The second, more emotive, one is when Matthew remembers (in a dressing room) at the prom the happy moments shared with Danielle and suddenly he feels incapable of shooting a porno scene. He realizes that in spite of not knowing what he's going to do next in his life doesn't matter because he's already fallen in love. Hirsch's smile when Danielle enters and they make eye contact is gigantic in its frankness.
The Girl Next Door is a romantic comedy that has silly moments and suffers from a music video aesthetic in places, but it makes its point of taking a second chance on winning the girl of your dreams with appropriate heartiness and without mawkishness.
In Lords of Dogtown (2005), directed by Catherine Hardwicke, based on Stacey Peralta's documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, Hirsch plays the real-life skateboarder Jay Adams, nailing his actual swagger, looking like a rugged River Phoenix. Not only does he perform the risky moves on the board at Venice Beach with vertiginous ease, but he also seduces Kathy Alva (Nikki Reed, Thirteen) in a dance as smooth and charming as his skating.
In Alpha Dog (2006), Hirsch plays a gangster wannabe, Johnny Truelove (aka Jesse James Hollywood in real life) who goes out with his steady girlfriend, Angela Holden (Olivia Wilde), while his savvy father Sonny (Bruce Willis) mocks his masculinity, a big deal for Johnny's posse (ridiculous, tweaked out guys who follow Johnny's orders blindly). Johnny gets involved in an improvised kidnapping that ends tragically for an impressionable kid (Zack Mazursky in the movie, played brilliantly by Anton Yelchin).
Among all kind of misdeeds and criminal events in this mixed-up story, Johnny and his girl's relationship is key to analyze some of the sick aspects that bedevil the upper-middle class in California's Valley. In a motel room, Johnny's small vestiges of conscience bring down his sexual bravado and he has to give up on hitting the sack with an insensitive, demanding, bimbo-esque Angela — in a scene which is intermittently comical and sleazy — and this act of impotence by the macho posturing bad-ass is a symbol of his bacchanal's last days.
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