La La Land (2016)

Remarkable musical directed by Damien Chazelle. 

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are just perfect as the young, ambitious Los Angeles dreamers who fall in love. He’s a jazz pianist who wants to open his own club. She’s an actress who writes a one-woman play and hopes to be a film star. 

The singing, dancing and choreography are a joy. I love the long shots that seem not to have any edits. The colours are bright and vivid. And the on/off relationship plot is strong. 

It’s not perfect. Arguably the “magic realism” goes too far on a couple of occasions and takes you too far out of the story, such as when they seem to start flying at the Griffith Observatory. And the two songs packed into the first 10 minutes set it up to be more of a musical than it ends up being, which makes it a little uneven. 

It’s certainly more emotional than a standard musical. It’s hugely romantic and ultimately a little sad, while also somehow being uplifting. It was incredibly fresh when it came out and it still feels just as fresh five years on.

Dragon Wars (2007)

Also known as D-War, this is an instantly forgettable South Korean fantasy film with mostly American actors. The “plot” is almost entirely nonsensical. Wikipedia attempts to explain how Ethan Kendrick (Jason Behr) is tasked by the mysterious Jack (Robert Forster) to “protect the Yuh Yi Joo, an individual who had been born able to change an Imoogi chosen by heaven into a Celestial Dragon, from a corrupt Imoogi identified as ‘Buraki’, who was prevented from obtaining it in the past by Ethan and Jack's previous incarnations. To this end, Jack gives Ethan a medallion formerly belonging to Ethan's previous incarnation Haram, and reveals that the reincarnated Yuh Yi Joo is Sarah Daniels (Amanda Brooks), whom Ethan will find in Los Angeles.” And so on. 

Huge snake creatures appear and terrorise the city, as do high-tech warriors, flying dragons and magical balls of light. None of it is really explained, but it keeps moving so quickly that your questions are quickly replaced by new questions. It would probably seem like a masterpiece if you were a nine-year-old boy. Occasionally the monsters recall the silly creatures shown in the Battle of Naboo in Star Wars Episode I, which is distracting, but the CGI effects are fairly sophisticated and worth seeing if you enjoy that sort of thing. 

The script goes beyond cliché into a surreal world of its own. The plot certainly doesn’t bother with logic. Anything can happen – and it does. The acting is merely functional. There’s no suspense whatsoever. Eventually you give up asking “What?!” and just enjoy the mildly engaging monsters-vs.-copters showdown in the knowledge that it will all be over soon enough.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Fascinating comedy-drama written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. 

It’s 1969 in Los Angeles. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an actor famous for his role in a 1950s TV western. His best friend is his stunt double and personal assistant Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Times are changing and the pair are struggling to stay relevant in the film industry. Their next-door neighbours are actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her director husband Roman Polanski. Also on the fringes of the scene is a young Charles Manson…

The film cleverly weaves together fact and fiction across multiple narratives, playing on what we know – or think we know – about the mythology of the Manson murders. It’s a kind of alternative history that finds humour and tragedy in the events, but not in the way that you might expect.

It’s visually rich and full of the iconography of the time, with Tarantino really relishing the period detail. Highly watchable stuff.

The Informers (2009)

Muddled adaptation of short stories by Bret Easton Ellis about a bunch of loosely associated dysfunctional, alienated Los Angeles people in 1983.

It completely lacks charm or intrigue. The sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll feels forced and clichéd. None of the characters seems to care about anything, so why should we care about them? It makes the mistake of being every bit as empty, vacuous and depressing as the world it portrays.

There’s an all-star cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke and Chris Isaak, and some of the individual performances are reasonable enough. But none stand out and the film doesn’t really hang together. What works well on the page seems flat and even annoying in this jarring, unrewarding mess.

City of Angels (1998)

A remarkable romantic drama. Nicolas Cage is an angel, who guides the dying to heaven. In a Los Angeles hospital, he meets a human doctor (Meg Ryan) and they fall in love. He then has to decide whether to give up eternal life and become human in order to be with her.

It’s loosely based on Wings of Desire (1987), but the theme of interspecies love reminds me a little of the mermaid saga Splash.

It’s subtle and nuanced. There’s something very pure and focused about the way it primarily deals with two characters and excludes sub-plots and other distractions.

Cage is perfect as an angel discovering what it is to love, possessing all the calm intensity you would expect of a supernatural being. Ryan is well-cast, too, so you can really believe in their romance.

The film excels in exploring the sensual qualities of pleasure and pain that angels are denied. The ending is satisfyingly not what you expect, and it’s moving without turning into sentimental slosh.

Face/Off (1997)

Absurd body-swap action-thriller directed by John Woo and incorporating elements of sci-fi and horror. 

A criminal (Nic Cage) and an FBI agent (John Travolta) have their faces switched with the use of pioneering technology. Meanwhile, the criminal has planted a bomb somewhere in Los Angeles. 

Cartoonish and unbelievable, Face/Off ends up being possibly the strangest film I’ve ever seen. Cage plays it like a pantomime villain, hamming it up so much that you realise the film is nearly a comedy – and would perhaps have worked better that way. On the plus side, the action sequence involving speedboats is one of the best I’ve ever seen. 

The film doesn't really bother to explore the complex identity questions it hints at: are we "ourselves" (with a consistent being at the core) or are we merely what we look like? It's so ridiculous that it takes cinema to a different level where different rules apply. Forget logic. It’s a thrilling, farcical mess that somehow works – despite Travolta’s creepy tic of touching the face of anyone he meets.

The Nice Guys (2016)

Unusual comedy thriller directed by Shane Black. 

An inept private eye (Ryan Gosling) and a brutal enforcer (Russell Crowe) investigate a missing girl in late-1970s Los Angeles. 

It’s a strange film. The humour is as dark as it gets, with an uneasy violence behind it. Crowe’s character seems equally capable of cold-blooded murder and compassion, and that makes for an awkward mix – probably deliberately so. The emotional development, based around Gosling’s relationship with his teenage daughter, cones across as shallow and unconvincing.

The party section was especially well done, and the action is expertly presented, but overall – despite some genuine laughs – it’s little too slick to fully engage. And off-puttingly, a tubby Crowe looks uncannily like John Goodman throughout.

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

John Hughes teen drama that ranks as the very best example of its kind. 

Looking like a young Luke Skywalker, Eric Stolz is Keith, a sensitive artist and mechanic from a blue-collar background in suburban Los Angeles. Keith resists his father’s wishes to send him to college. Mary Stuart Masterson is Watts, his tomboy best friend who loves drumming and who has been secretly in love with Keith for years. And then there’s Lea Thompson as Amanda Jones, the girl Keith thinks he’s in love with. But nasty guy Hardy Jenns (Craig Sheffer) has other ideas about who Amanda should be dating. 

It's hugely entertaining and very charming. The storytelling is superb. The three leads are all spot-on. It’s extremely earnest and it takes itself very seriously, which seems absolutely the right approach because that’s how teenagers are too. It’s romantic and silly at the same time. The usual 1980s preoccupations with social mobility dominate, alongside some morals about being your own true self rather than being fake with others. 

Note: the names Keith, Watts and Amanda Jones are all Rolling Stones references. Presumably the drumming gimmick was also added in reference to Charlie Watts.

I haven’t enjoyed a "youth" film this much since Teen Wolf.

Crossroads (2002)

A predictable “star vehicle”. Lucy (Britney Spears) and two other young women from Georgia take off on a road trip. One wants to go to an audition in Los Angeles, one wants to visit her fiancé and one wants to meet her estranged mother in Tucson, Arizona. In the process of taking the trip, they inevitably “find themselves” and rekindle their own childhood friendship. 

It’s formulaic in the extreme. Britney seems natural enough as an actor, but the script has no sparkle and the plot offers no surprises. I hoped they’d rob a bank or encounter a zombie apocalypse or something, but no such excitement occurs. Also, her dreary companions Kit (Zoe Saldana) and Mimi (Taryn Manning) are presumably there to make her look better. Her parents are played by Kim Cattrall and Dan Aykroyd, but it’s a struggle to believe they are the actual mum and dad of Ms. Spears. 

Crossroads tries to deal with issues such as teen pregnancy, the pressures of gender roles and the value of family, but the abundance of cliché means that it does so only superficially. It’s designed as fan fodder (you can almost hear the focus groups behind it), and in that sense it achieves everything it sets out to.

The Sure Thing (1985)

Sweet teen romance directed by Rob Reiner.

Classmates Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusack) and Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga) take a road trip from their New England college to Los Angeles. Gib (spontaneous but sloppy) is being fixed up with a “sure thing” – a girl who will definitely sleep with him – while Alison (a super-organised but stuffy academic) is meeting her extremely dull boyfriend. But the trip doesn’t go to plan and inevitably the bickering pair end up falling for each other, despite or because of all their differences.

It’s a fairly dialogue-heavy story, which is to be applauded, with lots of funny moments. Both of the leads are easy to like. It’s much smarter than teen films such as Pretty in Pink or St. Elmo’s Fire, and there’s something genuinely endearing about their stumbling relationship. It works as a road movie, too, although we don’t see enough of America as they cross it.

It’s a nice touch that you see a film poster for Reiner’s own This Is Spinal Tap in someone’s bedroom.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut (2007)

Ridley Scott’s masterpiece (originally released in 1982) is also Harrison Ford’s greatest film. In the Los Angeles of 2019, a cop has to track down and terminate four “more human than human” robots (or “replicants”) who have turned murderous as their four-year lifespan is about to expire. It’s wonderful on so many levels:
• The super-atmospheric soundtrack by Vangelis.
• The dark, dank visuals that so convincingly create a world and which have proved so influential on other films.
• The way it plays with genre. Is it sci-fi, horror, film noir, existential drama or a detective story? It’s all of those.
• The perfect cast: Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah are so convincing that you never once doubt that they are synthetic beings. Sean Young is also perfectly not-quite-right as the replicant who believes she’s human until all her illusions are crushed.
• The philosophical depth of it. What is life? What is humanity? How should we best use the little time we have?
• The exciting plot that builds to a remarkable and unexpected resolution.
• The restraint of it. No one over-acts. And Harrison Ford looks genuinely frightened when he’s being pursued. It’s the opposite of a shoot-’em-up cop film, or rather an extremely sophisticated version of one.

This is the third version of Blade Runner I’ve seen and they are all valuable in their own ways.

Doc Hollywood (1991)

Uneven romantic comedy. 

Dr. Ben Stone (Michael J. Fox) is driving to Los Angeles for a job interview as a plastic surgeon when he takes the wrong road and crashes his fancy car in the small town of Grady, South Carolina. He’s forced to stay there for a few days, working a punishment of community service in the medical centre, and slowly comes round to the locals’ way of life.

It’s a good idea, but some of the characters fall flat (such as Woody Harrelson as a crazed insurance salesman) or completely fail to convince. Ben starts falling for Vialula (Julie Warner), the town’s ambulance driver, who improbably first greets him by stepping out of a lake naked. 

Another flaw is that the comedy isn’t as sharp as you’d hope. Michael J. Fox is excellent, as usual: a very sympathetic hero with some good lines and some amusing moments. He does the “running around” escapades extremely well. Also, I really liked Bridget Fonda as Nancy, the mayor’s daughter. If only she was in the film more.

The small-town atmosphere begins to come together in the later stages, although not nearly as well as it does in films such as Local Hero or Roxanne, and there are a few laughs and a couple of touching scenes. But that’s not enough to make it truly satisfying.

Speed (1994)

Terrific action thriller. The concept is simple: a Los Angeles city bus is armed with a bomb that will detonate if the vehicle’s speed dips below 50 mph. Cute, funny Sandra Bullock is the passenger who becomes the heroic driver. Keanu Reeves is the cop jumping aboard the bus to save her and the other passengers while trying to defeat the crazed villain (Dennis Hopper). He’s helped by fellow cop Jeff Daniels, who is as reliably watchable as ever.

With exceptional pacing, the film ramps up the tension from the start and somehow sustains it for 111 minutes.

Some of the dialogue is weak, with a silly Bond-like quip about death that could have been skipped, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s so full-on in terms of excitement that you are swept away by the rush of energy. And the blossoming romance story is developed just enough to make you engage with the characters. It’s telling, though, that only Reeves is shown on the DVD cover, despite Bullock being every bit as integral to the film.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

James Dean is iconic as the troubled teen who finds himself feeling like an outcast in suburban Los Angeles. At high school, he struggles with bullies but makes a friend in the unstable young Plato (Sal Mineo) and the rather shallow but equally troubled Judy (Natalie Wood). 

It’s a classic, obviously, but it’s not entirely successful. Dean’s presence is undeniable. But the scenes with his conservative parents – who of course don’t understand him or his generation – seem overwrought. There’s an oddly ponderous and stilted quality to the film in places, but then there are exciting scenes such as the daredevil leap-out-of-the-car-before-the-cliff-edge competition (which ends badly). Natalie Wood's character is also poorly developed and her problems aren’t really explored. 

The melodrama of macho fighting (of which there’s plenty) has a certain racy thrill, but the film seems genuinely muddled about what it’s trying to say and who it’s saying it to. If it was made for teenagers, you wonder whether that audience felt cheated by the ending and its affirmation of family values.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997)

A quirky comedy. 

Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow star as two friends who travel from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona, to attend their school reunion, anxious to impress the peers who snubbed them 10 years previously.

As with so many American films, there’s a lot about status anxiety. It’s a story about aspiration and class. It’s also about the importance of friendship. While some of the jokes miss the mark completely, and the writing could be sharper, there’s enough charm in the two leads’ performances that it works. 

I’m still not sure if it’s forgettable fluff or a satire of forgettable fluff. It certainly doesn’t have the edge of Clueless, but it’s in the same general universe.

Elysium (2013)

Dystopian sci-fi action thriller. It’s 2154, and Earth (specifically, Los Angeles) is a ruined slum whose inhabitants live in desperate poverty. Meanwhile on Elysium, a huge nearby space station, the elite citizens enjoy lives of luxury with advanced technology and healthcare bays that can cure seemingly anything. (The rich/poor social divide brings to mind The Hunger Games – plus, the shuttles look suspiciously similar.) A fairly convoluted plot sees this injustice and the social order challenged by a bunch of tech-savvy L.A. thugs.

Matt Damon plays the hero, Max Da Costa, who – dying of radiation poisoning – has Elysium’s data stored in a brain implant in exchange for a chance to travel there and be healed. Jodie Foster is the ruthless Defense Secretary Jessica Delacourt, who is out to stop him and who, script-wise, has little to get her teeth into. Alice Braga is Frey Santiago, Max’s childhood friend whose daughter also needs urgent medical treatment. As with Foster, she’s not given much to actually act with and the romance you expect to see never flourishes. Sharlto Copley is pretty awful as the one-dimensional nasty sleeper agent Kruger.

It’s extremely violent and there’s a lot of pointless swearing. The dialogue is banal at best. The film makes some interesting points about class and society, but risks becoming just another shoot-’em-up – albeit in a more exotic setting. You want to explore the miraculous environment of the space station, but instead have to watch sweaty men fighting and throwing hand grenades at each other. A shame, because somewhere in there is an intriguing idea that could have been developed in a much more sophisticated and rewarding way.

Earthquake (1974)

When Los Angeles is hit by a major earthquake, it’s up to a few brave heroes to save as many lives as possible. This film performs the standard disaster-film trick of setting up several diverse characters in different places before the incident kicks off. We get to know them a little, and then we get to see how they fare when everything goes wrong. It works because it actually makes us care.

The drama is fairly compelling. On a couple of occasions it lapses into sensationalism – most notably when a lift plunges in its shaft and animated drops of blood superimposed on the screen indicate that everyone in it died. But the film is generally impressive in terms of the special effects of the time (a bursting dam, burning buildings, semi-collapsed structures) and it successfully conveys the huge scale of the disaster. It feels “real” in a way that The Poseidon Adventure never does. 

Charlton Heston is the former sporting hero who has to save work colleagues and his father-in-law. Geneviève Bujold is the young mum who Heston has fallen for. Will he save her or his semi-estranged wife (an oddly unconvincing Ava Gardner)? George Kennedy plays a tough, cynical cop who proves decent enough to do the right thing. Richard Roundtree is a motorcycle stunt driver whose potential is never quite realised in the plot. (I kept expecting him to have to leap across a crack in the ground or cycle through a ring of fire, but his story just peters out.) There are also roles for Victoria Principal (of Dallas fame), who is nearly the victim of a machine-gunning predator, and Walther Matthau, who gets to be a comedy drunk. It’s not clear why they felt the need for comedy in a fairly serious film.

Gripping and suspenseful, this is well worth seeing.

Heat (1995)

Cop tries to catch criminal gang causing havoc in Los Angeles. Al Pacino is the cop. Robert De Niro leads the gang. 

Heat is a complex film that introduces multiple threads. At its worst it’s in danger of becoming an episode of Miami Vice or even The A-Team. At its best, it’s like a cut-price Scorsese imitation, albeit without the elegance and sophistication. The script is reasonable enough, but there are casting problems. Val Kilmer is jarringly woeful as one of the gang members. Furthermore, the gang guys have no chemistry whatsoever. Even De Niro seems to be struggling a little with the material. Plus, some of the music is intrusive. And the threads about the stand-in getaway driver and Natalie Portman as a troubled teen could both have been removed in the interests of tightening up the narrative.

On the plus side – and it's a big plus – Pacino rises to the challenge of his role and is every bit as cool as usual. The scenes featuring him and his wife (Diane Venora) are convincing, and there’s a depth to him that the other characters lack.

Somewhere (2010)

Drama directed by Sofia Coppola, the brilliant talent behind Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and The Virgin Suicides. 

Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) is a famous actor living at Los Angeles hotel the Chateau Marmont. Recovering from an injury, he seems detached and numb. Plus, he’s receiving aggressive texts and it seems that his car is being followed. When he unexpectedly has to look after his 11-year-old daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) for several days, his world begins to change. 

Like Coppola’s other modern classics, this is all about the characters and their relationships rather than the plot. She’s not afraid to let silences stretch, or to let scenes unfold at their own pace, and the film feels much more “real” as a result. 

Music once again plays a big part, with expertly chosen tracks often playing out in full because they fit the mood or tone so well. 

I like the fact that Somewhere is of no recognisable genre. It hints at evolving into a sort of thriller, but cleverly dismisses those elements and keeps the focus on the evolving father-and-daughter dynamics. A real treat.

Paris, Texas (1984)

Emotional drama directed by Wim Wenders. 

A drifter named Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) walks out of the desert and appears unable to speak. His brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) travels from Los Angeles to collect him. We learn that he’s been wandering for four years without contact, presumed dead, and has clearly undergone some kind of psychological trauma. In L.A., he’s reunited with his son (Hunter Carson) and begins a sort of rehabilitation. But that recovery process cannot be completed without Travis facing up to – and finding – his estranged wife (Nastassja Kinski).

It’s a sort of road movie, and the landscape shots always look stunning. Ry Cooder’s iconic slide-guitar soundtrack helps to make it even more atmospheric. It’s a painful exploration of the characters’ feelings, and in some ways quite upsetting. The climactic scene towards the end doesn’t quite satisfy, however: it changes the pacing and feels self-consciously “theatrical” compared to what’s gone before. On the one hand that magnifies the impact, but on the other hand it jars slightly with what’s come before. 

That point aside, it’s a poignant story about families and the damage they can do to each other.