Riske Business: About That La La Land Ending...

by Adam Riske

I have a theory. SPOILER warning, obviously.

I fully admit that I might be reading into this based on personal experience, but I think the whole fantasy sequence at the end of La La Land is Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) realizing he was chasing the wrong dream. Mia (Emma Stone) was his avenue to life-long happiness and the jazz club he dreamed of opening (and does at the end of La La Land) is no longer his self-actualization. Remember way back when on the Star Wars: The Phantom Menace podcast where Patrick described George Lucas as being trapped in a Star Wars cage? I think Sebastian’s jazz club, affectionately named “Seb’s” for Mia (complete with a music note as the apostrophe), is Sebastian’s Mia cage.

Truth be told, I don’t know if Mia and Sebastian could have ever worked long-term. It’s obvious that they love each other and will think of the other fondly for the rest of their lives. However, using the structure of the four seasons of their romance, a lot happened. It might have been one of those super passionate loves that burns hot and flames out quickly. I think a reason for this is because (at heart) Mia is a revolutionary (e.g. she left Boulder City, she went for a big dream) and Sebastian is a traditionalist (i.e. he refuses to leave L.A., his dream is to revere jazz of the past). Mia is forward-thinking and Sebastian is not and he realizes that he probably should have been even though he’s (most likely) too late.

I think it’s telling that Sebastian isn’t seen in a relationship at the end of the movie. There’s ample opportunity to hint that he is, so much so that since they don’t it infers he hasn’t moved on. The giant wall advertisement for Mia’s next movie (or something she’s promoting) being on the side of the Seb’s building is also an interesting visual motif; she’s a cloud hanging over his whole life. He also comments to the other piano player in the “Five Years Later” sequence that “pretty good is great!” when the guy tells Sebastian that the club is doing pretty good. It hints that Sebastian is usually not “pretty good,” otherwise “pretty good” wouldn’t be “great.” Lastly, I don’t think the holiday card with Sebastian’s sister, her husband and his nephew being shown is a mistake. Within the sequence, it establishes quickly what happened to those characters, but they’re so slight in the grand scheme of the story that I think it’s more to give another clue that it’s what Sebastian really wants.

When Sebastian sees Mia as she comes into his club with her husband and plays Sebastian and Mia’s song, that sets off the phenomenal fantasy sequence, which is like Sebastian’s heart bleeding out for Mia to see.

• He grabs her and kisses her instead of brushing her off in the piano bar.

• Sebastian rebuffs Keith (John Legend) and doesn’t join his jazz fusion band, thus eliminating the choice he’ll have to make later of not going to Mia’s play and staying for the band’s photo shoot.

• Sebastian goes with Mia to Paris, plays at a jazz club there while Mia is groomed for stardom. The jazz club is seen as bright and lively as compared to “Seb’s,” which is darker and less vivacious.

• He imagines them married and with a family and super affectionate on a date night at the jazz club - - with someone else playing the piano. He seems happy. The jazz, while important, is not as important to him as Mia is. It still seems like Mia achieved her dream, too. It just goes to show you how delicate our lives can be based on a set of a few choices.

I love how the final shots of the movie recall Casablanca (i.e. “of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”) and I can easily see Mia and Sebastian getting back together even if it’s much more poetic that they do not. After all, they’re in the same town again, they are still making “do me” eyes at each other and she just has Tom Everett Scott as an obstacle. That’s no knock on Tom Everett Scott’s character. He seems like a decent guy BUT so was her boyfriend that she ran out on to meet up with Gosling for Rebel Without a Cause. Girl’s got heartbreaking in her bones. Gosling put it out there in his piano tribute to Mia and the ball is in her court.

In closing, this is just one theory I had. You could read this movie in a number of different ways (e.g. it’s a more realistic/modern take on the “happily ever after” traditional romantic musical, it’s a statement about sacrifices needing to be made to chase your ultimate dream and how bittersweet that can be, it’s about how timing is just as important as anything in a relationship etc.) which is one of many, many reasons it’s an incredible movie.

24 Hours of Movies: Happy Birthday, Erika

by Patrick Bromley

Celebrate the birth of my favorite girl with 24 hours of movies picked just for her.

Today is my beautiful wife's birthday, and because movies have played such a huge role in our relationship -- from friendship to falling in love to even now after 12 years of marriage -- I thought it would be fun to program a marathon for her. Full of stuff she likes. Full of stuff that makes her happy.

Obviously this is just hypothetical, as Erika would never actually sit through 24 hours of movies. Twelve? Sure. Sixteen, maybe. It's not that she doesn't love movies as much as I do -- she does -- but she also values her health and well-being. This is where we differ.

10 a.m. - Grease (1978, dir. Randal Kleiser)

Let's start with one of Erika's childhood favorites, a movie she taped off of television and watched again and again and again until she had the whole thing memorized. She grew up wanting to be Olivia Newton John in this movie -- especially in the final moments, mostly because of her hair. I know that the messages of Grease are fairly toxic by 2017 standards, but at no point has Erika ever thought that she, like Sandy, would need to change to make someone like her. She has always been exactly who she is. While this is one of my favorite things about her, it's also proof that audiences -- even young audiences -- can enjoy a film without reading it as an endorsement of the behavior on screen. It's the same reason she grew up loving Pretty Woman without ever believing that she should become a prostitute or that a rich man would come along to rescue her. Many of us can understand the difference.

Noon - Cocktail (1988, dir. Roger Donaldson)

I'll be honest. I really don't like this movie. But this day is not about me, it's about Erika. And she loves it despite knowing that it is terrible. I can't program 24 hours of Erika movies without at least one Tom Cruise entry, and though there are many, many more better Tom Cruise movies (an argument with which I know E would readily agree), this is the one that represents her love for him best of all because it demonstrates that she will love him in anything. Even junk like Cocktail.

2 p.m. - Wuthering Heights (1939, dir. William Wyler)

This in another one of Erika's favorite movies, but I'm a terrible person because I still haven't seen it. The movie is still hard to come by, though we have recorded it off of TCM on two separate DVRs that subsequently broke before we were able to watch it. We have it on our current DVR now, which means its days are probably numbered. Putting it early in the lineup of this marathon guarantees I'll finally be able to watch it with her with a minimal chance of falling asleep. Plus, putting a classic film into the lineup makes me seem really smart and cultured when I'm really just a dummy. Don't tell Erika.

4 p.m. - Hairspray (1988, dir. John Waters)

It selfishly makes me really happy that one of my wife's favorite movies is from John Waters. I mean, I knew she was super cool already, but how cool is that? This was another film she grew up loving, and one of the major reasons -- besides the fun and the dancing and the period style -- is the movie's passion for social justice. This is something that she has been drawn to her whole life and it's one of the coolest things about her. It's great that we can sit together and watch this and she'll be thinking about civil rights and I will be secretly excited that she loves this movie made by the same guy who filmed a drag queen eating poo. This is how we make our marriage work.

5:45 p.m. - Super 8 (2011, dir. J.J. Abrams)

After a series of nostalgia picks, it's time to program a movie that Erika and I fell in love with together. One of the reasons we got together in the first place was because we both responded to many of the same songs and movies and in a very similar way; sometimes, we couldn't explain exactly what it was, but just knew that the other person got it. From the first time we saw Super 8 together, we both fell for all of it -- the sadness, the adventure, the humor, the nostalgia, the feeling that life was different then. It's a movie we can sit down and watch together any time, and just because we don't (she shows it in her film class every semester) doesn't mean it's not something that's special to us both.

7:45 p.m. - Hoop Dreams (1994, dir. Steve James)

I don't think I could ever get Erika to commit to choosing a single movie as her all-time favorite (she would feel too bad about leaving something else out), but I have a strong suspicion that it's actually the 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams. There's no other movie she talks about with as much reverence and passion, and it's not because she's an especially big basketball fan. It has everything to do with empathy -- with getting to know the two young Chicago boys, Arther Agee and William Gates, and following them through their successes and heartbreaks. This is one of the best documentaries ever made, but it's one I like even more because I'm able to experience it through her eyes. At three hours, we really can't program this one any later so it needs to be the centerpiece of the marathon.

10:45 p.m. - Drive (2011, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

It's Ryan Gosling. We're good here.

12:45 a.m. - Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984, dir. Charles E. Sellier Jr.)

I usually like to get weird during the overnight sections of these 24-hour marathons and program some fucked up horror movies, but Erika's not necessarily the biggest fan of horror. Having said that, there are two horror movies that I will forever associate with her because they were the ones she grew up watching at sleepovers with her two best friends. She once even wrote a piece about Silent Night, Deadly Night that made me love her more than I already did. Her affection for this movie helps explain why she yells "PUNISH" every time I do something wrong. Just kidding! I don't do anything wrong. Just kidding! She doesn't yell at me.

2:15 Sleepaway Camp (1983, dir. Robert Hiltzik)

This is a horror movie I've come to love a lot over the last 15 years and one that has become very special at F This Movie!, as it was the first #ScaryMovieMonth commentary we ever recorded. I owe all of that to Erika, who introduced me to the movie when we were first dating. It's not one that I grew up with, but it was for her. How she watched something this crazy and didn't develop more of a taste for lunatic horror I will never understand, but I'm forever grateful to her for showing me this one. I mean, for lots of other things too. Like our kids. But mostly Sleepaway Camp.

4 a.m. - House of 1000 Corpses (2003, dir. Rob Zombie)

Despite the fact that she's not a huge horror fan, Erika is way into Rob Zombie's movies (not so much the Halloween films or 31, but I can't blame her for that one). This is a consistent source of amusement to me, because his movies are nastier and more horrific than a lot of what's out there. I can remember us being among the few to actually see this film when it played in theaters in 2003 and loving the fact that Erika loved it. She likes The Devil's Rejects way more, but this one will play better at 4 a.m. Plus I think The Devil's Rejects will be too genuinely upsetting to her, because it speaks right to a lot of things she is legitimately afraid of. House of 1000 Corpses is more fun.

6 a.m. - Can't Buy Me Love (1987, dir. Steve Rash)

After keeping her awake all night and asking her to sit through three consecutive horror movies, it seems fair to bring in the sunrise with another nostalgic favorite -- one of those films that Erika can quote from memory. I used to play this game where I would stumble across Can't Buy Me Love on TV and see how long I could leave it on before she would identify it from the other room. It was always only a single line of dialogue, or sometimes just a few notes of the score. Fucking amazing. It's not a significantly better movie than Cocktail, but it has a lot of '80s teen movie charm and I could easily watch it any time.

8 a.m. - Shakespeare in Love (1998, dir. John Madden)

Let's wrap up these 24 hours with another movie we fell in love with together, and one that played a big part in our eventually getting together. All Erika ever wanted was someone who looks at her the way Joseph Fiennes looks at Gwyneth Paltrow in this movie. I'm that person for her. I hope she'll still look at me like that after sitting through this many movies.

Happy birthday, Bue. I love you.

Riske Business: Great Performances of 2016

by Adam Riske

Happy Holidays!

This week Patrick and I discussed some of our favorite performances from the movies of 2016.

Adam: My first pick is Gillian Jacobs in Don't Think Twice. I saw this movie twice and while I appreciated the movie less, I fell even more in love with Jacobs. She's always been great, whether it be on Community or Love, but here she gives a different and very interesting performance as an improviser who is happy with her lot in life and isn't the competitor some of her improviser teammates are. She has a scene late in the movie where she's giving a performance with Keegan Michael Key that is sad and uplifting at the same time. She's a really good actress and this movie shows she's equally adept at portraying a rich character as she is at making an audience laugh (especially when she’s imitating Katherine Hepburn).

Patrick: Gillian Jacobs is always the best. She's one of those actors that can make something better just by showing up. I love her most when she's flawed but principled, and Don't Think Twice finds her right in that zone. I don't know if this was a conscious choice in the editing room or just how the actual scenes shook out, but she's also the only one who really gets laughs during the improv sequences, of which there are many. I don't mind that her character wants to stick with it because it seems like she's the best one.

For my first pick, I'll go with John Goodman in 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's unfortunate that most big awards shows don't ever recognize genre films -- with the obvious exception of Deadpool, one of the best Musicals or Comedies released in 2016. And how about that Ryan Reynolds? Seriously, HFPA, you may as well have nominated him for Van Wilder. He's no better or worse in either movie. But John Goodman is, like Gillian Jacobs, an actor who improves every project by presence alone, and his performance in 10 Cloverfield Lane is one of the very best I've ever seen him give. He's not just scary -- he's believable scary, and the scene (no spoilers) in which he appears "cleaned up" is one of the most chilling and disturbing moments in a movie that's full of them. All three actors are good; they have to be for the movie to be as good as it is. But I think John Goodman achieves greatness.

Adam: Goodman is.....good.....man....(I'm so sorry) in 10 Cloverfield Lane. It's nice to see him get a co-lead, which he only seems to get one out of every 10 movies he does. The thing I like about him is that all of his characters feel like they've had a life before we catch up with them. He always feels like he's for real and not performing.

My next pick stays on the girls tip (again I'm so sorry..I'm having trouble with transition phrases right now). It's Dylan Gelula in First Girl I Loved. You're probably all "Gehula in the Whata?" right now, so let me explain. This was a movie I saw on closing night of the Chicago Critics Film Festival this year (it's on Amazon Instant Video right now) and I was really blown away by her performance and the movie (more her performance...the movie is one of those "I'm blown away by this" and then you never think about it again type of movies). It's a love story about a high school girl (Gelula) who is in a love triangle with that Deadpool teenager superhero girl and some ponytail John Turturro looking kid. Complications ensue and Gelula's character goes on this sweet trajectory of trying to figure out if she's gay or just curious. The movie follows her lead and is pretty sensitive and also smart, depicting teenagers in a realistic way where they're thorny but still endearing, likable people (unlike that jerk face Halee Steinfeld in The Edge of Seventeen, who is the worst kind of person). You should see First Girl I Loved. Gelula's really good in it, though.

Patrick: I'm going to watch it right away! I love a good coming of age movie and I was sorry to have missed it at CCFF.

Speaking of good coming of age movies, I want to single out Hailee Steinfeld in The Edge of Seventeen, a movie I know underwhelmed you but which I thought was a really, really good character study of a teenage girl who felt real in every single way. There's no gimmick, no major crisis being faced, just a young woman who has a hard time seeing outside of herself and her own problems. I thought a whole lot about Juno during Edge of Seventeen, probably because both movies are about teenage girls who are a little too smart for the room and can't help but remind people of that. I thought Hailee Steinfeld was every bit as good as Ellen Page was in Juno, but both Page and that movie got nominated for Oscars and almost no one is talking about Steinfeld or Edge of Seventeen. That's a bummer. This is the best role and the best performance she's given since showing such promise in True Grit. She's so good that I can almost forgive that terrible song she has out right now. Almost.

Adam: Well I walked into that landmine, didn't I? I'll say this. She is very good at playing a disagreeable character. That song's not bad! I think I like that song (“Starving”) more than I like the movie actually.

Patrick: If you're serious about liking that song more than the movie, you, sir, are some kind of monster.

Adam: I do like the song more than the movie. Keep in mind, though, this is from a guy who is currently drinking Root Beer Schnapps straight from the bottle. My taste aren't very refined.

My next choice is a boy performance. It's Alden Ehrenreich in Hail, Caesar! I saw this actor for the first time in Tetro years back (he's really good in it) and then he kind of disappeared for a number of years popping up in a cameo in Somewhere and a supporting role in Stoker, but Hail, Ceasar! was cool to see because he delivers on the promise of that earlier performance. It's the type of role/performance that makes you really understand a different side of an actor (because he's so funny and likable as opposed to the usual 20-something brooding) and makes you excited to see him in future roles. I also liked him in Rules Don't Apply (shout out to Lily Collins, too, who is really good in the movie as well, better than she's ever been in anything else). Too bad in that movie the director steps in mid-way through and decides we need him more than anything and jettisons everything that was previously working about his film.

Patrick: Loved Alden Ehrenreich in that movie! Don't love typing his name. But he achieved the very difficult task in that movie of a) standing out most among one of the best ensemble casts of the year and b) making a very "simple" character sweet and three dimensional and gave him agency without ever condescending to the role. I can't wait for that movie to be reassessed and appreciated in about five years.

I'll once again piggyback off your choice and name Chase Williamson in Beyond the Gates as one of my favorite performances of the year. I've gone on and on about the movie since seeing it over the summer and I know it's not everyone's bag, but Chase Williamson is so good at finding a new way to play the fuckup brother. I rewatched the movie recently and was so taken with his ever delivery and reaction -- he's sweet and big-hearted when another actor would have played him as self-conscious and resentful. He has a goofy optimism that's super rare in horror movies.

Adam: I so want to like Beyond the Gates as much as you do. I'll give it another shot. I have watched the commercial Jackson Stewart shot for the board game about five times and love that. I may have just been in a mood that day. Or I'm a monster. We'll only know for sure from a blood test.

My next pick is twofer - Trevante Rhodes and Andre Holland from the last third of Moonlight. This is a movie with great performances across the board, but I'm sort of surprised that the largest share of praise is going to Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali. Though both of those actors are very good in the movie, it's Rhodes and Holland who are the most enduring memories I have from it. Their interplay is so reserved and emotional on a subtextual level that it maybe is easier to overlook. I love how romantic Holland plays that scene in the diner. It's the most romantic depiction I've ever seen on film of a relationship between two men and Rhodes is just out of this world as the adult Chiron. He's built like a brick wall but you can tell by his body language that he'll shatter from just the slightest gesture.

Patrick: I was so distracted by how much Trevante Rhodes looks like 50 Cent. Like, Andre Holland is hard at work making the Chef's Special and Trevante Rhodes is just thinking about taking him to the Candy Shop, where I assume he'll let him lick his lollipop.

Also, I am not trivializing their love. I'm just quoting 50 Cent lyrics because if I don't we are doomed to repeat history.

Adam: I take it Moonlight didn't do much for you, then? At least you've upgraded to 50 Cent blowjob jokes. They're 10 times better than your Nickelback blowjob material.

Patrick: I like Moonlight a lot! It's really good. Never let a stupid blowjob joke be the barometer of my feelings about anything.

Adam: That should be a Hallmark card.

Patrick: My next pick is Susan Sarandon in The Meddler, a movie I don't think a lot of people saw and even fewer people remember. I get it. The movie feels slight and Susan Sarandon has been doing good work for so many years that it's easy to overlook her when she's good in yet another thing. But she's seriously SO GOOD in The Meddler, a movie that's insanely sweet and touching and warm and funny. She takes a character who could have so easily been played as a sitcom nag and makes her into someone real and human. Plus, she loves going to see action movies so she might as well just let me marry her and now it's your turn.

Adam: I haven't seen The Meddler because there are too many movies. Also, I have a weird thing with that movie now because a couple (in their 50s maybe) told me that I might not like it because it's meant for "older people." So I'm going to wait for my hospice marathon to watch it.

My next pick is Sofia Boutella in Star Trek Beyond. The character and her performance add a great amount of humor and energy to the middle of the movie and I think starting with her appearance the film itself goes from "this is fun" to "wow, this is kinda special." "I like the loud beats and shouting" will always be funny.

Patrick: Love Sofia Boutella in STB. She's so fun and creates a character whose arc kind of becomes the centerpiece of the film. I really hope that, based on where it's left with her, she's back in a Starfleet uniform for the next installment (assuming there is a next installment). She kicks ass in that movie.

My next pick is probably a no-brainer, but I don't know if anyone had a better year than Ryan Gosling. I know he's always good in everything, but he's usually an actor I can appreciate or admire (though not as much as my wife) but never really love (never as much as my wife). Between his work in The Nice Guys and La La Land, Baby Goose is the king of 2016. He sings, he dances, he has expert comic timing. Maybe more directors will see how light and funny and charming he is when he's allowed to be light and funny and charming and not always rely on him to be dark and brooding and intense.

Adam: I'm glad you picked Ryan Gosling, because he was on my list as well for The Nice Guys. His performance in The Nice Guys is amazing in two ways to me: 1) He perfectly captures "my ass may be dumb, but I ain't no dumbass" and 2) He reaches a level (probably right around "No kid, we don’t want to see your dick.") where everything he does is funny...his mannerisms, his dialogue, his cadences, everything. I just saw La La Land this week and agree with everything you said there as well.

My next pick is Ethan Hawke in Born to Be Blue. It's a very good movie, but sort of the usual biopic; however, Ethan Hawke is more into the character than he usually is. I love this guy's work, but my last sentence means that he feels like Chet Baker in Born to Be Blue, whereas when I enjoy his work in other movies it's because I like Ethan Hawke as a movie star persona. He and Carmen Ejogo (who I thought would have been bigger after Metro) have really good chemistry together and he really is able to get across how this addict (in Baker) was so appealing to his peers. He's a decent guy but just one with a lot of problems.

Patrick: I haven't seen Born to Be Blue because I assumed it was the next Smurfs movie. I know you're a fan, though, so I will definitely check it out. Maybe during my 24 Hours of Jazz musician biopic marathon.

I'm picking an actor from a movie I don't think you've seen yet, but not just to get even for that whole Born to Be Blue thing. We're past that. I'm going with Samantha Robinson in The Love Witch. She's not an actor who was on my radar prior to this, but she's so, so good giving a very specifically pitched performance that's reminiscent of an early '70s exploitation or Hammer movie but at the same time being completely sincere. I don't want to say that the movie lives or dies based on her performance because it has a lot of other things going for it, but I think that if Robinson wasn't as good as she is the movie wouldn't work nearly as well as it does. What she does is really, really hard.

Adam: I'm really looking forward to The Love Witch. I wish it was available where I could watch it this month but I'm going to have to wait until its home release next year. I love the trailer. Whatever Robinson is doing, it works for me.

My next pick is kind of a lifetime achievement award/time served acknowledgment and that's for Kristin Stewart in Café Society. Her performance in the movie doesn't transcend other KStew performances, but her work in Café Society singlehandedly saves that movie because she has a certain heft to her that I think her co-creators are lacking. I really admire her because she takes interesting roles and is, more often than not, the best thing in the movies she's in. I also want to call it time served, because she is like the Jesse Eisenberg whisperer. He raises his game in movies she's in with him and case in point is Café Society. He's doing his Woody Allen schtick for the first 20 or 30 minutes and its insufferable and then Stewart walks in as if to say "cut that shit out and just play the scene" and it gets better. She did this in American Ultra, too.

Patrick: It bums me out when I see K-Stew be really good in something (like Adventureland or The Runaways) and then see her shit the bed in some high profile movie or seem miserable in an interview and get the reputation for being dead inside and talentless. She is not.

My next pick is a performance in a movie that no one saw and even I wasn't that crazy about: Mark Proksch in Another Evil. It's a microbudget/mumblecore horror comedy in which he plays an exorcist hired to get rid of the ghost living in Steve Zissis' house. The movie is never scary and only rarely funny, but Proksch gives one of those performances that is so original, so unlike the countless other versions we've seen of this same character (a variation on Chip in The Cable Guy -- the sad-sack loser who clings too tightly to a new friend), that I strongly recommend seeing Another Evil just to enjoy the work he does. Anything about the movie that works only works because of him.

Adam: Glad to hear your recommendation of Another Evil. I've had a couple of opportunities to see it but I've talked myself out of it thus far because people were saying I wasn't missing anything. Unlike Captain Fantastic, I'll give it a shot one of these days.

My last pick is one I just saw this week and I'm on cloud nine about it. It's Emma Stone in La La Land. Stone is always an actress I've enjoyed watching in movies. She's funny, likable, pretty, etc., but in La La Land it was seeing an actress kill it in a role that's perfectly suited for her. I made a comment on Twitter that one of the best things about La La Land is that it is a movie that lets us enjoy movie stars being movie stars. One thing that annoys me about movies today is that many of them are concept driven and not star driven. When you look back on decades past and see the caliber of movie star it puts the modern era (ERA!) to shame. And I think Emma Stone is La La Land takes a little bit of that back.

Patrick: Emma Stone is good in everything, but it's nice to see all of her talent truly put to use in La La Land. Her performance of "Audition" is really the emotional centerpiece of the whole movie and she kills it. Isn't that the same thing the Academy gave Anne Hathaway an Oscar for a few years ago? I don't imagine they'll be doing the same for E-Stone.

Adam: That would be a shame. We should give Emma Stone an Oscar just to say thank you for being Emma Stone.

Patrick: For me, Rebecca Hall gave the performance of the year in Christine, but I'm trying to highlight performances that probably won't get real awards consideration and I have to believe she will. So my last pick will be Lauren Ashley Carter in Darling. I understand why some people don't dig the movie because it is so much like Polanski's Repulsion, but I still really like it and Carter's performance is a big part of it. It's one of these movies that really hangs on the star's work, and her enormous eyes and increasingly undone state paint a picture of a girl who's already broken but waiting to shatter. Darling shows her shatter. This is the best performance I've seen LAC give yet, which is no small feat because I'm pretty sure she's in about half of the indie horror movies that come out.

Adam: I’m intimidated of Christine based on its subject matter. Glad to hear Rebecca Hall is good in it though. She’s a very good actress. Pretty underrated, too.

Some other performances I enjoyed a lot in 2016: Sam Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Shia LeBeouf in American Honey, Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals, Dan Fogler in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, John Travolta (and Jumpy the Dog) in In a Valley of Violence, Natalie Portman in Jackie, Emilia Clarke in Me Before You, AnnaLynne McCord in Trash Fire and Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms.

Patrick: I second a number of your "other" picks, and I'll add Abigail Hardingham in Nina Forever, Ralph Ineson in The Witch, Lauren Cohan in The Boy, Jeff Bridges in Hell or High Water, Devin Kelley in Swept Under, Isabelle Huppert in Elle, Do Won Kwak in The Wailing, Jenny Slate in My Blind Brother and Joshy, Sally Field in Hello My Name is Doris...I'm sure there are way more but I can't think of them.

Is there a performance we missed that you want to get some attention? Let us know in the comments.

Review: La La Land

by Patrick Bromley

Magic.

I have written at some length before about a type of film I have dubbed the "exploding heart movie," which is a movie that speaks directly to us in such a way so as to cause a kind of emotional overload, filling us with so much love and joy that it feels like we're going to burst. Everyone had different exploding heart movies, and everyone's exploding heart moments in their exploding heart movies are different. This, of course, is because we are all unique and beautiful snowflakes.

La La Land is writer/director Damien Chazelle's exploding heart movie, designed not just to speak to the emotions of the audience -- and boy, does it ever -- but to lay bare all of the joy and passion the filmmaker feels about making movies. The film has been described as a love letter to Los Angeles or to classic Hollywood musicals. I guess it's those things. To me, La La Land is a love letter to anyone who loves movies. It's Chazelle saying "I am lucky to make movies. I love movies. You, the audience, loves movies. Let's fucking love this movie together." It works. I fucking love this movie.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star in this Gangster Squad reunion as Sebastian and Mia, two budding artists trying to make it in Los Angeles. He's a piano player who dreams of opening his own old-school jazz club, in the meantime trying to get by playing Christmas carols in restaurants and filling in on keyboards for bad '80s cover bands. She dreams of being an actress, but like all would-be actresses is working as a barista in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot. They meet, then meet again. After meeting a few times, they realize they like one another -- and, better yet, inspire one another to be better and reach further than either is doing on their own. Before you can say "they probably fall in love and sing and dance," they fall in love and sing and dance.

Yes, La La Land is a musical -- a sprawling, wildly ambitious, gorgeously photographed and perfectly choreographed musical. From the opening number, an astonishing single-take number in stuck traffic on the L.A. freeway, to "A Lovely Night," one of the most charming first dates in memory, to the breathtaking and gravity-defying "Planetarium" to the show-stopping "Audition" (the number that is likely to singlehandedly score Emma Stone a Best Actress nomination), nearly all of the musical sequences achieve one kind of transcendence or another. I won't argue that all of the songs themselves are great; there are standouts like "City of Stars," but others that faded from memory moments after they had finished. What does not fade is the exuberant energy with which Chazelle (and choreographer Mandy Moore [not that Mandy Moore]) stage the numbers, using them sometimes to advance the story but mostly to express emotions being felt by the characters that are too big to be expressed in words. This is the beauty of musicals, and what separates them from more "realistic" stories.

"But what if I don't like musicals?" you ask. That is your right. You are a snowflake. While I cannot predict what you, reader, will or will not enjoy (nor would I want to), I can say that I'm not 100% sure I love musicals either. But I do respond to both the emotion and the technical execution of every number in La La Land, nearly all of which made my heart explode more than anything else this year. Sometimes I was swept up in the beauty of the photography by Linus Sandgren, who shoots Los Angeles in a way that is painterly and romanticized while still capturing a realism and familiarity that other movies fail to achieve. Often I was moved by Chazelle's simultaneous expression of control and bravado -- he's made a movie bursting with big feelings that radiate off the screen but has done so in a way that is expertly staged and timed and edited. I've always liked movies that take big swings, and La La Land is nothing but big swings. Like Paul Thomas Anderson graduating from Hard Eight to Boogie Nights, Damien Chazelle has cashed in all the goodwill earned by his Oscar-nominated debut Whiplash to make a movie that is bigger and riskier but which once again concerns itself first and foremost with expressing an emotional state through form.

I know that La La Land isn't going to have the same effect on everyone. That's true of any movie, but especially true of exploding heart movies. For some, the story may seem too slight and the emotional beats too familiar. Maybe these things are true. Beyond the romance at the center, the film has a lot to say about the need to create, about the lasting impact of art, about the ways we can draw strength from those around us to do the things we maybe couldn't do without making these emotional connections. Besides, I have a hard time accepting the idea that human happiness is "slight," and while we may recognize the emotions being expressed on screen, I'm not sure I've seen them expressed in quite this way. Chazelle cuts right to the core of one our most basic emotions but then dresses it up in some of the most exciting, buoyant filmmaking I've seen all year. La La Land floats for two hours and refuses to come down even after the credits have rolled. This is classic movie magic.