Damien Chazelle, director of Whiplash, is set to make his return to the big screen with his new feature, La La Land. The film is scheduled to open the 73rd Venice Film Festival in Italy, where it will have its world premiere on August 31. The Venetian screening will also mark the film’s world premiere.
La La Land is a musical romance set in Los Angeles. It tells the love story between Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a dedicated jazz musician who scrapes by playing piano gigs in dingy bars.
Chazelle’s new film re-unites him with Whiplash composer Justin Hurwitz, who co-wrote the score of songs in La La Land along with the Tony-nominated team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.
La La Land’s U.S. theatrical release is set for December 2.
Its unusual these days that a film's score leaps out. Haunting, forceful and superbly orchestrated, this film's music has both immediate and lingering effects.
The problem, of course, is that roughly 0.00001% of all moviegoers pay even scant attention to film music. They watch stars (generally big ones), action, romance and other forms of spectacle. The Tourist, which pairs Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in the city of Venice, with a high-stakes manhunt at the centre of its plot, has those things in spades.
The ingredients simply don't make for an appetizing movie meal. We are asked to believe that Jolie, a front (and romantic partner) for a man wanted by both Federal police and the Russian Mafia has chosen, for her decoy, a Midwestern schoolteacher who somehow has money for a train ride from France to Venice, that said schoolteacher has fallen in love with her, and that said schoolteacher - faced with his own mortality courtesy of the goons - has the physical abilities and mental wherewithal to escape and outwit his pursuers.
Fat chance. Not even the presence of an excellent supporting cast, including Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind), former James Bond Timothy Dalton, and Steven Berkoff (he was Eddie Murphy's first nemesis in Beverly Hills Cop) can lift this Tourist Trap out of the doldrums. it looks as good as it sounds (its Venice, after all), but the ending is just too pat, and Christopher McQuarrie's script just doesn't have the juice to sustain serious attention.
if films were vacation attractions, the The Tourist would be barely a sideshow. Indulge, if you wish, but save some coin for the good stuff.
