Like her, Emma Stone is a wonderful actress who can also dance a bit. I seem to remember that Ginger Rogers won her Oscar not for any of those great dance classics but for a drama, Kitty Foyle. La La Land, on the other hand, is a genuinely moving drama with musical interludes. That said, it should be noted that La La Land has more plot and less dance than the Astaire and Rogers classics, where the story is the flimsiest of vehicles to carry the viewer from one musical number to the next. She is wonderful as Mia, the aspiring actress, whose story this is, and like Ginger Rogers before her she rightly won the Best Actress Oscar. There was a palpable frisson of excitement when the curtains parted to reveal the wide screen, and the audience was rapt from that moment on. It's in Cinemascope, and needs to be seen in the cinema, as I did a few days ago. The lush cinematography paints it in soft pastel hues, a fantasy city like the 1930's Paris of Rene Clair, in which a young girl can walk home alone at night unmolested, through a Montmartre magically transported to Trump's America. La La Land is a hymn to LA and the golden years of Hollywood. But the cinematography and skills Ryan and Emma learnt for the film (piano playing and dancing) were amazing. I gave it four stars because I am soppy and would have preferred a different ending. I bought it because of horrible teenagers who had invaded the cinema with popcorn and their phones, so I needed to see it again without any distractions. One thing is that it doesn't have many songs, but I was fine with it because I don't like singing in films. People seem to love to hate it just because it's been so successful. When describing it to a friend, they thought the sound of 'an insight into two normal people's lives' sounded boring, but I promise it wasn't. Ī subtle look into the lives of two people pursuing their passions, and I know it's cliche, but yes, their worlds collide and they fall in love. I won't spoil anything, but at the end I nearly cried.

When I saw this film in the cinema I thought I was going to see a less-dramatic, more glitzy version of Eastenders. The memories should be treasured and in another life, who knows you may have been with that person for life? So you may get separated from someone you thought at the time would be with you forever. Life means hard choices when you are young, and it's not always a fairy tail. The ending makes the film and certainly brings the whole film together, all in one simple dance routine. Some people thought otherwise, but for me it's how real life is. But the soundtrack blended into the film really well. Yep, there are no real classics in terms of song. My lovely off board DAC gave me every little bit of detail, which was top class. It doesn't compare to the 5 star classics from the past.īut, the musical score was beautifully performed and came through really well. I was glad I ignored some of the negative comments on here. It does then drift a bit for 30mins ish.Įmma Stone doesn't sing that well, nor dance, but it's also about acting which she does very well. Outstanding start to the film with a very complicated sequence shot in one flowing move, impressive. So don't switch off after, 20-30mins and then write a review about time you'll 'never get back'. For that reason, it has the power to be a memorable film. Hard to define what the film is really about, but it has a shared sense of the joy of the moment, and of ambition. A good example of a musical that isn’t quite so naïve, and is enjoyable without being slowed down by songs. Some moments of incredulity, such as the opening number, which has not much relationship to the plot. Creative use of colours which have a 1990s throwback. Not helped by that old standby caption – ‘five years later’. It does start to drag slightly as the love affair frays under life pressures.

Almost certainly going to be a ‘classic film’ as people look back. It also takes time to build up, and must be seen all the way through. It's fashionable to call all this old fashioned, but there's much truth about life here. The story is nothing new, but the songs and presentation are exceptional. Clever and knowing variation on the STAR IS BORN theme.

Dvd2onex la la land