These are two good films I saw from Netflix over the weekend. The first one: Collateral Beauty starring Will Smith, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren and others is basically about a shattered CEO of an advertising company (Will Smith). He lost his 6 year old daughter to a rare form of cancer, and he can't get his act together and his co-workers feel that he should not be running the company anymore. They devise this daring plan to get him to become more emotionially stable and give up the ownership of his company. It is a good emotional film. The acting is good and the production is good. It did not win any major awards, and it grossed just about three times the money it took to produce the film.
The second film La La Land, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone is much better. Gosling stars as a struggling jazz piano player who dreams of opening his own club, but he is rejected by modern jazz players because they say he is too into the old kind of jazz that was palyed decades ago. Emma Stone is a beautiful young woman who dreams of being an actress, but also struggles and is rejected by all the studios on all her auditions. The two people meet one day and fall in love. The wonderful thing about this movie which by the way is a musical, dance, romantic comedy/drama, are the fantastic colors that are seen all the time , even in the night scenes. Pastel colored clothes, cars, everything is colored and bright. This film has fantastic dance numbers and Ryan Gosling had to learn how to play the piano and learn how to dance for the film. This film won many awards. Six Academy awards were won(Stone) won for best actress. The film also won 7 golden globe awards, setting a record for the most awards won by any movie ever. The film grossed more than 5 times the money needed to produce the film.