La La Land. Some kind of magic happens in Damien Chazelle's starry-eyed musical, with one foot (in tap shoes) firmly planted in the past, and the other (in taps, too, of course) planted in a me-first, modern-day world. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are the struggling Los Angelenos who fall in love despite a mutual wariness, walking and talking, singing and dancing, amid a swirl of classic Hollywood references.