So then, La La Land. I didn’t hate it which is better than I thought I would get out of it after the fist 15 minutes. Emma Stone was absolutely superb, carried the whole thing and her two big moments in the bookending auditions were the best things about the whole film (and the only time when I didn’t cringe my balls off during a song for the latter one) which brings me onto my main takeaway which is that it either shouldn’t have been a musical at all, or it did a bad job at being a musical IMO.
I know I’m not the best person to judge given they nearly always make me physically cringe but to me, none of the big numbers in the first half were memorable in any way aside from the visuals and the technical side of how it had been shot (which was very impressive throughout). Compare it to something like Moana where I didn’t love the songs but they’re still stuck in my head weeks after seeing it or something like Grease which I fucking loathe but the songs are so memorable. I honestly came into it expecting to at least remember the songs given the hype but aside from the City of Stars melody and the central piano bit of the (really good) score I can only remember the accompanying scenes and that feels like a failing to me.
All that said it did win me round once the big numbers dried up a bit and I was fully invested (entirely down to Stone though, I usually like Gosling but thought he was trapped between two different characters here and didn’t fully get a handle on either of them) and came away with plenty to enjoy from it which is about as good as it was gonna get I think.
Manchester by the Sea however is absolutely incredible, borderline masterpiece IMO. One of the most humane mainstream films I’ve ever seen.
It’s cliched to say a film makes you feel the full range of emotions but this really did, it’s funny as fuck which I wasn’t expecting at all (the family bickering in the hospital had me in stitches) but there are at least 5 points where it pulls the rug straight out from under you and punches you right in the gut. I cried about 6 times I think and burning house scene aside it was as a result of the nuances of the performances rather than through any big narrative moments. Every single performance was laced with so much humanity, you could read all the past turmoils and heartbreaks on their faces without them ever needing to be directly referenced in the dialogue. Michelle Williams is so fucking good, the kid was great, CJ Wilson was amazing but Casey Affleck should win every award going this year IMO, had absolutely no idea he had that in him.
It was beautiful to look at in a really understated way, the only very slight misstep was the choral score IMO but that didn’t matter much when the rest of it was so superb. I really hope lots of people go and see this and it doesn’t suffer from it’s opening weekend competition.
