Curry Barker makes a significant mark on the horror thriller scene as writer, director and editor of the surprise hit Obsession (B). His YouTube sketch partner Cooper Tomlinson is a hoot as best bud of the nervy central protagonist, well played by Michael Johnston, but this is really Inde Navarrette’s movie when a supernatural wish prompts her character to become ferociously fixated on the anxiety-ridden hero. Barker has skillful control of pace and tone as he introduces a tight ensemble of characters working together at a music store and casually raises the stakes. It gets quite intense and doesn’t necessarily have a vision for how to end as Navarrette brilliantly chews the scenery through and through. Viewers will undoubtedly relate to the film’s themes if they’ve ever been in a possessive relationship. Darkly, almost devilishly lit, filled with propulsive paranoia and altogether agreeably atmospheric, the movie has a lived-in feeling and moves briskly. Like last year’s Together, it’s a good horror date movie memorable for its strange central duo.
Damien Chazelle’s kaleidoscopic modern musical La La Land (B+) explores the eternal question of whether you should put your art or your love life first. Or maybe you can have both! OK, it’s not exactly a universal question – and possibly a first-world problem at that – but in the hands of starry-eyed and fleet-footed leads Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, they surely confront these themes with a spectacular charm offensive. After an impressive musical number atop and around cars stopped on the Los Angeles freeway (west coast Fame meets West Side Story), the film riffs into Meet Cutes and Meet-Not-So-Cutes, ups and downs and very few surprises aside from it all being a musical. Much is done in an Umbrellas of Cherbourg type leitmotif, but it doesn’t necessarily rain with consistent results. The songs are enjoyable, and Stone is luminescent in a big audition number. The Technicolor dance sequences are quite whimsical and wonderful. Gosling gets his best role yet, with the film exploiting many of his dapper deadpan assets. Stone is a radiant delight, with note-perfect expressions and game takes on a sometimes 
