LA LA LAND (12A, 128 mins) Musical/Romance/Drama. Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, JK Simmons. Director: Damien Chazelle.

Released: January 13 (UK & Ireland)

The frenzied expectation surrounding writer-director Damien Chazelle's musical love story was deafening before La La Land won a record seven Golden Globe awards earlier this week.

His impeccably crafted follow-up to Whiplash is now firmly installed as the frontrunner for glory at next month's Oscars, and already has one trembling hand on the coveted golden statuettes for Best Picture and Best Director.

The feverish hype is fully justified.

La La Land is a visually sumptuous, unabashedly swooning valentine to the golden age of Hollywood musicals, artfully constructed on a foundation of distinctly modern sensibilities.

Yes, characters burst into catchy songs composed by Justin Hurwitz, with snappy lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, to express their churning emotions, while their bodies tap, pirouette, twist and jive to Mandy Moore's expressive choreography.

But there is so much more to Chazelle's story of boy meets girl than doe-eyed glances and pat sentiment, including a heart-wrenching second act that affirms the need for everyone to chase their dreams, but also acknowledges the acrid pill we must swallow when reality bites, down to the bone.

Aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) works as a barista in between auditions, which repeatedly end in crushing rejection.

On a traffic-jammed Los Angeles freeway, she crosses paths with talented pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), who reveres jazz in its purest form, but is forced to play saccharine standards by restaurant owner Bill (JK Simmons).

"I hate jazz," Mia tells Sebastian after they meet at a party in the Hollywood hills, where they share dreams for the future beneath the twinkling stars of the Californian night sky.

Sebastian is convinced he can spearhead a new appreciation for music until an old classmate, Keith (John Legend), questions his devotion to masters of a bygone era.

"You're holding onto the past," laments Keith, "but jazz is about the future."

While Mia prepares to stage her semi-autobiographical one-woman show So Long, Boulder City, Sebastian agrees to play keyboard in Keith's soulless, chart-friendly band The Messengers.

Frustrations between the couple come to a head in a fractious to and fro about artistic integrity.

"Since when do you care so much about being liked?" snarls Mia.

"You're an actress!" Sebastian angrily reminds her, introducing pot to black kettle.

La La Land is a perfect marriage of directorial brio, tour-de-force performance and jaw-dropping production design.

Gosling and Stone are individually luminous and electrifying as a double-act in high energy song and dance sequences.

Both are gifted emotionally wrought solos - City Of Stars and Audition (The Fools Who Dreams) respectively - that galvanize Sebastian and Mia's perilously fragile romance.

Chazelle's film is a bitter and sweet confection in equal doses, laced with dry wit and an appreciation for the tug of war between love and career advancement that necessitates painful self-sacrifices for either side to triumph.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: NO VIOLENCE :: RATING: 10/10

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (15, 137 mins) Drama/Romance. Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Mol, CJ Wilson, Josh Hamilton. Director: Kenneth Lonergan.

Released: January 13 (UK & Ireland)

Anguished silences between members of a fractured Massachusetts family speak volumes about the loss of a son in writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's elegiac drama.

Set in and around the titular coastal community, Manchester By The Sea eloquently explores universal themes of grief, guilt and sexual awakening through the eyes of a 40-year-old handyman whose outlook on life is as threadbare and tattered as the winter jacket he wears atop his overalls.

Lonergan sketches his internally conflicted central character with patience and precision, gifting a peach of a role to Casey Affleck, who seems destined to triumph at this year's Oscars for his nuanced, emotionally raw portrayal of a man who has been battered and bruised by the past.

Every close-up of Affleck's eyes, glistening with regret, tug at the heartstrings until the sense of loss and abandonment becomes almost intolerable.

Men of few words are the best men and in Lonergan's lean script, his characters frequently say everything with a mournful stare or hesitant attempt at consolation.

Lee Chandler (Affleck) works as a janitor in a small apartment building in Chicago, where his chores include shovelling snow, changing lightbulbs and unblocking toilets of emotionally needy women.

It's an unedifying existence and Lee unfairly channels his resentment at the tenants.

Out of the blue, Lee receives a telephone call from family friend George (CJ Wilson).

His older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has suffered a heart attack.

By the time Lee arrives at the hospital, Joe has passed and the younger sibling must break the tragic news to his truculent 16-year-old nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

A meeting with family lawyer Wes (Josh Hamilton) reveals that Joe named Lee as Patrick's legal guardian.

"It was supposed to be my Uncle Donny. I was just the back-up," mumbles Lee, who is reluctant to be a parent again after the breakdown of his marriage to Randi (Michelle Williams).

Lee and his teenager ward muddle through grief and misunderstanding as they make preparations for Joe's funeral including a chance for Patrick to say farewell to his father at the mortuary.

"What does he look like?" asks the 16-year-old.

"He looks like he's dead," responds Lee.

Manchester By The Sea is anchored by Affleck's understated yet devastating portrayal, and the touching on-screen chemistry with co-star Hedges.

Awkwardness between the generations is perfectly conveyed in Lonergan's dialogue, like when Patrick has a tense reconciliation with his mother Elise (Gretchen Mol) and her devoutly religious new partner (Matthew Broderick).

"What was the guy like?" asks Lee during the drive home.

"He was very Christian," deadpans the teenager.

Co-star Williams is a potent maternal force in her few scenes, desperate to salve the deep wounds of an accidental and tragic past.

At 137 minutes, Lonergan's film does feel slightly overlong. Self-realisation, if it ever comes, takes time.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 9/10

LIVE BY NIGHT (15, 129 mins) Drama/Thriller/Action/Romance. Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Robert Glenister, Remo Girone. Director: Ben Affleck.

Released: January 13 (UK & Ireland)

Ben Affleck's journey as a filmmaker has been intrinsically linked to Boston, where he grew up and caught the acting bug.

His first screenplay, the Oscar-winning drama Good Will Hunting, co-written by best friend Matt Damon, was set in the densely populated south of the city.

When he eventually strayed behind the camera, Affleck's first two features were the gripping Gone Baby Gone based on the novel by Bostonian Dennis Lehane and the edge-of-seat thriller The Town about a group of bank robbers from the city's Charlestown neighbourhood.

So it comes as no surprise that his first directorial outing since he won the Oscar for Argo, a crowd-pleasing valentine to Hollywood, should be a stylish Prohibition-era crime saga set partly in Boston and adapted from another pulpy novel by Lehane.

Live By Night harks back to an impeccably tailored era of gangsters, molls and bullet-riddled massacres, when everyone has a dirty secret to hide.

"Vice, it seemed, was Depression-proof," observes Affleck's lead character early in the film, setting the scene for two hours of alcohol-sodden and sex-fuelled excess.

Boston police captain Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson) raises his son Joe (Affleck) to follow the path of righteousness.

Alas, Joe suffers deep emotional scars during the First World War, where he witnesses senseless slaughter at the behest of high-ranking officers.

"Good men died all around me and I saw no reason for it," comments Joe in voiceover.

He returns to Boston with an aversion to authority and robs banks with his buddy Dion (Chris Messina).

"What you put out into the world will always come back to you... but never as you expect," Thomas warns his son, to no avail.

Joe initiates a passionate affair with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), mistress of sadistic Irish mob boss Albert White (Robert Glenister), and plunders without thought of the consequences.

When one of the heists goes spectacularly awry, Joe heads to Florida to do the bidding of Italian crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone).

In new surroundings, Joe bootlegs Cuban rum and falls under the spell of nightclub siren Graciella Corrales (Zoe Saldana).

He is also drawn to aspiring starlet Loretta (Elle Fanning), daughter of God-fearing sheriff Irving Figgis (Chris Cooper).

Past and present collide on the sunbaked east coast and Joe must confront the sins of his inglorious past.

Live By Night is a blast of stagnant air from the past, which treats female characters as baubles to be draped over the arms of swaggering men.

The body count in breathlessly staged shootouts is extremely high.

Affleck's script doesn't glamorize violence, but it certainly lionizes his amoral lead character, who glides serenely from misfortune to full-blown disaster while those around him are riddled with bullets.

As an architect of relentless doom, he's an exceedingly dull and unsympathetic fellow.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 5/10