At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.
Director:
Guillermo del Toro
Stars:
Sally Hawkins,
Octavia Spencer,
Michael Shannon
A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.
Director:
Damien Chazelle
Stars:
Miles Teller,
J.K. Simmons,
Melissa Benoist
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
Aspiring actress serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and jazz musician Sebastian scrapes by playing cocktail-party gigs in dingy bars. But as success mounts, they are faced with decisions that fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.Written by
Eirini
Hurwitz composed "City of Stars" from an emotional place. He says it goes back and forth between cadencing in major and cadencing in minor because he thinks that is what the song is about. You have these great moments and then you have these less great moments in life. See more »
Goofs
At the very beginning of the movie, when Mia is leaving work to go to the audition, she bumps into a customer who spills a cup of coffee on her white shirt. You can clearly see that when she leaves the audition, the big coffee stain on her shirt is very different from before (when she was leaving work). See more »
Quotes
Sebastian:
You're a barista? I can see how you can look down on me from all the way up there.
See more »
Crazy Credits
There is a title card at the very beginning that says "Presented in CinemaScope." See more »
Writer/Director Damien Chazelle, who already had a nice career going for him, explodes into the Bigtime with this delightful, mesmerizing, and completely unexpected ode to Tinseltown.
The opening sequence (satirized on the Golden Globes) really does not do the rest of the film justice. It is as if the cast from the FAME remake grew up, had children of their own, and then those children hijacked the Santa Monica freeway to do a 10 minute flash-mob dance sequence.
From that point on, the film is hypnotic.
We segue to a love story as pure as anything since the great dramas of the 1940s. If the film had been in B&W, you would almost have expected to see Bette Davis in a 3-hankie tear jerker.
Except for the musical interludes, of course, which are pitch perfect and totally wonderful.
Gosling is surprising as a leading man expected to do song and dance, but he delivers the goods.
Stone, who was supposed to be "the next big thing" after Easy A (2010), steals the film and possibly the hearts of the audience as well. The awards should flow like water, and she will deserve every one.
As I said, deep in the DNA this is an ode to Hollywood. The film industry has always had issues with endings -- back in the day they would film several different endings per picture -- and then decide at the last minute which to use. Here Chazelle pays homage to that by giving us an alternate ending, along with the "real" ending, along with a closing sequence designed to remind everyone that nothing in Hollywood is actually real, but everything still can be really fun.
Destined to be a classic. Recommended.
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Writer/Director Damien Chazelle, who already had a nice career going for him, explodes into the Bigtime with this delightful, mesmerizing, and completely unexpected ode to Tinseltown.
The opening sequence (satirized on the Golden Globes) really does not do the rest of the film justice. It is as if the cast from the FAME remake grew up, had children of their own, and then those children hijacked the Santa Monica freeway to do a 10 minute flash-mob dance sequence.
From that point on, the film is hypnotic.
We segue to a love story as pure as anything since the great dramas of the 1940s. If the film had been in B&W, you would almost have expected to see Bette Davis in a 3-hankie tear jerker.
Except for the musical interludes, of course, which are pitch perfect and totally wonderful.
Gosling is surprising as a leading man expected to do song and dance, but he delivers the goods.
Stone, who was supposed to be "the next big thing" after Easy A (2010), steals the film and possibly the hearts of the audience as well. The awards should flow like water, and she will deserve every one.
As I said, deep in the DNA this is an ode to Hollywood. The film industry has always had issues with endings -- back in the day they would film several different endings per picture -- and then decide at the last minute which to use. Here Chazelle pays homage to that by giving us an alternate ending, along with the "real" ending, along with a closing sequence designed to remind everyone that nothing in Hollywood is actually real, but everything still can be really fun.
Destined to be a classic. Recommended.