Damien Chazelle's Optimistic, Bright as the L.A Sun, Heartwarming and Life Inspiring, Live Your Dreams, Delightful "LA LA Land" (2016)

A true delight for the eyes, and ears, and most importantly, for the heart. For the yearning hearts, to feel the rhythms, live the rhythms, and create the rhythms of your dreams. Through hardwork, persistence, the belief in magic and your dream, but also through the force of love, unexpected love, the belief that we can have in one another. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are cinematic and romance perfection. The "Audition" scene encapsulates the full storyline and the feeling, it's a pivotal scene. "My aunt used to live in Paris I remember, she used to come home and tell us stories about being abroad and I remember that she told us she jumped in the river once, Barefoot She smiled, Leapt, without looking And She tumbled into the Seine! The water was freezing she spent a month sneezing but said she would do it, again Here's to the ones who dream Foolish, as they may seem Here's to the hearts that ache Here's to the mess we make She captured a feeling Sky with no ceiling Sunset inside a frame She lives in her liquor and died with a flicker I'll always remember the flame Here's to the ones who dream Foolish, as they may seem Here's to the hearts that ache Here's to the mess we make She told me: A bit of madness is key to give us to color to see Who knows where it will lead us? And that's why they need us, So bring on the rebels The ripples from pebbles The painters, and poets, and plays And here's to the fools who dream Crazy, as they may seem Here's to the hearts that break Here's to the mess we make I trace it all back, to that Her, and the snow, and the sand Smiling through it She said She'd do it, Again"

Tom Ford's gut-wrenching, psycho-intense, haunting "Nocturnal Animals" (2016)

It's been weeks since I have seen the unexpectedly disturbing, yet beautifully impactful Tom Ford's second feature. Weeks and I am still haunted. By that scene. The central scene on the Texas highway, where everything is violently taken away from him. Piece by piece, uncontrollably. But also by the entire punch that the film within the film delivers and makes you leaving the theatre by asking yourself, what just happened? Like that ending scene, where she almost was warned, but went ahead anyways, wishfully hoping for a human touch, reconnection and to share how devastating, yet powerfully beautiful the reading experience was. By all the glitzy Los Angeles vs. gritty Texas contrasts and by the still shots of Amy Adams, inhabiting her seemingly rich yet void lifestyle, not knowing how she can actually re-grasp the past (refer back to the scenes where she says that she has been thinking a lot about her ex-husband, and with perfectly plotted timing, that is when his book manuscript is mailed to her gallery). By all of the superb casting and acting, especially the psychopaths and sociopaths criminals. Aaron-Taylor Johnson - hit the Gary Oldman caliber cords with this role. Also, Karl Glusman, you are so present and disturbingly perfectly immersed in all of your scenes. There is no genre for the categorization of "Nocturnal Animals". Psycho-drama-revenge-thriller? Still doesn't adequately reflect the unique style of a film that shocks you from its opening to its ending scene. Watch it, but consider yourself warned.