Review: “Wicked”

Jon M. Chu’s 2021 film adaptation of the Broadway musical In the Heights made me suspect that he wasn’t a particularly skilled director of musicals. His long-gestating film adaptation of Wicked confirmed it. It’s a shame, because even more so than Heights, there’s a legitimately great movie musical rocking around inside that two hour and […]

Review: “Best Summer Ever”

Plot-wise, there isn’t much that is new about the musical “Best Summer Ever,” directed by Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli. The story involves two teens who meet at a dance summer camp and fall in love before going their separate ways. Tony (Ricky Wilson Jr.) is supposedly going home to New York, where he […]

Streaming Movies: December, Part 1

Wow, what a busy month! Despite widespread theater closures and release date delays, awards season and the holiday movie season are both definitely in full swing. I’m presenting some mini reviews of some of the new movies that have been released on streaming services this month so far, including potential awards contenders “Mank” and “Sound […]

Holiday Classics: “White Christmas” (1954)

Irving Berlin’s song “White Christmas” had been out for around twelve years by the time a new movie musical of the same title that revolved around his music was made. Directed by the great Michael Curtiz, the plot of “White Christmas” is derived from the 1942 musical “Holiday Inn”, which also starred Bing Crosby and […]

Holiday Classics: “In the Good Old Summertime” (1949)

While its title suggests the opposite, “In the Good Old Summertime” is a musical set primarily during the Christmas season. In fact, it’s a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch comedy “The Shop Around the Corner”, which is also considered a holiday classic. The setting of this version of the story is moved from 1930s Budapest […]

Holiday Classics: “Holiday Inn” (1942)

Don’t get me wrong, I love “White Christmas”. But there’s something special about “Holiday Inn”, the 1942 film that 1954’s “White Christmas” was a loose remake of. “Holiday Inn” follows song and dance team Jim Hardy (Bing Crosby) and Ted Hanover (Fred Astaire). Jim plans to retire to his farm and marry the other member […]

Review: “Cats”

1 out of 5 stars. I will never forget where I was when the “Cats” trailer first debuted. It was a warm summer evening, and I was standing in a Starbucks just outside of Dallas, Texas waiting on the latte I’d ordered. Having not been on my phone much all day, I scrolled through Twitter, […]

Review: “Mary Poppins Returns”

3.5 out of 5 stars. Walt Disney’s 1964 film “Mary Poppins” is hugely beloved and widely regarded as the studio’s greatest live-action movie. So despite the fact that author P.L. Travers wrote multiple stories about the magical nanny, it’s still a tall order for Disney to make a sequel to the classic film over 50 […]