Best Musicals (Movies)

awesome, nominated academy award

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Liza Minelli in a story about a woman who falls for a bi-sexual man – and by the way, who blew the world’s expectations completely out of the water in her debut Musical feature role. While it’s executed in a format that tends to the light-hearted side of things, the storyline is anything but, addressing the rise of Nazism, and the complicated fabric of love in a, perhaps, overly dimensional dynamic. It’s powerful, and having been released in 1972, it’s becoming fair to say that it’s also timeless.

To merely say the premise out loud sounds very strange, but it turns out that it not only works, it captivates. Personally, a world of chocolate, no matter how small, sounds divine.

Who doesn’t love this movie? Even folks, such as myself, who generally don’t like musicals, LOVE “The Wizard of Oz.” Starring the lovely and extremely affable Judy Garland, who realizes “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto”…and takes us on a journey where we learn the hard way that there’s no place like home.” Indeed.

Starring Barbara Streisand (and Omar Sharif) in this 1968 musical movie, “Funny Girl” remains one of Babs most powerful efforts, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, as well as receiving a total of 7 Academy Award nominations. It was both a huge commercial and critical success, and it became the top grossing film of 1968. A feat I’m not sure any other musical has accomplished.

Starring Madonna (in the title role, as Eva Perón) and Antonio Banderas (as the narrator, as well as several personal roles to Eva, such as her conscience and critic), the movie did a decent job of relaying the historical facts of Eva’s life. We forgive the sensationalism because that’s the nature of iconography, especially when translated into film. The truth is that Eva was a very powerful figure, and helped achieve some profound progress in the realm of social reform, as well as heavily influencing Argentina’s granting of women’s suffrage.