Schmigadoon!
As Melissa (Cicely Strong) explicitly points out, the musicals that inspired the first season of Schmigadoon! were all of a relatively similar happy-go-lucky and “they all lived happily ever after” cloth. Her attempt to return to that mystical world with her now husband Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) in Schmigadoon! Season 2 takes them instead to Schmicago. It is another mythic town that mirrors musicals, but this time out, it’s the shows of the 60s and 70s. The Broadway shows of that era were darker, more complex, more violent, and far less likely to deliver a happy ending. That, paired with their motivation to flee the drudgery of day-to-day life and the heartbreak of infertility, means escaping will take something far more challenging to find than “love.” Continue Reading →
Spirited
Watch afterBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022),
StudioApple Studios,
It’s rare to watch a film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol that turns you into a Scrooge by the end of it. Apple TV+ pulls it off with their modern, social media-age take on the holiday standard with a bloated musical comedy that features zero memorable musical numbers or laugh-out-loud moments. Continue Reading →
The Sixth Reel
Charles Busch writes, directs, and stars in a delightful, frantic, thoughtful picture about the hunt for a lost film.
(This review is part of our 2021 coverage of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival)
What to do with one’s final reel? Legendary drag performer Charles Busch and longtime collaborator Carl Andress have made a picture that brings heart and humor to issues of restoration and romance. The Sixth Reel is a loving ode to old movies, their material remains, the necessity of their preservation. It’s also a gentle rhapsody about growing older and facing the final act of one’s life. Continue Reading →
In the Heights
SimilarDriving Miss Daisy (1989),
Watch aftertick tick... BOOM! (2021), West Side Story (2021),
StudioEndeavor Content,
During his sophomore year at Wesleyan University in 1999, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a draft of his debut play. At first, he “had one song and a title: In the Heights.” Soon after, the musical would premiere at the school’s student-run theater. John Buffalo Miller and Quiara Alegría Hudes helped revise it in the following years, and then it snowballed. It premiered off-Broadway in 2005, went to Broadway in 2008, and had international tours throughout the 2010s. A film adaptation felt like the natural next step, and over two decades after its inception, it arrives with a screenplay from Hudes and Jon M. Chu directing. Continue Reading →