La La Land (2016)

Impression: I kinda wanted to hate this movie. It had picked up all the awards, that Moonlight (which is on my top 5 movies of all time) rightly deserved. I wanted it to be horrible, so I can feel ok about yelling at the screen when it wins awards. But I didn’t hate it! At first, I kept thinking “This is cute, I am glad that a movie like this got made!” Eventually, I felt myself kind of liking it, and by the end maybe even loved it? I still think Moonlight should win anything it gets nominated for. But, I think La La Land is actually pretty great: it’s very entertaining, it’s well filmed and well acted, and creatively thought-out. It deserves its nominations, it’s just unfortunate for it that it was made in the same year as a cinematic masterpiece.  This movie is both, a Hollywood fantasy and a commentary on the Hollywood happy-ending type fantasy, and it’s clever with how it’s presented. It’s about dreams and hopefulness and the weight of reality. The monochrome dance sequences were spectacular, and the writing was funny and sharp. The scenes where Mia is shown going through bad auditions were pretty funny.  And while it’s most definitely a movie about Hollywood, it deconstructs the myth, and presents a much more likely scenario as an acceptable ending.  And sure, Hollywood’s obsession with itself, and the likelihood for a movie about Hollywood to win awards, is absurd (The Artist and Birdman come to mind from just the last few years). But, as Roxane Gay pointed out in a recent interview, authors write books where main characters are authors all the time. So, it’s not all that surprising that movies would be about movies. Still, if you want your movie to stand out for more than beautiful shots, and amazing song and dance numbers, the movie might need to say something a little deeper than “It’s tough to make it in showbiz!”

Facts: A struggling actress and a struggling musician in Los Angeles keep running into each other until they fall in love, amidst a lot of song and dance.

Extra: Bad choice to see it in IMAX, the spinning sequences were all extra blurry.