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Funny Girl

“As a star vehicle, Funny Girl is top of the class, as an actual movie, Funny Girl is a great star vehicle. It’s a towering monument to Barbra Streisand’s reading of Fanny Brice, and there’s more than a hint of Barbra in Fanny and Fanny in Barbra. Not enough good things can be written about Str” read more

The Sound of Music

“The dirty little secret of theater nerds is that the stage show version of The Sound of Music is not very good. The movie isn’t just an improvement, the movie is practically an entirely different beast. It doesn’t just restructure the narrative, it completely rethinks some musical numbers, modif” read more

My Fair Lady

“Some stories are surprisingly sturdy, they’re bulletproof entertainments built upon solid foundations and strong characters. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion transmutes across genres into this Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s My Fair Lady, one of the titans of musical theater. This 1964 fi” read more

Mary Poppins

“Am I going to be that asshole that dissents on Mary Poppins being a canonized great? Well, yes and no. I think Mary Poppins is a great movie – in parts. The pacing is all over the place, and nearly a third of the film is occupied by the boring story involving Mr. Banks and the bank. Yet there’s ” read more

West Side Story

“Robert Wise was already a major industry veteran by the time West Side Story came around. Beginning his career as Orson Welles’ editor, getting Oscar nominated for Citizen Kane and working closely to create some of those great special effects shots, before transitioning to a director under Val Lew” read more

The Peanuts Movie

“It’s only when it makes concessions to modernity that The Peanuts Movie really stumbles. Other than these few moments, it’s a sweet, innocent blast of nostalgia, never withholding from the melancholy and defeat that permeates the comic strips. It won’t rival any of the now classic TV specials,” read more

The King and I

“Everyone’s quick to claim The Sound of Music as the best of the Rodgers and Hammerstein II film adaptations, but The King and I more than holds its own. Perhaps since this one ends more tragically than happily, it’s not quite afforded the same amount of respect. Shame then, as Deborah Kerr and Y” read more

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

“I’m on the fence about this one. Stanley Donen’s direction is effervescent, Michael Kidd’s choreography is unique and lively, the score is pleasant if unmemorable, but that story is just so aggressively archaic. I suppose the sexist overtones of the film’s second half could be overcome with ” read more

Singin' in the Rain

“Singin’ in the Rain plants its tongue in both of its cheeks at the same time, offering up a self-aware guffaw, and an eye-roll over how preposterous this whole fame thing is. Typically, Hollywood can’t help but indulge in some deeply self-critical appraisals in films about its own practices and ” read more

An American in Paris

“While Singin’ in the Rain is easier to embrace and admire, 1951’s An American in Paris is the more coolly intellectual. It is the pop-sophisticate in comparison to its more extroverted sibling. The two films probably should not be compared too much as their aims are different, but they keep gett” read more

On the Town

“Three sailors on 24-hour shore leave look for love and adventure in On the Town, one of the most enthusiastic musicals to come out of Arthur Freed’s unit. This was the first musical to film on location, with the “New York, New York” number racing through all of the infamous sights and location” read more

Meet Me in St. Louis

“It’s that subtle hint of darkness lurking underneath the sweet, colorful surfaces that makes Meet Me in St. Louis such a classic. Centering on a year-in-the-life of one typical suburban family pre-1903 World’s Fair, the story quietly details the triumphs and travails of the family, forfeiting a ” read more

Yankee Doodle Dandy

“Yankee Doodle Dandy is two solid hours of myth-making and grand entertainment, perhaps a little politically simplistic and overripe in its drama, but these things don’t take away any enjoyment for me. Everything – the politics, songs, performance modes – is old-fashioned, almost sweetly naïve” read more

The Wizard of Oz

“There are movies, and then there are movies like The Wizard of Oz. Classics so eternal and reinvigorating that terms like “masterpiece” or “beloved” don’t justify their rarefied space. They sit high upon the top shelf of the canon, projecting the highest artistic heights of which we may ac” read more

Show Boat

“My knowledge of the film versions of Show Boat is limited to the 1951 version with Ava Gardner and the heavily truncated version wedged into the opening of Till the Clouds Roll By. I had heard of this version, and knew that James Whale, one of the great-underrated talents of the era, directed it, bu” read more

Top Hat

“Cinema produces many iconic pairings, typically comedic duos who play off each other brilliantly, and find ways to make their disparate qualities part of the material, like Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers. Or similar stars with personas that mesh well, like William Powell and Myrna Loy as th” read more

42nd Street

“42nd Street is the premiere backstage musical, the granddaddy of them all, setting the template for the narrative and crafting the character molds. If some of it feels flabby or overly familiar, that’s simply because it’s impossible to view 42nd Street in any other way than through the prism of ” read more