La La Land
Zach a.m.

Review by Zach a.m.

La La Land 2016

★★★★

Watched 07 Dec 2016

December 7th, 2016 - I just want to mark down the date I first heard "City of Stars" in the cinema because it's a special moment of movie amazement I know I won't easily forget.

The whole movie is a technicolor dream; a foggy haze of primary colours with a deep a twinge of nostalgia and melancholy rippling through like sheet of lightning across the evening sky.

This isn't quite the show-stopper I was sold on, even as the opening credits themselves act as a salesman. Fr a movie about following your dreams, it's much sadder. And for a song-and-dance musical, it's much more intimate. I'd question even calling it a musical because the movie goes long stretches without even breaking into song (I wonder if it speaks to our collective dwindling attention span). But music as the most powerful motivating tool in filmmaking is still very much in play. The second most powerful tool being Emma Stone's smile. Chazelle uses both to wrench your heart. There's also a third - Ryan Gosling's dirty bangs.

Magical, magical movie.

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