusting after her.

The Proposal

The Proposal

When she learns she's in danger of losing her visa status and being deported, overbearing book editor Margaret Tate forces her put-upon assistant, Andrew Paxton, to marry her.

Frozen Land

Frozen Land

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

Going My Way

Going My Way

Youthful Father Chuck O'Malley led a colorful life of sports, song, and romance before joining the Roman Catholic clergy. After being appointed to a run-down New York parish, O'Malley's worldly knowledge helps him connect with a gang of boys looking for direction, eventually winning over the aging, conventional Parish priest.

The Girlfriend Experience

The Girlfriend Experience

Chelsea is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.

The Gauntlet

The Gauntlet

Phoenix cop Ben Shockley is well on his way to becoming a derelict when he is assigned to transport a witness from Las Vegas. The witness turns out to be a belligerent prostitute with mob ties—and incriminating information regarding a high-ranking official.

Brokedown Palace

Brokedown Palace

Best friends Alice and Darlene take a trip to Thailand after graduating high school. In Thailand, they meet a captivating Australian man, who calls himself Nick Parks. Darlene is particularly smitten with Nick and convinces Alice to take Nick up on his offer to treat the two of them to what amounts to a day trip to Hong Kong. In the airport, the girls are seized by the police and shocked to discover that one of their bags contains heroin.

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.

A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities

Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, followed by his release to live in London with the daughter he has never met.

Leading Lady

Leading Lady

An idealistic British drama school teacher, Jodi Rutherford, persuades a cynical South African farmer to prepare her for a role in a major film as an Afrikaans war heroine. In return Jodi undertakes to direct the annual concert on the Willemse farm. Jodi's interaction with the quirky small town citizens and the stubborn Kobus, teaches her that: "there is more to life than lights... camera... and action!"

Dance with Me

Dance with Me

Young Cuban Rafael just buried his mother, and comes to Houston to meet his father John for the first time. The difficult part is that John doesn't know he is Rafael's father. John runs a dance studio, and everyone prepares for the World Open Dance championship in Las Vegas. It soon becomes clear Rafael is a very good dancer, and Ruby is the biggest hope for the studio at the championship.

Tales from the Hood

Tales from the Hood

A strange mortician tells four horrific tales to three drug dealers that he traps in a local funeral parlor.

Jude

Jude

In late 19th-century England, Jude aspires to be an academic, but is hobbled by his blue-collar background. Instead, he works as a stonemason and is trapped in an unloving marriage to a farmer's daughter named Arabella. But when his wife leaves him, Jude sees an opportunity to improve himself. He moves to the city and begins an affair with his married cousin, Sue, courting tragedy every step of the way.

P.S.

P.S.

Louise, an unfulfilled divorced woman with regrets, gets the chance to relive her past when she meets a young man who bears an uncanny resemblance, in name and appearance, to her high school sweetheart who died many years before.

Soccer Mom

Soccer Mom

A warm-hearted comedy about a compulsive soccer mom who masquerades as a famous Italian soccer star hired to coach her daughter's floundering soccer team, then struggles frantically to keep her wacky charade going long enough to see the girls win their big tournament.

The Way

The Way

A story about self-taught street fighter who works in the Almaty flea market at day time and takes part in underground fights at night.

Recommended Movies

The Basketball Diaries

The Basketball Diaries

A high school basketball player’s life turns upside down after free-falling into the harrowing world of drug addiction.

The United States of Leland

The United States of Leland

A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.

Freedom Writers

Freedom Writers

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.

The Mustang

The Mustang

While participating in a rehabilitation program training wild mustangs, a convict at first struggles to connect with the horses and his fellow inmates, but he learns to confront his violent past as he soothes an especially feisty horse.

Kids

Kids

A group of bored, disaffected New York City teenagers spend a day skating, smoking, drinking, partying, deflowering virgins, and getting into fights.

25th Hour

25th Hour

On the eve of a seven-year prison sentence, a New York drug dealer spends his final day of freedom confronting his past, his relationships, and the choices that led to his downfall in a city still reeling from 9/11.

Carlito's Way

Carlito's Way

Free after years in prison, Carlito Brigante intends to give up his criminal ways, but it's not long before the ex-con is sucked back into the New York City underworld.

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption

Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.

American Me

American Me

During his 18 years in Folsom Prison, street-gang leader Santana rules over all the drug-and-murder activities behind bars. Upon his release, Santana goes back to his old neighborhood, intending to lead a peaceful, crime-free life. But his old gang buddies force him back into his old habits.

Heaven Knows What

Heaven Knows What

A young heroin addict roams the streets of New York to panhandle and get her next fix, while her unstable boyfriend drifts in and out of her life at random.

Palmer

Palmer

After 12 years in prison, former high school football star Eddie Palmer returns home to put his life back together—and forms an unlikely bond with Sam, an outcast boy from a troubled home. But Eddie's past threatens to ruin his new life and family.

Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America

A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.

A Bronx Tale

A Bronx Tale

Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

A short, unhappy affair with a married man leads a dedicated schoolteacher into the alcohol-and-drug fueled underworld of singles’ bars, where she begins to engage in a pattern of dangerous sexual activity.

Rounders

Rounders

Poker addict Mike McDermott knows the game inside out, but loses his money one night in a game to Russian-American gangster Teddy KGB. Promising his partner Jo he'll give up, he meets up with best friend Lester 'Worm' Murphy, just out of prison and owing lots of money to the wrong kind of people. McDermott becomes his co-guarantor and now there's only one way to raise the money, the pair have to get back into the game.

Class of 1984

Class of 1984

Andy is a new teacher at an inner city high school that is unlike any he has seen before. There are metal detectors at the front door and the place is basically run by a tough kid named Peter Stegman. Soon, Andy and Stegman become enemies and Stegman will stop at nothing to protect his turf and drug dealing business.

Hot Summer Nights

Hot Summer Nights

In 1991, a sheltered teenager comes of age during a wild summer on Cape Cod, getting rich from selling pot to gangsters, falling in love for the first time, partying, and eventually realizing that he's in way over his head.

My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer struggles with a difficult family life as a young boy. During his teenage years he slowly transforms, edging closer to the serial killer he was to become.

American Gangster

American Gangster

Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina, who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts.

The Brutalist

The Brutalist

When an innovative modern architect flees post-war Europe, he is given the opportunity to rebuild his legacy. Set during the dawn of the modern United States (in Pennsylvania), his wife joins him, and their lives are forever changed by a demanding, wealthy patron.