Video on Demand — April 2017
Video pick of the month
La La Land
Early in La La Land, Emma Stone’s aspiring actress rises from a restaurant conversation about the unpleasantness of contemporary moviegoing and sprints to the Rialto Theatre to take in Rebel Without a Cause with Ryan Gosling’s intractably traditionalist jazz pianist. The burst of exuberance doesn’t last. The Rialto later closes down and as Gosling waxes poetic about jazz’s declining cultural relevance you begin to feel that for La La Land jazz is just a surrogate for the state of film itself. La La Landis an ode to the magic of movies – at a time when going to the movies has rarely felt less magical. But I’m not going to prattle on with another “Do Movies Still Matters” diatribe. I can only say that they certainly still matter to me. And that La La Land served as a reminder that there’s still an indefinable alchemy found within a great movie that isn’t replicated by any other medium. (Matt Mulcahey)
