La La Land (2016)
I've finally finished waging my internal war on La La Land , which so many reviewers adored and I left feeling a little lukewarm. I loved what it was going for - a “feel-good” musical tale of two flailing creative types trying to make it in LA and their love story - which purposely eschewed a lot of self-awareness and dipped unashamedly into fantasy. It was, technically and conceptually, a beautiful movie - visually satisfying (I loved how saturated all of the colours were), great music, heavily nostalgic, thematically simple - but after hearing such wonderful things, I was left wanting overall. I felt that most of the film’s issues hinged on its third act, which felt discordant and occasionally incoherent. I don’t mind a outwardly nostalgic film dipping into cliche, but I felt that often La La Land fell a little too far. The initial relationship between Gosling and Stone was tonally great and tooth-achingly sweet, but as conflict arose, cliche felt like it overwhelmed go...