This film is part of Rentals

La La Land
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone channel old-school Hollywood glamour in this bright and playful romantic musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash).
Director: Damien Chazelle
Overview
Damien Chazelle’s bitter-sweet love letter to the city of Los Angeles, the golden era of Hollywood musicals and the visual flair of French maestro Jacques Demy, is beyond glorious. It’s a perfect confection with medicinal properties! Mia (Stone) is an aspiring actress, barely holding down a day job on a studio lot while juggling auditions for second-rate parts. Sebastian (Gosling) is a pianist who struggles to keep his job at a family restaurant where he plays freewheeling jazz instead of stale, cheesy favourites. Their fleeting first encounter during a traffic jam on an LA fly-over ripples with tension and holds little promise. (The opening sequence alone is a rapturous homage to West Side Story via 8½.) But after a series of blunders and mishaps, romance blooms.
Stone and Gosling may well be the sprightliest pairing since Rogers and Astaire, and where Chazelle’s first feature Whiplash (LFF2014) left us breathless and immobile, La La Land sends the heart racing and will have you dancing out of the cinema. That said, it’s not all sugar and spice and happy-ever-after. There is a disconsolate undercurrent at the film’s emotional core – a clear recognition that ‘the chase’ sometimes takes you away from ‘the dream’. Reuniting composer Justin Hurwitz and editor Tom Cross, Chazelle’s virtuosic direction is amplified by superb choreography and design. And the dignified reaction of the film's cast and crew to the now infamous Best Picture mix-up at the Oscars 2017 only adds to the film's all-round warm and inclusive glow.
Related

It's Raining Men It's Raining Men
Comedy 2023 123 mins Director: Caroline Vignal
Iris (Laure Calamy) disrupts her bourgeois routine by joining a dating app and embarking on an amusing, sensual quest for identity and lost desire.

The Penguin Lessons The Penguin Lessons
Drama 2025 112 mins Director: Peter Cattaneo
Steve Coogan is superb as a disillusioned teacher whose life is turned upside-down when he rescues a penguin in turbulent 1970s Argentina.

Misericordia Misericordia
Drama 2024 104 mins Director: Alain Guiraudie
French provocateur Alain Guiraudie's rural homecoming story mixing passion, crime, mushrooms and bedroom farce to dizzily involving effect.

The Summer with Carmen The Summer with Carmen
Comedy 2023 106 mins Director: Zacharias Mavroeidis
A seductive and smart gay comedy set on a cruisy Greek island.

Driving Mum Driving Mum
Comedy 2022 113 mins Director: Hilmar Oddsson
Jon drives his mums corpse across Iceland in Hilmar Oddsson’s darkly comic odyssey of self-discovery and acceptance, beautifully filmed in crisp black and white.

The Crime is Mine The Crime is Mine
Thriller 2022 103 mins Director: François Ozon
François Ozon’s witty 1930s farce about a penniless actress who finds fame while on trial for murder, featuring a riotous performance from Isabelle Huppert.

Sing Street Sing Street
Drama 2016 106 mins Director: John Carney
The third in John Carney’s trilogy of musical films is the utterly charming story a boy who escapes his troubles through fronting a pop band.

London Road London Road
Musical 2015 92 mins Director: Rufus Norris
Daring, startling and wholly original: a musical based on the infamous Ipswich murders of 2006, adapted by National Theatre director Rufus Norris.

Babymother Babymother
Musical 1998 77 mins Director: Julian Henriques
Neeta and her crew rise to dancehall fame in North West London's Caribbean community, in the first Black British musical.

Chi-Raq Chi-Raq
Musical 2015 127 mins Director: Spike Lee
Spike Lee’s bold and vivacious hip-hop musical restages an ancient Greek battle-of-the-sexes in 21st-century Chicago.

Song of Freedom Song of Freedom
Drama 1936 77 mins Director: J. Elder Wills
A black London docker becomes a famous opera singer in this stirring musical drama starring Paul Robeson

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Musical 2001 92 mins Director: John Cameron Mitchell
The trailblazing cult musical about a transgender punk from East Germany who reinvents herself as a rock diva.

Bogancloch Bogancloch
Documentary 2025 86 mins Director: Ben Rivers
The life and environment of a solitary man is gently observed in Ben Rivers' intimate, experimental documentary.

When Autumn Falls When Autumn Falls
Drama 2024 104 mins Director: François Ozon
The ever-inventive François Ozon offers a bittersweet tale with a twist or two, about age, youth, the past and the art of breaking the rules.

Gholam Gholam
Drama 2017 95 mins Director: Mitra Tabrizian
An Iranian exile in London, who is haunted by his past, gets involved in the conflicts of a total stranger and has to see it through until the end, in this mesmerising slow-burn thriller.

When the Light Breaks When the Light Breaks
Drama 2024 77 mins Director: Rúnar Rúnarsson
A young woman is forced to reframe the future she’d hoped for, in Rúnar Rúnarsson’s quietly breathtaking elegy of love, loss and acceptance.

Words of War Words of War
Drama 2025 117 mins Director: James Strong
Maxine Peake leads an excellent cast in this true story of journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s fight to expose corruption and abuse in Putin’s Russia.

The Return The Return
Drama 2024 116 mins Director: Uberto Pasolini
Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche are superb in this moody and poignant adaptation of the final sections of Homer's Odyssey.