La La Land

This past Wednesday, I sat down in the comfortable reclining chairs of the newly renovated Emagine Willow Creek Movie Theater, excited to see the Golden Globe winning and Oscar nominated film, La La Land.

The musical romantic comedy-drama first premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August of 2016, then was released into theaters throughout the United States in December.

The movie began with the classic Los Angeles highway traffic, when suddenly a woman broke out into song and dance. Everyone on the highway quickly joined in. The whole first scene was quite surprising, confusing, and frankly bizarre, but definitely grabbed my attention, and held it for the rest of the movie.

After the spontaneous flash mob, the scene quickly pivots to Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) and Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) encountering each other for the first time. Sebastian aggressively honked at Mia, then eventually passed her while Mia gave him the middle finger. A truly romantic way of first seeing each other.

As the storyline progressed, La La Land quickly turned into a full blown romance, with twists and turns involving work, dreams, and relationship conflicts.

It is no surprise that this movie is nominated 14 Academy Awards including: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and two nominations for Best Original Song.

If you get the chance go see La La Land, which is still in theaters today, take it. Afterward, find me in the hallway and let’s talk about that controversial ending.