For what it is--a slice-of-life of a group of people, trying to make the big-time and at least be able to say that they were on Broadway--it's a fine work. I admit I haven't seen the stage play--which many sources say is far superior to this filmic adaptation. I'm rather surprised that: a) Michael Douglas gets star status here, or is even involved. He doesn't dance here. The film would have worked so much better if it showed his character showing some dance moves and getting across to the dancers what he wanted. Both his character would have connected better with the dancers, and he would have connected better with filmgoers; and b) that Lord Richard Attenborough got involved with this: It's definitely not his forte or cup of tea. Perhaps he wanted to expand his directorial palette, or that some of his influences were masters of the genre, such as Lubitsch or Minnelli. Personally, I wish I knew, for he has done much better work in his career. Overall, not one of the better of contemporary (post-1970) musicals, but worth seeing once, if renting or seeing that it's coming on TV. Not a top purchase priority, unless you are a Douglas or Attenborough completest, and then prepare to be disappointed.
Were it not for Marvin Hamlisch's "Surprise, Surprise" then I think this film would be even more forgettable than it actually is. Michael Douglas is the hard-to-please Broadway director "Zach" who is casting the dance ensemble for his latest production. Aided by his sidekick "Larry" (Terrence Mann) he pits the would-be's through their paces with rigorous routines and some rather invasive questioning about their lives, families and peccadilloes. I did see this on stage and felt it a rather flat and introspective of an industry that should usually keep it's casting practices under wraps. Here, Richard Attenborough attempts to lay these bare for the big screen and ends up with a rather dull, processional series of footwork demonstrations and sob-stories that are pretty wearisome to endure after a repetitive first half an hour. Alyson Reed clutters the thing up further as the down-on-her-luck "Cassie" who is looking for favours from a man who seems pretty impervious to many of the decent aspects of human nature. The stage setting is too sterile to engage for long, and the characterisations fit just about every stereotype in the book as these youngsters vie for this latest opportunity to shine (and eat!). I didn't hate this, but it's really a rather disappointing foray into the potentially fascinating world of who wins and who doesn't in this highly competitive and fickle environment!
A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.
"The Hours" is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.
New York chorus girl Cindy Lou Bethany becomes frustrated when she prepares for an audition for a Broadway musical, but the auditions close and her roommate, Gwen Abbott, is hired to be secretary to Top Rumson, the show's financial backer. Gwen tells Cindy that the director, Lloyd Lloyd, and composer, Dick Rayburn, have been sent to the South on a talent search for a classic Southern belle type to star in the show, although their shows usually feature Myra Stanhope, an actress whose style is hopelessly inappropriate for this show. Desperate for work, Cindy returns to her aunt Lily Lou and uncle Jefferson Davis Bethany's home in the South and schemes to get Lloyd and Rayburn to audition her.
The amazing wartime saga of a young American GI who travels to Budapest to find his former companion, a French soldier who told him of the spectacular bathhouses he visited there. The GI explores the fraternal joy of these Turkish baths and loses himself in passion - only to discover his real sexual self!
Director Ted Brooks and comedians Jack Norcross, Dandy Joslyn and Phil Miller are part of a troupe of promising young players rehearsing for a WPA show at the Garrick Theater in New York and are stunned when the government withdraws their funding on the day of the show's dress rehearsal. Destitute, the troupe plans to return home when Mac, the stage doorman, offers to allow four of the men, Phil, Dandy, Jack and Ted, to use the theater for a boardinghouse. After accepting Mac's offer, the men improvise bedrooms out of the set pieces and meet amateur actress Lorie Fenton from Cleveland, who is eager to audition for them. When the men learn she recently received a small inheritance, they allow her to audition, hoping she will back the show.
An ex-seminarian slash communist runs a hotel in Baguio. He then meets a handsome upcoming lawyer. A once-a-year trip to Baguio by the lawyer and conversations with the hotel owner develop into an affair which encompasses decades of socio-political changes in the country.
In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.
Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.
Juliet, a white girl, falls in love with a dark-skinned romeo, a divine trumpet player from the Roma orchestra. But her father Satchmo doesn't accept Romeo. Romeo needs to fight for Juliet at the legendary Festival of the trumpeters in Gucha.