An Ode to Mary Poppins’ Element of Fun
By the end of Mary Poppins, it's easy to mistake its warmth for simplicity. As moving as it is, it's basic as all hell: two hours and 20 minutes just build up to George Banks learning a lesson and embracing...
Anna and the Apocalypse – Review
A Christmas zombie musical comedy should not work. However, John McPhail’s second feature sells the hell out of this improbable combination. Anna and the Apocalypse’s scrappy lack of polish and the gusto...
Gotta Dance: The Top 10 Original Movie Musicals
This week sees the release of Anna and the Apocalypse, a Christmas zombie musical comedy set in small town Scotland. There is a lot to unpack in that description. Today, let’s celebrate the fact that the...
The Greatest Showman – Review
In true Barnum spirit, director Michael Gracey’s dazzling musical The Greatest Showman embraces his subject’s famous proclivity for massaging the truth. The man who once paraded elderly ex-slave Joice Heth...
La La Land and the Question of Authorship in Film
Damien Chazelle's nostalgic musical La La Land puts its behind-the-scenes artists to full use, creating poetic and fanciful imagery and prompting the question of who the author of a film really is. It's a...
Team Talk – La La Land
Winning a record 7 Golden Globes this year, La La Land is seemingly unstoppable. Adored by critics, lapped up by the public, it can seemingly do no wrong this golden child of 2017. Our Kambole saw this all...
Debbie Reynolds: Guardian of the Hollywood Galaxy
The news of Debbie Reynolds' passing would be upsetting - especially in cinema circles - on any given day, but it has gained a particularly tragic quality for occurring just one day after the untimely death of...
Sing Street – Review
Sing Street is a touching and toe-tapping delight from start to finish. Like an Irish, musical Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Sing Street transposes the universal themes of youth and growth through pop...
A Love Letter To… Top Hat
The great movie musical institution, otherwise known as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, sprinkled its box office gold dust over ten pictures, and that which arguably received the lion’s share was 1935’s...
Stories from the Set: Singin’ in the Rain
Singin' In The Rain is rightly regarded as the greatest Hollywood musical of all time, and stories of its production have melted into movie legend, from Debbie Reynolds' remark that "Singin' in the Rain and...