Movies in the Musical/Drama genre

Watching The Color Purple, there were times when the split personality was enough to pull me out of the experience. Musical stage adaptations of serious novels can sometimes work because of the immediacy of the audience and the reality of the ...

For all that the description implies, Elvis is well and truly a Baz Luhrmann film. At times frustrating and at times exuberant, the movie is ultimately effective in capturing both the triumph and tragedy of the title character’s life. It’s une...

What a year 2021 has been for Lin-Manuel Miranda. In addition to having one of his stage plays (In the Heights) transformed into a movie, he has also enjoyed major involvements in two animated films (Vivo for Netflix and Encanto for Disney) and ma...

While watching Dear Evan Hansen, I was reminded of the 1994 film I’ll Do Anything. Originally designed as a musical (with eight songs by Prince), the decision was made in the editing room to release the Nick Nolte vehicle as a straight drama...

Whether as a result of coincidence or intent, the COVID pandemic has issued in a new era of motion picture musicals. Not since mid-20th century, when Musicals were perennially the biggest earners, has the genre been this popular. Everybody’s...

A breath of fresh air? Or a pretentious mess? Perhaps a little of both. It’s easy to see why a mainstream viewer might quickly lose patience with Annette but I found the film’s embrace of unconventionality to be bracing and energizing…at...

From its early days at the Off-Broadway Public Theater in February 2015 through its highly-anticipated opening on August 6 at the Richard Rogers Theater, it was apparent that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was going to be the big live theater...

Oliver Twist has never been one of my favorite Dickens novels, so perhaps that’s part of the reason why I’m lukewarm about Oliver!, the stage musical-turned-Oscar-winning motion picture adaptation of the book. It’s an uneven film with a...

In style, if not substance, The Greatest Showman is reminiscent of the Disney film, Newsies. Like the 1992 live-action musical, The Greatest Showman comes to life when the characters are singing or dancing but struggles through the sequences i...

Les Miserables, believed by some to be the best novel ever penned in French, has been adapted in nearly every form imaginable, including dozens of movies, television mini-series in French and English, loose "thematic reworkings," and comic books. ...