LA LA LAND: A Cinematic Song & Dance Delight From Start To Finish

Now playing at a multiplex or art house near you:

LA LA LAND (Dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)

Within moments of this film’s big opening scene – an impressively choreographed production number involving dozens, maybe hundreds, of commuters singing and dancing to the joyous original song “Another Day of Sun” atop a gridlocked Los Angeles overpass – you know you are experiencing something really special.

For Damien Chazelle’s third feature is the definition of a modern movie musical – one that respects the “follow your dreams” tropes of the golden age of Hollywood, but puts a fresh-faced spin on it with by acknowledging that living “happily ever after” may not happen the way you imagined.

After that lavish, invigorating opening number, in the same traffic we meet Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress who pisses off jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) in the convertible behind her because she was too busy running lines for an audition to notice that the cars ahead of her have moved forward. Sebastian repeatedly honks as he passes her, and she responds by flipping him the bird. Not exactly a meet cute.

Mia works as a barista at a coffee shop on a big studio lot where she’s constantly starstruck by her famous customers and dreams to be one of them someday.

But that’s something that’s going to have to wait we see as Mia flubs her audition, then finds that her car has been towed while she and her roommates (Callie Hernandez, Sonoyo Mizuno, and Jessica Rothe) were at a party in the Hollywood hills that was supposed to cheer her up but only ended up making her feel lonely anyway.

On Mia’s walk home, she is enticed to enter a restaurant/night club named Lipton’s because she overhears an intriguing tune being played by the club’s new house pianist, who, of course, is Sebastian.

The film then flashes back to Mia and Sebastian’s first meeting in the opening traffic jam, and we see the last day from his perspective. We learn that hardcore jazzhead Sebastian is a classic struggling musician archetype who lives with his snarky sister Laura (Rosemarie DeWitt) as he floats from one humiliating low paying gig to another.

Sebastian’s latest gig at Lipton’s has his boss Bill (J.K. Simmons) forcing him to play Christmas standards, forbidding him from playing freeform jazz. Before long, Sebastian can’t help but improvise which gets him fired but gains him a fan in Mia. The angered artist though ignores her as he storms out, and we have our second failed meet cute.

They run into each other again at a pool party where Mia is supremely amused to see Sebastian playing synth-keyboards in an incredibly cheesy ‘80s cover band. So much so that she requests “I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls to torture him.

Sebastian confronts her afterwards and before long they are engaged in endless flirtation as they walk down a dreamy moonlit street in the Hollywood hills with a gorgeous view of the LA skyline. This is the backdrop for another delightful song and dance number, “A Lovely Night,” highlighted by such witty lines as “we stumble on a view that’s tailor made for two, what a shame those two are you and me.”

When he shows up at her workplace the next day, Mia gives Sebastian a tour around the Warner Brothers lot. Upon her declaring that she hates jazz, he whisks her off to a club to try and convert her, and also reveal that his big dream is to own a jazz club himself someday.

Our protagonist couple falls for each through multiple montage song and dance numbers, including a particularly stirring one in which they visit the planetarium at the Griffith Observatory after seeing the location at a revival screening of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.

While Mia works on a one-woman play in hopes of kick starting her career, Sebastian joins his friend Keith’s (John Legend) band the Messengers, both pursuing their dreams but with mixed results as Sebastian hates the commercial pop direction of his new outfit.

Gosling, who got his start as a child actor singing as a mouseketeer in a revival of Disney Channel’s Mickey Mouse Club, shows off his talents as a vocalist, pianist (that’s really him on the keys not a piano double), and dancer here with buckets of charm. Sebastian may be Gosling’s sharpest and most irresistible role yet.

Stone, likewise, pulls out the stops as a triple threat, matching Gosling’s moves beat by beat. I saw Stone make her Broadway debut in “Cabaret” a few years back so I knew she had the chops, but she doubly impressed me throughout this endlessly adorable film.

Our good looking stars are surrounded by gorgeous scenery, lushly shot by Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren (AMERICAN HUSTLE, JOY), and a dazzlingly colorful production design by longtime Quentin Tarantino collaborator David Wasco.

The score made up of over a dozen instantly memorable original songs composed by Justin Hurwitz, who worked with Chazelle on his previous two films (GUY AND MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH, WHIPLASH), with perfectly on-point lyrics written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, is the icing on the cake.

It all paves the way to an absolutely stunning, showstopping ending - see it before somebody spoils it for you.

Sure to make the upper region of my best films of 2016 list, LA LA LAND is a fun, toe-tapping, romantic, life-affirming, cinematic delight from start to finish. It was hard to stop smiling the whole time. In their third film together (CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE and GANGSTER SQUAD were the first two), Gosling and Stone have proved themselves to be worthy of being America’s top screen duo sweethearts.

A blast of a spectacular yet intimate feeling big-screen musical is exactly what we need right now as there’s a strong sense that there’s bleakness on the horizon.

Until then, let Ryan and Emma sing and dance your troubles away - they are definitely up to the task.

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Natalie Portman's Performance As JACKIE Is Second Oscar Worthy

Now playing at an indie art house theater near me:

JACKIE (Dir. Pablo Larraín, 2016)

The Kennedy assassination has been cinematically examined many, many times before, but Pablo Larraín’s JACKIE looks at what’s considered one of the most tragic and world-changing events in American history from the most intimate angle.

That would be through the eyes of JFK’s First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, who was sitting next to her husband in the Presidential Limousine on that fatal day in Dallas when he was slain by a sniper.

Written by Noah Oppenheim (THE MAZE RUNNER, ALLEGIANT), the film concerns Mrs. Kennedy, beautifully portrayed by Natalie Portman, being interviewed by noted journalist Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) for Life Magazine at the Kennedy’s family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts shortly after the death of her husband in late ’63.

Through flashbacks we are taken through Jackie’s recollections of the aftermath of the assassination, and the making of her 1962 CBS television special A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy (Mad Men fans may remember the episode in which several characters were watching this special).

The tone between the former First Lady and writer White is tense as she reminds him that she’ll be editing their conversation in case she doesn’t say exactly what she means, and she says curtly, right after taking a puff on her cigarette, that she doesn’t smoke.

Peter Sarsgaard puts in a solid turn as JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy, who despite being in a state of shock, does what he can to assist his sister-in-law with the funeral arrangements while newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson (John Carroll Lynch) prepares to move into the White House. Johnson’s staff includes future Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti, played with assholish arrogance by Max Casella.

Former indie it girl Greta Gerwig is on helpful hand as Mrs. Kennedy’s Social Secretary, Richard E. Grant (WITHNAIL & I) plays abstract painter/Kennedy confidante William Walton, and JFK dead ringer Caspar Phillipson puts in brief appearances as the iconic Commander in Chief in flashbacks. But perhaps the best supporting role here is that of John Hurt as Father Richard McSorley, who Jackie confers with about her despair. Hurt is somehow comforting when he tells Mrs. Kennedy that there are no answers, and that every soul alive wonders whether this is all that there is. Not your typical “everything happens for a reason” b.s. for sure.

Portman’s Jackie may not be picture perfect, but she’s got the voice and mannerisms down and almost immediately I was buying her in the role. She obviously studied the White House tour film, and probably just about every recording of the legendary woman that she could find, but her performance comes off as a lot more than a studied impression. It’s a lived-in piece of fine acting that captures the emotional rollercoaster of mourning. 

The feelings of grief, confusion, anger, and loss of faith that Jackie wrestles with all swirl together in such moments as when Lady Bird Johnson (Beth Grant) suggests that Jackie should change out of her blood-covered pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat on the plane ride back from Dallas as there will be press and cameras ready for her when they land, and Mrs. Kennedy sternly remarks: “There were wanted posters everywhere for Jack - with Jack’s face on them. Let them see what they’ve done.”

When Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswalt, is shot by Jack Ruby on live TV, RFK decides to shield Jackie from the news, but when she learns about it she still isn’t deterred from arranging the elaborate funeral procession in which she walked in black veil slowly behind her husband’s casket for eight-blocks through Washington D.C. to St. Matthews Cathedral.

While much of the film is speculation about Jackie’s state of mind, and, like with any dramatization of history there are bound to be inaccuracies, Larraín and Portman’s depiction of this elegant lady feels authentically faithful to its subject. I was unaware that the entire notion of JFK’s being likened to Camelot originated from Mrs. Kennedy’s interview with White.

Jackie recalls that her husband used to play side two of the Original Cast Recording of Camelot before turning in at night, and that he loved the lyric “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”

So as the film movingly reveals, Jackie Kennedy herself polished the legend of JFK’s era that still shines today. Here, Portman channels that shine into a powerful and poignant performance that is absolutely second Oscar worthy (she had previously won for BLACK SWAN).

JACKIE, one of two historical dramas that director Larraín has made this year (the other being NERUDA about Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda), may be an overly respectful and romanticized portrait (but not too romanticized that we don’t get a graphic assassination scene, gory head wound and all), but it feels profoundly righteous as it completely earns its gravitas. It’s a gripping experience to see one of our countries most beloved political figures being embodied by one of the most beloved actresses of our day in this haunting tale about finding grace in the face of tragedy.

This film also stirs up emotions about dealing with the difficult transition involving power changing hands next month. The Obama administration was as close to Kennedy’s Camelot as I fear we’re going get again in my lifetime. Such a movie as this is a must see in these scary times as it reminds us that America has gotten through dark times before and will again. This movie makes me want to believe that, despite the scariness of what’s on the rapidly approaching horizon, Camelot lives!

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PASSENGERS Left A Bad, Creepy Taste In My Mouth

Now playing at multiplexes from here to Homestead II:

PASSENGERS (Dir. Morten Tyldum, 2016)

Despite that the screenplay has been floating around online for a while, and because I didn't click on anything that went into more detail about the plot, all I knew going in was this sci-fi movie’s basic premise - i.e. two spaceship passengers played by Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence on a 120 year voyage to a new earth-like planet wake up out of hibernation 90 years early, fall in love, and work together to solve the mystery of why they were woken up.

What I didn’t know was that Pratt’s character, Jim Preston, actually wakes up from a pod malfunction a year before Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane, and because Jim is taken with Aurora (he’s never met her; he’s just watched her passenger profile video over and over) he sabotages her sleep pod so that she’ll wake up and they can be together.

Sounds pretty creepy, huh? No wonder the film's trailers, and TV spots gloss over that crucial plot point.

The film, written by Jon Spaihts (DOCTOR STRANGE, PROMETHEUS, THE DARKEST HOUR), bends over backwards trying to justify Jim’s actions. 

It shows us that Jim, a mechanic back home, goes through months of desperately trying to break into the ship’s control room, becoming suicidal from loneliness as he wanders drunk and pantless around the corridors of the ship, which is named the Starship Avalon, where his only friend is a robot bartender named Arthur played by Michael Sheen (a role that in dress and demeanor largely recalls Lloyd, the hotel bartender in THE SHINING).

Jim also doesn’t just wake up Aurora on a whim; he goes back and forth about it for weeks, and talks it out with Arthur, but from him he only gets responses like “Jim, these are not robot questions.”

When he finally decides to wake up who he thinks is his dream girl, he tells Arthur not to tell her, and he makes sure he hides the tools he used to tamper with her pod.

Lawrence’s Aurora is in a daze at first, going through some of the same motions that Jim did involving desperately trying to come up with a solution to being “stranded in space with a stranger” as she puts it.

Aurora is a writer and her plan was to travel to this new world, dubbed Homestead II, live there for a year then return home after another 120 year journey back – that’s right, she bought a round trip ticket – so that she could write the first book about the earth’s distant twin.

Finally, after giving her space, Jim asks Aurora out and before long they are in love – eating at the fancy restaurant facilities, engaging in holographic dance-offs, and going outside the ship in spacesuits where they knock helmets in place of their first kiss.

Then Arthur, that damn robot bartender has to go and ruin it by telling Aurora that Jim deliberately woke her (Arthur misunderstands it when the couple agrees that they “have no secrets”) and Aurora is livid.

Equating it to him murdering her, Aurora angrily withdraws all contact with Jim and ignores his pleas – one of which is broadcast around the ship – for understanding.

This all changes when somebody else wakes up - Laurence Fishburne as Chief Gus Mancuso, one of the Avalon’s high ranking staff members, and they all find out that the vessel is in extreme danger due to more major malfunctions, so the last act is a high octane fiery climax in which our leads fight to save the ship.

PASSENGERS goes from funny (Pratt’s early one man show scenes before he commits his questionable act) to creepy (the couple’s icky, yet stylish, courting scenes) to a routine sci-fi action thriller scenario, to creepy again (the ultra stupid ending, which I won’t spoil).

Lawrence and Pratt are two attractive, likable movie stars whose talents deserve a better, more thoughtful sci-fi platform than this, or at least one that doesn’t leave such a bad, creepy taste in my mouth.

It feels like Morten Tyldum (THE IMITATION GAME) and Co. took the standard rom com narrative, in which the male protagonist does something unforgivable and is rejected in the first half of the film, but redeems himself in the eyes of the female protagonist with a heroic feat in the third act, and they tried to go all GRAVITY and INTERSTELLAR on it.

The aforementioned screenplay for this film has been around for nearly a decade, and at one point was almost made with Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon, and that alone should confirm the rom com-iness of this material.

The film, as shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, ARGO, BABEL), is as good looking as its leads, and there are a number of amusing moments, but overall PASSENGERS is a A-list actors lost in space letdown.

If you want to see a great movie starring two talented good looking A-listers, there’s a certain musical opening on Christmas day. I’ll fill you in about it soon.

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