Bayside resident Mark Metcalf is an actor who has worked in movies, TV and on the stage. He is best known for his work in "Animal House," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Seinfeld."

In addition to his work on screen, Metcalf is involved with the Milwaukee International Film Festival, First Stage Children's Theater and a number of other projects.

He also finds time to write about movies for OnMilwaukee.com. This week, Metcalf weighs in on "Lars and the Real Girl" and "The Big Lebowski."

LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (2007)

I think most of the really good, serious film actors at some point either play, or develop, a character that would be considered handicapped.

Either they play a retarded person like Sean Penn in "I Am Sam," or a mentally handicapped person like DeNiro in "Awakenings" or the character he plays in "Stanley & Iris," who is illiterate. Cliff Robertson did it in "Charly." I'm sure there are others, like Leo DeCaprio in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"

The rule amongst actors is that you should always play someone not as smart as you are but never try to play someone smarter than you are because it will show.

In addition, there is a wonderful bit in an episode of the HBO series "Extras," created by Ricky Gervais, where Kate Winslet, playing a nun in a Holocaust film, explains that she is doing it only because she wants to finally get an Oscar. The only way to get one, she says, is to play a nun, a victim of some terrible disease or a mentally disabled person.

In this episode she, also teaches Maggie how to talk dirty on the phone, while dressed as a nun. It's a great episode, but it's not why we're here. We're here to try to figure out if that's what Ryan Gosling is doing in "Lars and the Real Girl."

Ryan Gosling came out of nowhere to be nominated for an Oscar for playing a drug addicted teacher in "Half Nelson," then last year he was nominated again for playing, perhaps not a mentally handicapped, but certainly a socially handicapped person in a small town in Northern Minnesota, where winter is even longer than it is here.

Lars lives in the garage of his family home, which is occupied by his brother and pregnant sister-in-law. He keeps very much to himself, rebuffing the advances of co-workers and even his sister-in-law has to tackle him to get him to come over for dinner. The very touch of another human being feels, to him, like a burning sensation. Lars purchases, through the Internet, a life sized "sex doll." Not for its intended purpose, but for companionship. It is the only perfectly safe relationship he can support. It serves to get everyone off his back since they are constantly trying to set him up.

This premise could easily become a bad joke and make for a very short movie. Some of the men in the community make those bad jokes at first. You know the ones -- about wishing they had a girl friend that couldn't talk, and the leering about this apparently painfully shy man who now has purchased an anatomically correct playmate.

But Lars is a perfect, even courtly, gentleman. He never touches her, rushes to open doors for her, speaks for her, and carries her everywhere. He quite bravely introduces her to the entire community.

This is where the film becomes magical. Either because this town is gifted with a degree of human kindness that only exists in fables or because they are so smart as to intuitively realize how desperately Lars needs human contact but knows not how to seek it, and because they truly love and care for Lars, the entire town embraces Bianca, the plastic blowup doll.

My son, Julius, kept saying that it was a town full of losers because they support the fantasy that Lars so desperately needs to keep from absolutely losing touch. But Julius has never felt the emptiness of the absence of love. Affection is easy for him because he is a miracle of another sort. I hope he never feels the loss and abandonment of love leaving. But, inevitably he will. Then he will be grateful for the sweetness and the kindness of a film like "Lars and the Real Girl."

Therefore, I don't think Ryan Gosling was angling for an Academy Award when he agreed to do this film. Based on the other unique choices he has made in his career, from playing a skin-head, anti-Semitic Jew in "The Believer," to the crack addicted teacher, to the painfully shy and beautifully sweet Lars, I think he is just searching around, as any really good actor will, for the most interesting and challenging roles he can find in order to deepen his understanding of humankind and set a finer edge to the knowledge of his own existence.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)

Everyone should watch "The Big Lebowski" at least once. I don't usually like movies by the Coen brothers. I feel like they live and work in a gated community and I live outside the gate. There is an "I-get-it-and-you-don't" quality to their humor. They are not quite willing to cop to their own innocence and so they miss a sense of wonder and the ability to be surprised.

"The Big Lebowski" lives on that insider humor. The three performances at the center are so perfectly in tune with each other that whenever they decide to go bowling, you feel the comfort of home, be it ever so dysfunctional.

John Goodman's outraged Vietnam vet never relents. Jeff Bridges as the Dude is the stoner I certainly was hoping to be, but never got quite lost enough to become. And Steve Buscemi, as Donny, caught in the middle and content not to quite keep up -- but available for anything his friends need him for -- is the ideal dumping ground for Goodman's rage and Bridge's frustration.

The three together are a perfect harmony. I don't like saying it, but I will watch it repeatedly, so I guess I must like it. I just wish I could watch it one time from inside the gates.