From Silents to the Seventies: Footlight Parade
The closest thing to an acid trip in 1930s Hollywood was a Busby Berkeley musical number, and Footlight Parade is one of the filmmaker’s most potent hallucinogens.
The closest thing to an acid trip in 1930s Hollywood was a Busby Berkeley musical number, and Footlight Parade is one of the filmmaker’s most potent hallucinogens.
Shirley MacLaine’s irrepressible vivacity and Bob Fosse’s iconic choreography sweeten Sweet Charity, but the lumbering story of a not-so-happy hooker’s quest for love leaves a slightly sour aftertaste.
Forget your troubles, c’mon get happy! Summer Stock is at last available on Blu-ray, and Warner Archive’s excellent rendering makes this modest but enormously entertaining musical a must-have for any fan of the genre.
The FX network’s new bio drama Fosse/Verdon examines legendary choreographer and filmmaker Bob Fosse, dissecting his life, his loves, his career and all that jazz.
Director Stanley Donen may be gone, but because of films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, he will never be forgotten. The classic frontier musical with Jane Powell and Howard Keel is one of Donen’s most beloved films, a...
Define irony. How about a movie about the value of putting on a great show that is a mediocre show at best? Well, that’s ‘The Greatest Showman’ for you. The film is a massively expensive musical ode to old-fashio...
Points for this much: This week’s big musical extravaganza crossover with ‘Supergirl’ considerably lightens the mood from the dreary misery-fest that ‘The Flash’ has been for much of this season. I ap...
Full disclosure: I generally don’t like musicals. They’re too artificial, too stylized, too overblown, too sweet, and mostly just too nice for me. When ‘La La Land’ was hyped up like nobody’s business...
Even as a crusty cynic, it was remarkably difficult to shake off the charms of ‘La La Land’. A mixture of homage to the oldest and corniest of Hollywood musicals as well as a modern parable about the perils of chasing ...
John Carney’s unexpected breakout musical romance ‘Once‘ looms large over his latest coming-of-age fairy tale ‘Sing Street’, in ways both good and bad. Following an underwhelming attempt to take his m...
If you didn’t happen to watch it earlier this week, Fox’s production of ‘Grease Live!’ was an order of magnitude more ambitious and better realized than any of NBC’s recent live musicals (and I say th...
‘The Last Five Years’ serves up a slightly unconventional musical for slightly unconventional audiences. It’s not groundbreaking, but it is heartbreaking, sweet and moving in all the right ways. The songs and ins...