Chicago (2002)
January at the theaters is a tale of two kinds of films. One type are the studio bombs (take Just Married and Darkness Falls, please take them far away). The other type are the prestige pictures expanding their releases in hopes of garnering some of that Oscar magic. A lot of prestige films were released around the holidays and though not every one could be a winner, they were all better than Kangaroo Jack. Well, except for The Hours.
Premise: Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), hungry for fame, finally grasps it when she kills her lover and is put on trial. Silver-tongue lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) stirs up the media in her defense, as well as for another starlet killer, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
Results: A song-and-dance picture thats quite toe-tappin with imaginative numbers, even if I can only remember like two songs. A surprisingly steady Zeta-Jones really shines and Gere can cut a rug. Chicago is just lively fun. Blink and youll miss Lucy Liu in it.
Nate’s Grade: B
Posted on January 8, 2003, in 2002 Movies and tagged best picture, catherine zeta-jones, crime, john c. reilly, lucy lui, media, musical, oscars, period film, prison, queen latifah, renee zellweger, richard gere, rob marshall, theater. Bookmark the permalink. 1 Comment.
I give this film an A+. Every song is memorable, the dialogue clever, and the direction first-rate. The opening sequence, which has an interplay between the Velma-Roxie stage performance and Roxie’s lovemaking with Fred is a directorial tour de force. “Chicago” deserved its Oscar hands down, and is one of the very best “musicals” ever filmed. I put the word in quotation marks because it’s not a musical in the traditional sense. Characters are either performing on stage, or are creating musical numbers in their mind.