Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (2016), Arthur Miller: Writer (2017), This So-Called Disaster (2003), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway (2005), The Travelling Players (1975), The Country Girl (1954), Trust Us, This Is All Made Up (2009) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Theater movies.
Storyline: If, in 1940, you had a lobotomized aunt, an institutionalized father, a racist mother, and were the only gay kid on the block, what do you think the odds would be that you'd end up a Tony winner, a staple of television, and a generational icon? Enter "The Life Of Reilly". The cliché goes that truth is stranger than fiction. In this case, it is also funnier and more heartbreaking. Charles Nelson Reilly, famous for his game show innuendos and "X Files" guest appearances, takes us through his bizarre, star-studded, tragic, hilarious, and ultimately amazing life with a potent blend of tenderness and quick one-liners. "The Life Of Reilly" is an adaptation of Mr. Reilly's acclaimed one-man show and was photographed for the screen during Mr. Reilly's final two performances of his play in North Hollywood, California.—jlm
Plot Keywords: documentary, drama, adaptation, stage play, comedy, tragedy, autobiographical ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Eve (Anne Baxter) is waiting backstage to meet her idol, aging Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis). It seems innocent enough as Eve explains that she has seen Margo in EVERY performance of her current play. Only playwright/critic DeWitt (George Sanders) sees through Eve's evil plan, which is to take her parts and her fiancé, Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill). When the fiancé shows no interest, she tries for playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), but DeWitt stops her. After she accepts her award, she decides to skip the after-party and goes to her room, where a young woman named Phoebe has sneaked into her room and fallen asleep. This is where the "Circle of Life" now comes to fruition as Eve will get played like she played Margo.
Plot Keywords: drama, classic, hollywood, black and white, theater, female lead, fame and fortune ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Kurt Gerron was a star in Germany's theater and cabaret scene in the 1920s and 1930s, performing with some of the country's best artists and entertainers of the time. But with the rise of Adolf Hitler, the acclaimed Jewish entertainer was relegated to the role of prisoner in a Nazi-run concentration camp. There he was forced to put his talents to use writing and directing a propaganda film that sang the praises of his captors. This documentary tells Gerron's shocking and tragic story.
Plot Keywords: documentary, world war ii, holocaust, nazi, concentration camp, jewish, propaganda ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Chaplin's final American film tells the story of a fading music hall comedian's effort to help a despondent ballet dancer learn both to walk and feel confident about life again. The highlight of the film is the classic duet with Chaplin's only real artistic film comedy rival, Buster Keaton.—Kenneth Chisholm <kchishol@execulink.com>
Plot Keywords: drama, comedy, romance, music, dance, theater, silent film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: It's the early twentieth century Sweden. Adolescent siblings Alexander and Fanny Ekdahl lead a relatively joyous and exuberant life with their well-off extended paternal family, led by the family matriarch, their grandmother, Helena Ekdahl. The openness of the family culture is exemplified by Helena's now deceased husband ending up becoming best friends with one of her lovers, a Jewish puppet maker named Isak Jacobi, and their Uncle Gustav Adolf's open liaison with one of the family maids, Maj, who everyone in the family adores, even Gustav Adolf's wife, Alma. Between the siblings, Alexander in particular has inherited the family's love of storytelling, his parents and his grandmother who are actors and who manage their own theater. Things change for Alexander and Fanny when their father, Oscar, dies shortly after Christmas 1907. Although she truly does believe she loves him, the children's mother, Emilie, decides to marry Bishop Edvard Vergérus, who she first met as the officiate at ...
Plot Keywords: family, drama, historical, swedish, childhood, fantasy, religion ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A young woman gets killed in an accident trying to meet her favorite actress Myrtle Gordon after a play. Then Myrtle Gordon felt responsible for the killing leading her down to an emotional crisis that interferes with her professional work as an actress.—Chemi González <chemi01@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: drama, psychological drama, female protagonist, show business, theater, midlife crisis, mental breakdown ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A collection of skits that made the Monty Python troupe famous, performed live at the Hollywood Bowl. Included are the singing philosophers, lumberjacks, the pope, and a suspiciously-male looking seabird vendor.—Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
Plot Keywords: comedy, musical, live performance, humor, british comedy, absurd, satire ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Joe Gideon is a Broadway director, choreographer and filmmaker, he in the process of casting the chorus and staging the dance numbers for his latest Broadway show, starring his ex-wife Audrey Paris in what is largely a vanity project for her in playing a role several years younger than her real age, and editing a film he directed on the life of stand-up comic Davis Newman. Joe's professional and personal lives are intertwined, he a chronic philanderer, having slept with and had relationships with a series of dancers in his shows, Victoria Porter, who he hired for the current show despite she not being the best dancer, in the former category, and Kate Jagger, his current girlfriend, in the latter category. That philandering has led to relationship problems, with Audrey during their marriage, and potentially now with Kate who wants a committed relationship with Joe largely in not wanting the alternative of entering the dating world again. Joe also lives a hard and fast life, he chain smoking, drinking heavily, listening to hard driving classical music and popping uppers to keep going. In addition to pressures from investors and meeting film deadlines above and beyond his own self-induced hard life, he is teetering on the brink physically and emotionally. With Kate, Audrey, and his and Audrey's teenage daughter Michelle looking over him as best they can, Joe flirts with "Angelique" in the process, he potentially succumbing to her if he doesn't listen to them or what his body is telling him.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: musical, dance, broadway, autobiographical, director, art, fantasy ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>
Plot Keywords: war, nazi, germany, politics, art, actor, moral dilemma ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This intimate documentary follows careers of two remarkable personalities: Carmen de Lavallade, a dynamic dancer and choreographer from California who moved to New York with Alvin Ailey and began a legacy of modern dance in America, and her husband Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidad-born choreographer, set and costume designer, painter and man about town with productions such as The Wiz. Features interviews and performance footage of friends and colleagues: dancers Judith Jamison, Gus Solomons, Jr., Dudley Williams, Ulysses Dove and Alvin Ailey.—Scott P
Plot Keywords: dance, documentary, biography, art, culture, performance, choreography ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Manuela is a hard-working single mom who has raised her son Esteban by herself since the time he was born. On his 17th birthday they go to the theater and after the show, he tries to get the main actress' autograph but is run down on the street and dies. She quits her job and journeys to Barcelona, where she hopes to find her son's father, Lola, a transvestite she kept secret from her son, just as she never told Lola they had a son. In Barcelona, Manuela reunites with her old friend Agrado, a warm and witty transvestite prostitute. She also meets and becomes deeply involved with several characters: Rosa, a young nun who works in a shelter for battered prostitutes, but is pregnant by Lola and is HIV positive; Huma Rojo, the actress her son had admired; and the drug-addicted Nina Cruz, Huma's co-star and lover. Her life becomes entwined with theirs as she cares for Rosa during her pregnancy and works for Huma as her personal assistant and even acts in the play as an understudy for Nina ...
Plot Keywords: drama, women, mother, family, tragedy, loss, identity ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In modern dance since the 1970s, few choreographers have had more influence in the medium than the late Pina Bausch. This film explores the life and work of this artist of movement while we see her company perform her most notable creations where basic things like water, dirt and even gravity take on otherworldly qualities in their dancing.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: dance, documentary, modern dance, art, germany, performing arts, choreography ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Max Fischer is a precocious 15-year-old whose reason for living is his attendance at Rushmore, a private school where he's not doing well in any of his classes, but where he's the king of extracurricular activities - from being in the beekeeping society to writing and producing plays, there's very little after school he doesn't do. His life begins to change, however, when he finds out he's on academic probation, and when he stumbles into love with Miss Cross, a pretty teacher of the elementary school at Rushmore. Added to the mix is his friendship with Herman Blume, wealthy industrialist and father to boys who attend the school, and who also finds himself attracted to Miss Cross. Max's fate becomes inextricably tied to this odd love triangle, and how he sets about resolving it is the story in the film.
Plot Keywords: comedy, drama, youth, coming of age, school, rebellion, friendship ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Down-on-his-luck theatrical producer Max Bialystock is forced to romance rich old ladies to finance his efforts. When timid accountant Leo Bloom reviews Max's accounting books, the two hit upon a way to make a fortune by producing a sure-fire flop. The play which is to be their gold mine? "Springtime for Hitler."
Plot Keywords: comedy, musical, satire, broadway, song and dance, black comedy, producers ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>
Plot Keywords: religion, faith, theater, performance, modern adaptation, moral dilemma, social critique ...
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