Movies in the Drama/Musical genre

The passage of time has labeled 1983’s Staying Alive as a turkey, but the contemporaneous view (at least to Paramount’s bean counters) was somewhat different. Although critics lambasted the movie upon its release, with Roger Ebert giving an es...

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (full title: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody) is as generic a musical bio-pic as one is likely to find. A by-the-numbers, slightly fictionalized chronicle of the rise and fall of pop singer Whitney Houston (...

Generally speaking, the movie industry loves the concept of unrequited love…to a point. That point is, of course, that there’s a happy ending – a quality notably absent from Edmond Rostand’s play, Cyrano de Bergerac, upon which Joe Wright�...

Blinded by the Light is a one-third Bruce Springsteen hagiography, one-third kitschy ‘80s recreation, and one-third feel-good father/son coming together. Surprisingly, however, it works. The movie combines an infectious spirit with a serious...

In 1988, Elton John released the album Reg Strikes Back. In addition to being his “comeback” following a period of stagnancy in the mid-1980s, it was a return to his roots and an acceptance of less flamboyancy on-stage and off. Clean and so...

The most compelling thing about Queen has always been the music. The story behind the band, like the stories behind many bands, is a combination of the banal, the tragic, and the clichéd. For this “based on a true story” movie, the filmma...

Hollywood loves coming back to this story; it shows the entire lifecycle of show business and celebrity in one easily-digestible morsel. Over the years, A Star Is Born has attracted the likes of Frederic March, Gloria Gaynor, Judy Garland, Jam...

2014 has already seen one straightforward, largely unimaginative bio-pic of a '60s music icon (Frankie Valli in Jersey Boys) - now along comes another. Get on Up, like Jersey Boys, is more notable for its music than for anything else that ends up ...

When the characters in Footloose are dancing and the music is blaring, the film comes alive. It has energy and personality. Would that the same could be said about the dramatic scenes, which are hamstrung by a combination of mediocre acting and atr...

If one was to judge Country Strong based solely on its misleading trailer, one might assume this to be a cliché-riddled Crazy Heart wannabe. And, although I will not argue that the whole cloth from which the story has been cut contains its fair sh...