De-Lovely (2004)

Musical Rated PG-13

An oddly stodgy biography picture of composer and lyricist Cole Porter, De-Lovely follows an aging Porter (Kevin Kline) as he revisits scenes from his life, many re-created as musical numbers. Director Irwin Winkler (Life as a House) fails to give it an ounce of the life of say, Chicago or Moulin Rouge. It’s a curious

Phantom of the Opera, The (2004)

Musical Rated PG-13

I’ve always suspected Andrew Lloyd Webber’s opus to be one of the cheesier musical concepts, and this big-screen version – complete with squealing guitars, swirling capes and approximately 3.2 billion candles – did nothing to convince me otherwise. This is supposed to be a swooning Gothic romance, but it struck me as a particularly unconvincing

Dreamgirls (2006)

Musical Rated PG-13

Eddie Murphy is the best reason to see this otherwise overblown, narratively clunky adaptation of the Broadway musical. As a James Brown-type singer, Murphy is more alive than he’s been in years. That familiar gleam in his eye shines – for the first time in a long time –over something other than the easy money

Bride and Prejudice (2004)

Musical Rated PG-13

There had to have been an easier way to drag the Bollywood style – that epic, musical method of Indian filmmaking – into Hollywood than this ungainly experiment, which melds Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and musical numbers, all in an Indian setting. As forced as a fake smile, this is multiculturalism at its most

Moulin Rouge (2001)

Musical Rated PG-13

This postmodern musical traces a mythologized love story – that of the doomed affair between a naive young writer (Ewan McGregor) and a nightclub courtesan (Nicole Kidman) in 1899 Paris – but its true concerns are strictly aural and visual: the way the vibrant colors of a cancan dancer’s dress meld into a moving rainbow

Rent (2005)

Musical Rated PG-13

“Why is it that struggling artists who sing, paint, or write about their struggles usually seem to produce the worst art?”

Woman is a Woman, A (1961)

Musical Rated NR

“…an homage to/butchering of classic Hollywood musical tropes.”

Idlewild (2006)

Musical Rated R

“There hasn’t been a movie musical this impulsive, this risky, this impetuous since Moulin Rouge. Even when it falters, you’re still swept along by its sheer ambition – and the joy it takes in being ambitious.

Top Hat (1935)

Musical Rated NR

It never really mattered what loopy plot was devised to get Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together in their musicals – once they started dancing in each other’s arms, all contrivances fall to the wayside and you clearly see they were made for each other. Top Hat relies on especially flimsy contrivances, already recycling from

One From the Heart (1982)

Musical Rated R

One of those Hollywood disasters that you almost – and I stress almost – have to see. Francis Ford Coppola made a curious follow-up to the great Apocalypse Now with this, a musical experiment that’s at once gaudy and sterile. The movie has the flash of neon but also its deadening hiss. Neon features prominently