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Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

“Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison plays like a lukewarm reheating of The African Queen, with most of the energy and wit comes through the performances of Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, and not John Huston’s weirdly sleepy direction. Normally a dark wit with a peppy sense of pacing and tone, Huston seems” read more

Cheaper by the Dozen

“I cannot muster up much in the way of poisoned-pen enthusiasm for this one, in fact, I cannot muster up much of anything for it. Cheaper by the Dozen sticks its three major stars in thankless roles, has them acting out less than amusing vignettes, and feels much longer than its meager 85 minutes. ” read more

Chicago

“24-karat cynicism at its most entertaining. Chicago is a solid racehorse of a movie musical, and it feels more classic in its presentation than many of its contemporaries. It loads the cast up with movie stars (a mixed bag, but mostly successful), glittery costumes, and grandiose production numbers.” read more

All That Jazz

“Heavily indebted to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ in its combination of reality and fantasy in exploring the artistic mind and temperament, All That Jazz is a reflective, energetic movie about a genius director/choreographer grappling with impending death. For such weighty material, All That Jazz feels ” read more

Grease

“Inexplicably the highest grossing movie musical ever, Grease is a soulless, synthetic experience. There's no real personality here to speak of, just an indifference to style and substance. This is normally not a huge problem with musicals, as they make up for a lack of heavy substance with an abunda” read more

Cabaret

“I came across Cabaret the first time at a highly formative time in my life. I was around 11 or 12, and I found it on cable. Clearly, I didn’t understand every single nuance, yet the content spoke to me on a very deep level. As time has gone on, Cabaret has only solidified in my mind as the obvious” read more

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

Guys and Dolls

“Perhaps it’s a bit too long, and maybe a few of the musical sequences are a little stiff, but I still think Guys and Dolls is an enjoyable riot. Obvious musical players like Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine excel here, but Jean Simmons is the surprising coup, providing the movie with a heart and so” read more

The Bishop's Wife

“The Bishop’s Wife is a perfectly fine excuse to spend 105 minutes with Cary Grant and Loretta Young, but there’s a general sense of heavy sentiment that makes the whole thing so sweet that it threatens to drill holes in your teeth the longer it goes on. It’s kind of gentle, old-fashioned movie” read more

Inside Out

“After Toy Story 3 in 2010, the consistency of Pixar’s output went all sorts of strange. Not that every single movie prior to 2010 was a gold star, hey Cars, but the quality was remarkably high, and the few sequels found ways to expand the themes and emotions of its original in profound ways. Then ” read more

The Revenant

“Yet again, Alejandro González Iñárritu creates a film that is artistically daring, but emotionally hollow, a simple-minded revenge film that ends in two men beating each other bloody in the snow. That is the entirety of the film, a simple revenge story that is lacquered with gorgeous cinematograp” read more

Hans Christian Andersen

“Is Hans Christian Andersen a very good movie? Eh, it’s ok I suppose, but it’s a great spotlight for Danny Kaye’s abilities. The movie has little to do with Andersen’s real life, presenting pure confectionery sugar as substantive storytelling, with a few musical numbers, bright colors, and li” read more