10 Comments

"Falling Slowly" from Once might be one of the five best movie musical songs ever written. It's just so stunningly perfect.

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If you care one iota for musical theater, and don't get chills from that version of "Sunday" in tick, tick...boom!, I don't know what to say. Oh, to have been on set that day...

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I know Holiday Inn is super problematic (the less said about their Lincoln's Birthday number the better) but I have such nostalgia for watching it with my mom. Plus it's the origin of White Christmas! (even if their is a movie musical by that name that seems to think otherwise!)

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The film version of Rent is a great example of good intentions leading to poor results all across the board. Everyone’s heart is in the right place and almost none of it works.

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I just saw Glen Hansard and Marketa Iglova here in Denver and wow, those songs still hit hard. When Your Mind's Made Up is definitely the best non-standard time signature song from any musical [stares in Everything's Alright].

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Here is the dilemma with which you have presented me: INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is a great movie, but one I don't actually consider a musical, while RENT is a bad movie but at least it is actually a musical.

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On one hand, I get it (because you could make the argument that a fair few of the titles in this bracket are not full-on musicals a la Singin' in the Rain or something).

On the other hand...there's, like, ten songs performed in the movie! I feel like this one, more than a rock-star biopic, counts.

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It's obviously too late to do anything about it in this bracket, but here is my arbitrary and purely personal definition of what qualifies as a "musical" vs. "a movie with music:" There needs to be a non-diegetic component. If every song involves the people on screen playing the instruments and doing a music performance, that's not really a musical. ONCE, for example, passes the test by virtue of the "Lies" sequence. BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, 100% absolutely not.

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Holiday Inn is a NO for the Lincoln Birthday salute in blackface.

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I really, really want Rent out first round. I just cannot stand that show.

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