I love musicals, but I love the West Side Story, Moulin Rouge, and Holiday Inn type of musicals. On location live action, when words cant covey the emotion, break into a song. Kind of cheesy…but it’s what I think musicals should be. Marshall’s Chicago takes a different style, half location-half stage show, and some nice mixes and transitions in both. Most of the numbers are shot a little sporadic, but 2 or three work extremely well. Not the way I would have done it, but definitely the Fosse would have made it.

Great pace, Great story, very good performances. I figured it out way to early, but the ride was still very engaging. Spacey was perfect as the doomed inmate, Laura Linney keeps her-hey that-s creepy- nudity streak alive. And a surprisingly unattractive Winslet keeps her clothes on in a rare, great performance. The twist is top notch, and shows the problem with the true believers of this world. Alan Parker does another great movie about the south. Kinda Liberal in nature but also shows them as kinda wacko too.

(2 of 5)
Director-Good (Scene changes were fun) Rockwell-Good, Story-Good as life stories go. Movie-Sub-Par. The film drags along like a Galapagos turtle. It took forever to get somewhere; segments were grainy, rough and un-interesting. Deb likened it to About Schmidt-but I wasn-t going to trash it that far-. I saw it more as an indie version of Man on the Moon. Was only playing at-The Bridge-(too far…I made a funny) or at our choice-The Pacific- So projection was going to suck-but it was a Miramax picture, how good was the image going to be anyways?

Dragonfly (3 of 5)
Deb Tivo-d and said I should watch it, Reviewers I trust didn-t really have an opinion about the film. So I jumped in on Sunday. The story revolves around two married doctors, after a tragic accident in Columbia kills the wife while doing red cross work, she was 7 months pregnant. The husband, (Kevin Costner) who stayed home on this trip, grieves in the normal fashion until strange things start to happen. Most revolving around Dragonflies, his wife-s-token- (she even has a birthmark that looks like one). But the kicker comes when he checks into his wife-s patients on the pediatric oncology ward at his hospital. When some of her near death kids tell him that his wife is trying to communicate and to visit a symbol (a squiggly cross). To everyone else he looks like he is have a nervous breakdown, but the journey he takes will be a fruitful one. A good movie, but standard fare…no tears, no cheers.