5 alternative movie musicals to La La Land

La La Land broke records at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards. This musical movie won in each category for which it was nominated, including best musical/comedy film. Damien Chazelle won the awards for directing and screenplay; Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone took home the awards for best actor and actress, respectively; and composer Justin Hurwitz won for best score as well as best original song with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul for "City of Stars." View More

Damien Chazelle's plucky modern musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling is a box-office smash ($109 million to date) and awards darling, earning a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations, including best picture. But backlash against the crowd-pleaser has steadily escalated online, with some critics calling the film's winking callbacks to classic movies such as Singin' in the Rain and On the Town both distracting and unoriginal, and its leading duo's song-and-dance routines forgettable.

Here are five entirely original picks that are now in theaters or available to watch at home:

The Lure (2017)

In this lurid reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, teenage mermaids (Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska) fall for a guitarist (Jakub Gierszał) and become man-eating strippers in '80s-era Poland. "Possibly the weirdest thing you'll see this year," Dazed magazine wrote of the Polish-language horror musical (with English subtitles), which washed ashore at Sundance Film Festival last year.

Where to watch: Now playing in New York; expands to 11 additional cities throughout February and March, including Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Dallas and San Francisco.

Begin again（2014）

You may be more familiar with John Carney's other movie musicals: 2007's Once, whose Falling Slowly took best original song at the Academy Awards; and last year's Sing Street, a retro coming-of-age romp that became a critical sensation. But the Irish filmmaker's underrated Begin Again is equally charming, with winning performances from Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo as an unlikely musical duo who hit the streets of New York to record an album.

Romance & Cigarettes (2005)

John Turturro's romantic musical comedy bombed, netting just $557,500 in the USA and 54% positive reviews on aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com from critics, who dismissed it as "a classic awful" and "little fun to watch." Still, it's worth revisiting if only for its star-studded cast led by the late James Gandolfini, who plays a chain-smoking steel worker torn between his wife (Susan Sarandon) and mistress (Kate Winslet).

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Baz Luhrmann's splashy, tragic romance starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor is partially responsible for reviving the movie musical, earning eight Oscar nominations (including best picture) and $179 million worldwide, despite barely breaking even stateside ($57.4 million on a $50 million budget). The film even spawned a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart: a racy rendition of Patti LaBelle's Lady Marmalade by Christina Aguilera, Mya, Pink and Lil' Kim.

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

A Czech immigrant (Björk) working at a factory in 1960s Washington to save money for her son's (Vladica Kostic) eye surgery may seem like unusual terrain for a drama where characters break into song. But with a soundtrack written almost entirely by the Icelandic singer and a sweeping narrative written and directed by Lars von Trier (Melancholia), the polarizing Danish musical picked up the Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival's highest honor, a best actress Golden Globe nod for Björk and a best original song Oscar nomination for I've Seen It All.

Recommendation: How to Play iTunes purchased or rented movies freely

All above movies you  can purchase or rent from iTunes Store. M4V Converter Plus is a powerful iTunes DRM removal software that is available for Mac and Windows users.

It allows you to legally remove FairPlay DRM from iTunes rented movies by converting them to common video formats with very high quality.

Besides, it enables you to play any iTunes videos on various devices, including iPhone, iPad, Samsung Galaxy Series, Google Pixel, etc without having wifi.

M4V Converter Plus for Windows

M4V Converter Plus for Mac

How to play 2015 iTunes Hit films on Android Smartphone

Apple’s iTunes is having a sale on recent hot movies from 2015, selling them for $9.99 in HD quality. The films are normally priced at $14.99 and $19.99, so the sale reflects a 25% – 50% discount. Some titles also include iTunes Extras, with bonus material not offered through other digital video platforms.

For example, Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation comes with over an hour of bonus content including behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and featurettes. Bonus material included with digital purchases is typically the same content available on Blu-ray Disc.

Why buy digital movies in HD? If you plan on watching digital movies on a 4k or HDTV (not just tablets or phones), Digital HD movies (especially in 1080p) will deliver far more resolution than a movie in 480p SD. Apple’s iTunes movies are viewable in both 720p HD and 1080p HD, the latter of which can only be downloaded (not streamed).

On iTunes, once the HD version of a title is purchased both 720p or 1080p are available, but users may have to change their iTunes preferences to choose which quality to watch in iTunes > Preferences > Playback > “Preferred Video Version.”

The following movies are selling $9.99 in HD on iTunes Store now.

• Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation
• Mad Max Fury Road
• Trainwreck
• Pitch Perfect 2
• Furious 7 (Extended Edition)
• Southpaw
• Amy
• Spy
• The Divergent Series: Insurgent
• Fifty Shades of Grey
• San Andreas
• Terminator Genisys
• Kingsman: The Secret Service
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Pixels
• Entourage
• Magic Mike XXL
• The Gift(2015)

How to play iTunes Hit movies on Android smartphone

Now you can purchase or rent the following hit movies from iTunes Store. Rent a movie is much cheaper than purchase one. But you can not keep the rented movie for long time. And you can't play the purchased movies on android phones, either. 

M4V Converter Plus is a smart iTunes DRM removal software. With it, you can remove DRM from iTunes purchased and rented movies, and convert iTunes M4V videos to MP4, convert M4V to MOV and other popular video formats at 30X faster speed. Therefore, you can play any iTunes movies on android phones, such as Galaxy S6/S6 Edge/ S6 Edge+, Moto X, Nexus 6P, LG V10, LG G4, HTC one M9, Sony Xperia Z5, etc.

Step 1: Import iTunes movies from your iTunes library.

Free download, install and launch M4V Converter Plus, click the Add Movies button, the added windows will pop up and you can select the movies you want to convert. 

Step 2: Set output format according to the smartphone you have.

After the movies added, you can customize the output format according to the android phone you own. Here you can choose Same as source for mp4 . As MP4 is the most common format for all devices. 

(Optional) Here you can also clip the big movies into several small segments by setting Start and End time. 

Step 3: Convert iTunes movies and play them on android devices. 

After all settings done, you can convert Convert button to start the conversion. 

Later,  choose the converted movies and now you can transfer these movies to android phones easily. 

How to Play iTunes movies on a non-Apple device via USB Flash Drive

I would like to purchase a digital media device to play via USB, my movies that I have purchased from iTunes store. They have a ViewSonic dmp for <$90 that outputs HDMI, and input files are MP 1-4, H.264 and a few other codecs. This player reads from a NTFS or Fat16 formatted HD, which I don't see a problem there. My question is: Can I play iTunes movies using a non-Apple media device? Asked by Donald Palmer at Apple Support Communities.

If you search on Google, you will find many similar questions: How can I play iTunes movies on my android phone? How to watch iTunes TV shows on my Smart TV? How can I get my iTunes rented movie onto another computer? Obviously, iTunes brings a lot of joy, at the same time it also bring inconvenience to users.

Things you should know about iTunes video purchases & rentals

Videos purchased from the iTunes Store have FairPlay digital rights management embedded in the files and are in a format that can be readily synced to a video-capable mobile device, such as Apple TV, or on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. A single device can contain purchased content from up to five accounts; iTunes will not allow you to add data from a sixth account.

If you rented the movie on your iOS device or Apple TV, you can’t move it to any other device. If you don’t start watching a movie within 30 days, you must rent it again. Movies you rent disappear from your iTunes library when the rental period ends. 

The Simplest Way to Convert iTunes TV shows, movies and music videos 

M4V Converter Plus is widely recognized as one of the best iTunes videos purchases & rentals  converting tool on the market. To solve all the problems above, you can’t miss it.

It is special designed to help users to remove FairPlay digital rights management from iTunes videos and convert M4V to almost popular plain video formats, including MOV, MP4, AVI, FLV, 3GP, etc. If necessary, you can also extract audio files from iTunes videos to save as WAV, AIFF, MP3, M4A and so on.

Tutorial: How to Play iTunes movies on a non-Apple device via USB Flash Drive

Tip: M4V Converter Plus has Mac and Windows versions, you can download either as your requirement. Here we use Windows 7 as an example.

Want to convert iTunes movies, TV shows and music videos on Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista?

Want to play iTunes movies, TV shows and music videos on Mac OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 or 10.11?

Step 1. Launch M4V Converter Plus and iTunes will be opened automatically with it. Click “Add Movies” button to import the iTunes files you want to add.

Adding iTunes M4V files to the M4V Converter Plus.

Step 2. Here you can click “Convert to” profile drop-down list to select the appropriate output format for your non-apple devices.

Step 3. Hit “Convert” button and the smart M4V Converter will do the rest for you!

Transfer the converted files via USB Flash Drive

1. From your computer, find the converted videos you want to copy. The default save folder you can find by clicking Option button.
2. Connect your device to your computer with the micro-USB cable that came with your device.For Mac customers, you will need to install the free Android Fire Transfer app to complete USB transfers.

Windows: Your device will appear in the Computer or My Computer folder.

Mac: Your device will appear on the desktop.

3. Open your device folder, and then you can drag the converted files you want to transfer into the applicable folder:
4. Disconnect your device from your computer. Now you can find the converted content on your devices.

Now you can play your iTunes movies, TV shows and music videos on your non-device at will.