Life Obscura

For the past few weeks, I’ve been back in Seattle, largely for the Seattle International Film Festival (which has a full week left, so go see some films!) but also of course to see all the wonderful friends that I miss terribly.

Of course, me being me, the topic of movie recommendations has come up numerous times on this trip, both in relation to SIFF and just in general, seeing as how I can’t resist telling people they just HAVE to watch some film or another. Eventually it was suggested that I collect some of recommendations into a more concrete lists for people to reference, and I fell upon this task with a little too much fervor. My initial list was 39 films and still kept growing!

I did discover a theme within that list: films I can’t resist recommending, but are somehow weird or bizarre or extreme - not your run-of-the-mill Hollywood feature. So for my first concrete set of recommendations, it seemed appropriate to explore that theme, as divisive and strange as they may be. Here’s my ‘full disclosure’ comment: I enjoyed ALL of these films. You may not. That is okay. Many of these are really weird, so-called art house films, and those aren’t for everyone. Anyway, fair warning should you decide to make a movie night or two from this list!

So IMDb recently added a feature to their iOS app that provides a “You May Know Them From” section on every person’s page based on your ratings. Basically, if a person you look up was in something you rated, it tells you what that thing was, shortening the amount of time you stare at a person’s face thinking ‘they look so familiar…’ Now, this is a great thing, but I’ve been a bit of a purist in my rating systems so far on IMDb (for a lot of reasons, none of which are really that important), and that means I hadn’t rated any TV shows. But some people I know from TV shows… and I wanted to know WHICH TV shows… and so I recently bulk rated a ton of TV shows on IMDb.

Rating TV shows is very hard for me to do, because one of my purist principles is wanting to only rate things I have finished, and there are SO MANY TV shows that I haven’t finished, because I’m sorry, but I can’t be expected to watch all twenty thousand seasons of shows like ‘Supernatural’ and ‘The Big Bang Theory’ when I have other things to do in life (like watch a ton of movies). Not to mention the fact that with most TV shows, the most rateable part of them is individual seasons (for example, season one of ‘Buffy’ is quite silly and campy, but by season six, which I kind of love, it had gotten way darker and is, in a sense, a very different show), but this is the one TV rating that IMDb does not allow you to make. The horrors.

This is a really long-winded way of saying that right now, my IMDb ratings list is very messed up, and nowhere near an accurate representation of what I have watched recently, so thank god for the Check-Ins function. Also, I may have used my messy ratings list as an excuse to procrastinate writing this wrap-up. Maybe.

‘A Private War’ is the story of Marie Colvin, a foreign affairs journalist for The Sunday Times who spent much of her career telling stories from the front lines of war zones. One of those wars killed her, as it killed over half a million people, in Syria. She was one of the brave, those willing to go in and tell the stories of the people whose homes, families, and lives were forfeit to the cruelties of war and the apathy of the outside world. Rosamund Pike does a tremendous job, giving an incredibly powerful performance as Colvin, capturing both her courage and her flaws as you see the toll a lifetime of exposure to these horrors takes. Surrounding her, you see the war torn cities and peoples that she sought to open our eyes to - the innocents, the civilians, those who end up just as numbers the further away you get from the bombing sites. It’s a well-executed film with dynamic acting, but I was unprepared for how gutted it would also make me feel.

I have not stuck to my writing resolution, but I have stuck to my movie-watching resolution - I’m already at 22 films watched for the year, with 7 directed by women, and while that number feels small, keep in mind that once again there are no women nominated for Best Director at the Oscars, which is just one reason that it is still frustratingly difficult to get access to new female-helmed movies on the big screen. (I wish my life involved trips to film festivals all the time, where you have a better chance at catching some of the films that I can only read about right now. Le sigh.)

Since I’ve been lax in writing, I’m doing a quick-and-dirty recap of the films I saw in January (which it turns out I really like typing up, so maybe I’ll keep doing this in future months. We’ll see.)

This year I set a new movie resolution! Though somewhat less ambitious than 2017 with my Movie A Day project, it still has the potential to expose me to plenty of fantastic films that haven’t crossed my screens as of yet.

For 2019, each week my goal is to watch 3 films that are new to me. Of course I can go over this number, but with the wedding and the job searching and the myriad travels I have ahead of me, I felt three was a reasonable number to aim for. But to keep it interesting, I’ve made sub-goals for my weekly films:

• One film from my collection (I own close to 100 that I haven’t seen… I would like to whittle that down!)
• One film directed by a woman
• One film in cinemas

In reaching these goals, I can always knock off two requirements with one film (‘Desert Hearts’ has been in my collection for months, for example, and is also directed by a woman, so it’s high on my list to pop into the Bluray player!) but I hope that this will keep me energized and searching out new films throughout the year.

I intended to write a weekly blog post about what I’m watching, but I’ve already fallen down on that goal a bit! But there’s no harm in starting now, is there? As we’re still in the middle of the third week of the year, I’ll just reflect on the first two weeks of this plan.

The Seattle International Film Festival has fully kicked off, and I’ve been in films pretty much when I’m not sleeping or eating. (Or jotting down these notes to share with you!) It’s definitely a marathon, this festival, so as fun as it is to jump off the blocks in the first few days with five or six films a day, I’ve got to make sure I don’t lose steam over the next three weeks.

Anyway, it’s a great festival, and there are many many awesome films, so if you are near Seattle anytime before June 10th, you should grab some tickets and check it out! The full line-up and daily schedule can be found online at www.siff.net.

The sun has come out in Seattle, it’s beginning to warm up and feel like summer… and of course I’m shuttering myself away in the cinema for (at least) six hours a day. I clearly have my priorities in order.

Translucent skin notwithstanding, I’m incredibly excited because the Seattle International Film Festival is about to kick into full gear. I’m so pleased to be working with them again in a photographic capacity, and because of that I’ve already seen some early screeners and am armed with suggestions as you plan out your viewing spreadsheet for the festival. (Oh, that’s only me? Okay then.)

Apart from those wonderful festival gems, I encourage you to join Thanos as he seeks out a completely different set of gems in the biggest blockbuster film ever (or something like that). It’s a fantastically good time!

I may not be aiming for 365 films in 2018, but I’m still indulging in as many movies as I can fit into my schedule! I’ve already seen some great films this year, and am finally settling down enough to formulate a posting plan regarding recommendations and general reviews. Considering the Seattle International Film Festival is just around the corner, this feels like good timing!

Getting back on the horse is a challenge, so in this review I’m focusing on just two films. They are very different from each other, but they are both fantastic, and they feature two fabulous female actors in standout performances.

So it’s a new year, 2018 - I hope everyone had a lovely New Year’s holiday, and that your first day back to the grind hasn’t been too painful. I’ve taken down the Christmas decorations, started at least five new resolutions that probably won’t make it to the end of the year, and began compiling a whole new film watchlist for this upcoming year.

But before I begin new cinematic adventures, I wanted to wrap up last year’s MovieADay Project in style! First, a twist for your viewing pleasure - I’ve actually watched 371 films this year, because I found one that I LEFT OFF my list! I have no idea how, but I never added ‘Blade Runner 2049’ to my IMDb list, which meant it never got on my posted list… and now I’m all sorts of confused.

But moving on from that… I’ve had people ask how I managed to watch so many movies, which movies were my favorite, and what kind of movies have I been watching, so I’m going to dive into my list of 371 films and give you my Top Tens, and a few more fun facts about this past year of film watching.

So we’re finally here, New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2017. And I’m proud to say… I did it! I finished my MovieADay project, with a day to spare… and a few extra films in the bank. This year, I watched 370 films for the first time, and it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed so many wonderful movies - I’m hoping to write up a summary post tomorrow about my thoughts on the whole year (I’ve had people already ask for my top ten films of the project - it’s going to be hard to choose!).

But for now, here is the last roundup post of the year! As always, you can check out my complete MovieADay list on IMDb, and the full list of films 351 through 370 are below my capsule reviews.

I’m rounding the bend, I’m coming down the stretch, I can see the finish line… I’m only a couple of weeks away from wrapping up my MovieADay Challenge for 2017. So this should be my last full 25 film check-in post… anything could happen between now and New Year’s, to be sure - like all the award films being released - but I’m also going to be spending Christmas with my family, so I currently plan to meet my 365 films for the year goal and not much else.

This 25… was very eclectic. I started with a very specific plan, as a 10 day holiday in Hawaii had to be buffered. I was going to watch a bunch of Oscar films, and top 100 films, and cross a chunk of films off my to-watch list. That happened… until it stopped. You’ll notice a dip into easy films, things I could watch on planes and while wrapping presents, as the holidays and travel got the best of me. But I haven’t shirked from my goal, and I’m on track as of writing for the year, so let’s get to the shout-outs and full list for films 326 through 350!

(For those keeping track, the full list of 25 films I’ve watched is listed below the reviews. And you can check out what I’m currently watching by visiting my MovieADay list on IMDb.)

I hit 325 films a week ago, but have been crazy busy with holidays and upcoming trip planning, so this is the first real chance I’ve had to write down any notes about the films I’ve been watching. This post is going to be a bit shorter than usual, as I’m just trying to get it up before I leave on a vacation for a while.

For this chunk of films, I saw so many great movies that I loved, it’s hard to not gush about them all. It also means I don’t have any lowlights in here, as I wanted to save the space for my raves rather than my rants. As always, you can see what I’m watching over on IMDb. And without further ado, let’s get to the reviews.

Procrastination has really been the name of the game for this post - I’ve had capsule reviews written for weeks, but have been enjoying sweater weather and ‘Stranger Things’ binge watching far too much to compile it all. I DID meet my goal of 300 films for the year on the 26th of October - 300! Holy cow!

This chunk is a bit eclectic - for starters, I had a Disney pub quiz to study up for, which involved watching a bunch of animated films I’d never seen. Disney really had some doozies, let me tell you. (I will, in brief, a little later.) For those wondering, yes, we won our quiz, so it was totally worth it. In addition to those features, there was the obligatory smattering of Halloween season films, and also my attempt to stay on top of recent releases as we kick awards season into gear.

Enough with the procrastination, let’s get to the reviews! As usual, the full list of 25 films is at the end of the post, and you can follow along with my watching adventures through my MovieADay list on IMDb.

275 films! Which I definitely hit by my target date (October 1st), but this post has been delayed due to unforeseen dragging of feet. I saw some brilliant classic films this time (“Rashomon” and “Bicycle Thieves”), a couple wildly different yet curiously the same political thrillers (“The Parallax View” and “The Manchurian Candidate”), plus many recent releases, because going to the cinema is just a great way to spend a couple hours.

The two films that stood out far above the crowd were “Battle of the Sexes“ and “mother!”, and part of the delay in getting this post up was finding the time to write reviews that came close to touching on my feelings for them. Once I started writing, the words came tumbling out and created longer reviews than normal. So without further ado, I’ll get to my highlighted films from this 25 movie chunk!

For those keeping track, the full list of 25 films I’ve watched is listed below the reviews. And you can check out what I’m currently watching by visiting my MovieADay list on IMDb.

Well, I’ve reached 250 films for the year. I’m still a little ahead of schedule, which is good, because currently I’ve got an 8 to 5 job that’s keeping me from watching films at my leisure. Not to worry, I’m still cracking on and watching one a day (as often as I can), but it’s definitely a different landscape than when I started this challenge!

On reviewing this chunk of twenty-five, I saw quite a few new releases - people have been saying that this is the worst summer for movies in years, but I found many of them quite enjoyable. I guess it’s all about money though…

Besides the recent films, I’ve found inspiration from several different sources - I just subscribed to FilmStruck, and it’s like walking into a candy store, there’s so many great choices! Also, I just finished reading ‘Making Movies’ by Sidney Lumet, and the way he talks about filmmaking - well, it’s pretty incredible, and now I’m actively seeking out his films that I haven’t yet seen. And if you’re ever looking for some watching recommendations, I would suggest subscribing to the NYTimes Watching Newsletter - they send out great gems that are available on every streaming service imaginable. I’ve gotten quite a few good recommendations from them as well.

As always, I would love to talk about all the films I’ve watched - it’s getting harder and harder to narrow down my highlights each time. But enough chat - let’s get to the film discussions! As always, the full twenty-five are listed at the end of the post, and if you want to follow along day by day with my MovieADay project, you can view my list on IMDb here.

Folks, it is HOT here in Seattle. I do not like it. This amount of heat makes me want to sit on the couch and not move a muscle. Luckily, that helps with my MovieADay goal, so I’m only kind of complaining. (Well, I’m seriously complaining because there’s no AC in our apartment, but at least the movie theaters have AC, so I have somewhere to escape to when it’s unbearable.) Anyway, I’ve reached 225 films! Woo-hoo!

This set of films really jumps all over the place - I have films that are hard/impossible to get here by any streaming or buying method, but thank goodness for Scarecrow Video in Seattle, because I can find almost anything I need there. They even will rent you non-regional players for their discs that won’t work on your home player, which is pretty damn cool. (If you have an amazing video rental in your area that has survived Netflix, support it! They are worth it!) I also have several films that just came out in theaters, because I actually think this summer has had several worthwhile movies to see in cinema, and did I mention the air conditioning? (Not on this list - I saw both ‘The Big Sick’ and ‘Wonder Woman’ for a second time, which were just as good as the first times I saw them.) Plus, as I will mention below, a sale on the Criterion Collection means more Blurays find their way home with me… and therefore must be watched.

Without further ado, let’s jump into some commentary! I wish I could talk about all 25 films without making this post a novel - I have thoughts on so many of them, but if I keep typing I’ll have to bind this together into a small novella rather than a fun, peppy blog post. Remember, you can keep track of my progress, find out more about these films, and suggest other films for me to watch on my MovieADay list here at IMDb.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July, which means fireworks, food, and hopefully friends and family celebrating together with kindness and a lack of pyromania. I have to admit, this year it feels a little hard to celebrate this country as it currently stands, for reasons that are should be obvious by now. But after much thought, I’m choosing to celebrate what this country can be, and I continue to hope that it will be, and I’m encouraged every day in the small moments where everyday people show that they still have courage, and kindness, and a believe in true freedom no matter the odds.

With that seriousness out of the way, what do you do between the barbecuing, the fireworks, and the inevitable sunburns? Watch a movie, of course! When I started this list, I was having trouble coming up with “4th of July themed” movies, so I looked online to see what other people were suggesting… and boy, there are some BAD “patriotic 4th of July” movie lists out there! No, I do not want to sit through ‘Lincoln’ on the 4th of July. Or the entire series of ‘John Adams’. For that matter, ‘Forrest Gump’ is way too long as well, but at least it’s a little more pleasurable? And someone suggested ‘Apocalypse Now’?? If you think that movie was patriotic… I’m pretty sure you missed the point. And also - TOO LONG. This is a day of celebration, people!

So keeping to a more fun and festive 4th of July theme, here are my 10 films to watch on America’s birthday.

It feels like it’s been a while since I hit a 25 film mark, but really, it’s just that SIFF wrapped up mid-June and I haven’t been crazily seeing three films a day anymore. (I’m still about 15 days ahead of my MovieADay resolution for the year though.) Seeing as I’ve slowed down a bit, I’ve gotten to wander through a few older films that have popped up on my radar, along with crossing off my “homework” movie for this quarter. Also - 200 new movies watched so far this year! That’s a big ‘un, folks.

As it’s heading into summer blockbuster season, I’ve got a few films that I’m very much looking forward to - one of them was ‘Baby Driver’, which exceeded my expectations, so more on that below. But summer also means crazy heat for about a month and a half (which is the new normal in Seattle… global warming is real), so I’ll be heading into the cinemas to escape the heat, and quite possibly watch some trash film along with the great.

In relation to this post, I’ve mixed things up a little bit - instead of only talking about films that were super standouts, I’ve thrown in a few that require some explanation or acknowledgement. I can’t really give a full review for every film in my lists of 25, because that would make these incredibly long and people would probably stop reading, but sometimes I just really want to discuss the bad films along with the good! I’ve also included my ratings of the films on the IMDb star scale, just for fun.

The full 25 I’ve watched is listed below my highlights, and to follow along with my updated-daily watched list, be sure to head over to IMDb here. You can also leave me film recommendations there, if you have something you think I need to see!

So SIFF 2017 is still going on, because it’s amazing, and also because it lasts for 25 days, so we’ve still got a solid week left. But because it’s still going on, I’ve hit my next 25 films in a little over a week, so that merits another post!

After the festival, I’ll make a top ten list for the films I’ve seen (which is going to be hard, because I’ve seen a ton of films I loved, and I’ve already seen 42 films, and I’m going to add at least another ten this coming week… but I will made some hard choices!), but for now these highlighted films have a theme: All but one of them were directed by women! Since film 175 for me was ‘Wonder Woman’, which is breaking box office records for films directed by women and superhero films headlined by women, etc., it felt natural to focus on the smaller films that I have been able to see during this festival that were also spearheaded by talented women. So enjoy!

As always, the full list of 25 films is at the end of this post, and you can find out more about those films by checking out my full MovieADay list on IMDb here. (Which I’d highly encourage this time, because there are so many films from the festival on this list of 25, so you should learn more about them!)

Recently, during a discussion with friends of what we had done over the weekend, I mentioned that I had once again watched one of my favorite films, ‘Stardust’. This news was met with question marks, as no one else had seen the film, and I realized that actually happens a lot when I bring up ‘Stardust’. In my head I began compiling a list of other films I really love that most people haven’t seen when I bring them up, and that’s how this list came about.

I ended up going through my top rated films on IMDb, and pulling out the ones that a) I absolutely love and would recommend to most people, and b) had a low total number of votes that surprise me. So basically this list is full of fantastic movies that you’ve probably not seen, but you should definitely take the time to check out!

So as suspected, I reached this next goal far earlier than the standard “watching one new film a day” would have gotten me (my goal date was May 30th, and I hit 150 on May 21st), and that’s largely due to the fact that the Seattle International Film Festival has begun! Since the evening of the 18th, I’ve been spending most of my days in movie theaters, and it’s been glorious.

This grouping of twenty-five films begins before the festival, and then halfway through I begin watching films from the festival. The special thing about SIFF is that it features over 400 films from around the world, and so many of them are films you really won’t get another chance to see (over half of them don’t have distribution deals right now, so they seriously may not be available again). It runs for a little over three weeks (until June 11th), so there’s still plenty of days left if you’re in Seattle and looking for some great cinema. At the end of the festival, I’ll work up a list of movies you really must see if they become available near you, but for now, let’s get to the highlights of movies 126 through 150!

Remember, you can check out my up-to-the-day list of films I’m watching here on IMDb.

This post is a little bit late, but I’ve hit 125 new films for the year, which feels like a massive milestone for me. Over 1/3 of the way through my MovieADay goal, and I’ve seen so many fantastic films! In this set of twenty-five I’ve seen quite a few recent films (of them all, I highly recommend ‘Their Finest’ if you can still catch it at a theater near you!) as well as many highly rated films that have been on my to-watch list for ages. (Such as ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’, in which Dustin Hoffman pretty damn near broke my heart with his amazing performance.)

There were so many films that I really enjoyed this time around, so it was especially hard to pick my top highlights. I can say that I’ve fallen in love with bright, luscious pictures that invoke visions of Technicolor, a la Douglas Sirk (and in his own bright way, Jacques Demy) - so much so that I’m going to recommend ‘The Love Witch’ to anyone else like me who loves looking at beautifully saturated, lushly colorful films, no matter the content. (Not to go into too much detail, but while the film itself was gorgeous, the story dragged a bit. And by a bit, I mean a lot. But it was so pretty…)

Anyway, on to my highlights! As always, the full 25 are listed at the end of the post, and you can follow along with my up-to-the-day movie watching over on IMDb!

According to the internets, today is International Dance Day. Who has decided this, I’m not really sure, but I’m choosing to take the dance part at face value and use it to inspire this list of my favorite moments of dance on film. Now, this was incredibly hard to choose, and I had to work hard to trim it down to only twenty… so I probably left out something incredible, and for that I’m sorry.

“You do an eclectic celebration of the dance! You do Fosse, Fosse, Fosse! You do Martha Graham, Martha Graham, Martha Graham! Or Twyla, Twyla, Twyla! Or Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd! Or Madonna, Madonna, Madonna!… but you keep it all inside.” -Armand, ‘Birdcage’

In honor of “Administrative Professionals Day” today (which was originally Secretaries Day, but I guess that’s not a word we use anymore), I started thinking about some of my favorite administrative professionals on film or TV. (A few of these aren’t traditional assistant/receptionist jobs, per se, but in my mind they fit the spirit of the position - often undervalued, but clearly the lynchpins holding workplaces together.) So here’s to my favorite administrative professionals on big and small screens, and to all the rest working out there in real life.

I’ve hit 100 new movies for the year! Which means there have been 100 days already this year, which in and of itself is kind of a terrifying thought, but there you go. I’m thoroughly enjoying this challenge of a movie a day (which sometimes, due to scheduling and such I don’t quite hit, but I do faithfully make up those days with a couple two- to three-movie days, so I’m still 100 percent on track for my goal right now!), so let’s get down to films 75 through 100.

In this twenty-five, half my time was spent in my hometown of Eugene visiting my family, so the movies I watched there largely came out of their collection. Now, these movies weren’t all necessarily high on my to-watch list, but to be fair, they were enjoyable. (Some in very odd ways, like ‘Crocodile Dundee’, but I was at the very least amused.) Sprinkle in a newfound taste for documentaries, an exploration of HBO Now’s movie offerings, and a couple films in theaters that I was looking forward to (‘Beauty and the Beast’ lived up to my expectations, ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ fell a bit short), and all in all it was a wide-ranging, fun group of films.

Remember, you can check out my up-to-the-day list of films I’m watching here on IMDb. (Plus if you want to recommend any films to me, you can comment on that list too!) Now, here are some of the film highlights from this round of twenty-five, and the full list of what I’ve been watching.

I’ve had to play catch-up several times during this last group of twenty-five films, as I’ve been vacationing and spending time down in Eugene with my family, making the ‘one movie a day’ goal a little difficult to finagle. But I did make my 75th film goal on time! …I’ve just procrastinated getting this post up, so that’s where I’m actually behind schedule. But never mind that, here we go to the highlights of films 50 through 75!

In this twenty-five, I’ve bounced around a lot, between recent releases at the theater, old classic films, not so old classic films, old but not really classic films, and several films that my parents were shocked to hear that I hadn’t seen, so we promptly sat down and watched those from their collection.

(For other posts about my MovieADay Project, head over here. And as always, you can follow along with my up-to-the-minute watched list on IMDb here!)

Alrighty, onto the next twenty-five! I’m ahead of schedule, which is good, because I have several mini-vacations coming up where I might not hit my one-movie-a-day goal right on target, so a bit of a buffer is nice. Plus I’ve had extra time lately, especially when it’s excessively rainy outside and I’d rather hide on my couch with some tea and good movies.

In this twenty-five, I watch way too much Bond, cross off a few more Oscar nominees, and stretch the definition of ‘first time seeing a film’ but it’s my list so I can do what I want! Once again, I break down a few of the things that stood out to me in this set of 25 films, and then the full list of 25 is at the end of the post.

And if you missed my first post, you can check it out here. As always, you can follow the full list on IMDb here!

For New Year’s this year I decided to set myself a goal of watching a new movie a day (new to me, not necessarily new this year), so that by the end of the year I will have watched at least 365 new films. Since it’s more fun to do these things when I’m at least putting the list out there, I’m keeping track of my progress on IMDb here, and I’m going to recap my list here every 25 films, including a brief review of my personal highlights.

So, here goes!

My first 25 films of the year were all pretty enjoyable (except ‘Silence’… sorry Scorsese). This time of year is when I try to watch all the award nominees, so there’s quite a few of them on this list, as you’ll notice. But here are just a few films that really stood out for me. (The full list of 25 is at the end.)

Ever since I was little, and studiously sat replaying the ‘Godspell’ soundtrack to memorize the lyrics to ‘All for the Best’, I’ve had a soft spot for musicals. See, the musical universe is one similar to ours, but better - through pain, happiness, loss, and discovery, emotions are laid bare in beautiful, funny, and touching songs - songs that you can take away from the musical and treasure in your own life for those secret moments when you, too, wish you could break into song. And don’t forget the dancing! When strangers can break into perfectly synchronized dance steps on every day sidewalks, life is just a little bit more fun. (Why do you think flash mobs were such a craze?)

I joined my high school theater program because of my love for musicals, and even though high school is hell, the magic of musicals never let me down. From going over the same ten bars of choreography for an hour, to vocal warmups that included rocking out to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, to late nights building sets and hanging lights, there was always something special in the air. No matter what was happening in life, when you were up there, under the lights, singing your heart out and getting those dance steps down just right, you felt invincible. You felt incandescent. You felt indescribable.

A few weeks ago, I got to experience that feeling again, at a screening of the brilliant new musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, ‘La La Land.’ During the first moments of “Traffic”, the brilliantly colorful and expertly choreographed opening musical number, I began crying. Not tears of sadness, or even tears of happiness - this was pure joy. For the following two hours and eight minutes, I was transported into that parallel musical universe once again, and when it finished, I didn’t want to return to the real world.