La La Land: a story you've heard of before, but cant help but hear again.

Undergrad Rating: 10/10 Its modern story of following your dreams set with a storybook way of cinema story telling is sooooo good

Reviews: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes

Where to Find: Amazon Prime

This movie is a guilty pleasure of mine. I will admit to watching it at least 6 or 7 times now. I cant help but fall in love with the songs, the visuals, the relationship between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, and underlying theme of following your dreams, and what it takes to make it in Hollywood.

The movie opens, and your taken to LA traffic in 2016, all of a sudden, a musical number starts, and your introduced to the theme and overall tone of the movie. The movie follows a young aspiring actress, Mia (Emma Stone), and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) a down on his luck Jazz pianist that refuses to let the genre die.

They eventually cross paths casually a couple of times before actually getting to know each other, and coming together because their mutual passion for becoming what they want. Something else that you see is that they fully support each other, and feel truly in sync.

The other things that I like about this movie is how it shows what it looks like to live in LA as a poor person with a dream and nothing else. In addition to the problems that come with each profession. Its implied early in the movie that for a lot of actresses, they have to sleep with a producer to get a part in a movie, something that Mia refuses to do. And Sebastian eventually sells out to make money with a warped image of jazz-pop fusion that he even admits isn't what he wanted.

*SPOILER WARNING*

Despite this movie being somewhat of a fairytale vibe, our two lovers do not end up together. Instead, they both end up following their dreams instead of making a go of it in a relationship. At the end of the movie. Mia becomes a famous actress in Hollywood, and Sebastian opens up a jazz club like he originally wanted, but both had held on to little pieces of each other. Sebastian made the name of his club Mia's suggested name. And Mia kept her confidence that Sebastian helped her with.

Mia eventually finds her way into Sebastian's club and he plays their song, throwing a beautiful song filled, theatrical version of what could have been if they had stayed together and how different things would be. Only to be brought back to reality once the song had ended. Making you realize that you were more invested in these characters as once realized, and that life comes with sacrifice but that the feelings and memories will always be a thing.