Majboor ('Convulsed') (1974)

Ravi has a mother, sister, young brother, and a love interest we get to know, first, watching their jolly good times at home and at the beach; time is also spent establishing the kidnap and murder case Ravi is involved in as a witness; he then develops and is diagnosed with a brain tumor; dying, he concocts a plan to falsely confess to a kidnap-murder and claim the reward money for his family; then comes an operation - miraculously - that cures him; and it is only after all this convoluted set-up - a perfunctory first hour and a half (perfunctory despite brightly coloured Bollywood music-and-dance set-pieces) - that the mystery thriller can start: poor helpless and alone ("majboor"), Ravi's only way out of the death penalty is to go on the run and find the real murderer.

★★★☆☆

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Wonka (2023)

Like a Wonka' chocolate, this prequel is a confection entirely concocted from scratch by some lunatic using the weird and wonderful ingredients from Dahl's books, so there's giraffe milk and chocolatier wars, exotic oompa loompa lands and stuff, but there is also a pervading sense that the movie is all a rigmarole to perpetuate a non-canon add-on chapter of not-especially-good songs, childish acting, and some wonky cgi, making this confection a sickly sweet one – you end up feeling that to pick up a book or go to see a movie isn't worth the risk of having thrust upon you the burden of an ever-expanding film and television universe.

★★★☆☆

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6.9 on the Richter Scale (6.9 pe scara Richter) (2016)

A gormless actor working on a musical theatre production dreams constantly of devastating earthquakes, but it is the arrival into his adult life of his long-lost pilot father and the increasingly strained relationship he has with his depressive wife that rocks him during his waking hours, in this colourful, sometimes amusing, but incredibly chauvinistic sex comedy from Romania centred on an especially irritating couple.

★★☆☆☆

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The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

The third Muppets movie - the first to introduce the Muppet Babies and the last to be made before Jim Henson's death - has the plush theatre troupe, my great love since I was a kid, taking their show to Broadway and their "little guys trying to make it big in the Big Apple" story is the perfect blend of musical numbers, laugh-out-loud comedy skits and cameos of some big name stars.

★★★★★

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La La Land (2016)

Facing daily rejection in audition rooms, a waitress in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros Studio lot in LA longs for the day when someone discovers her, believes in her, and thinks she is perfect, but her dreams of Hollywood success are interrupted when she encounters someone who does just that - a pianist pursuing his own dreams of owning a jazz bar.

★★★★★

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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

There is nothing objectionable in watching people catapault from one success to another as Freddie Mercury and his band Queen do in this bandopic, but there is nothing much unique about the trajectory traced by this particular movie, either - the band experiences the crazy heights and then the abject lows experienced by all winners of The Voice and all musicians in movies - have you seen A Star Is Born? - and all you are left with in the end as you watch a painstakingly recreated 20-minute set at a rock concert is doubt regarding the reality of Queen's longevity and questions - because I just don't know - about the accuracy of Rami Malek's impersonation.

★★★☆☆

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School of Rock (2003)

The nuns are students, the convent is a private elementary school, the criminal masquerading as a sister is a loafer masquerading unqualified as a teacher and, also just like Sister Act, rules are broken, music unites, the no-hoper discovers a purpose, his charges discover their inner rock gods, and it is all thanks to Jack Black's genuine, unabashed, and infectious enthusiasm for rock and roll that this movie, despite its well-trodden plot and issues here and there with gender stereotyping, is a feelgood classic.

★★★★★

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Glitter (2001)

A singer - who performs Mariah Carey songs like Mariah Carey, and is in fact played by her, but called Billy - is steered to stardom by the men who control the music industry, and when she finally achieves her dream of singing to a packed Madison Square Garden, she feels bad for not having been more grateful to the less talented agent in her life, who over the course of the movie grows steadily more jealous of her success and starts treating her badly - the end.

★☆☆☆☆

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Holiday Inn (1942)

Cleverly built around the themed song-and-dances performed at an inn on occasions such as Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving, this amiable musical from Irving Berlin has a dancer (Fred Astaire) and a singer (Bing Crosby) competing for the affections of their co-stars, and even if you loathe musicals, this light and frothy one with its debut presentation of Crosby's White Christmas will make you smile.

★★★★☆

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Purple Rain (1984)

You don't watch Purple Rain for Prince's debut as an actor or for the movie's wet variation of the "Who's on second?" routine, nor for its maudlin story, apparently almost Prince's own, of a Minneapolis musician, Kid, who uses music as an escape from an abusive father, and you certainly don't watch for its depiction of women who fellate guitars and are dismissed as "bitches" whose "periods are messed up", but you watch it because you are a fan of and/or want to marvel at the big-headed queer bird that is Prince in his Little Lord Fauntleroy suits, and for his musical performances, especially 'Purple Rain,' one of the best songs ever written.

★★☆☆☆

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Footloose (1984)

A city kid rocks the foundations of a conservative town in America's Midwest by challenging its ban of rock music and dancing, in this 80s classic, a dull, ridiculous melodrama that is not so ridiculous if you believe claims it is based on real events in the township of Elmore City, Oklahoma, and not so dull if you try to find ways in which it is analogous to real situations like, say, the Australian Government's stance on same-sex marriage.

★★☆☆☆

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Evita (1996)

This film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical attempts to reduce decades of Argentinian history into two hours of Tim Rice's bawdy rhyming couplets and because of this is an almost unwatchable movie-length rock opera music video featuring, among other embarrassments, suited Argentinian statesmen rapping to funky synthesizers, Antonio Banderas drifting around as a everywhere narrator who often has to nod and look unembarrassed as he waits a beat or two for the music to let him finish what he is saying, bawdy rhymes about Argentina's reverred/abhorred Eva Peron played by an out-of-her-depth Madonna and, the musical's biggest sin, apart from repeated scenes shot on the balcony of the Casa de Rosa, an almost entirely absent Buenos Aires.

★☆☆☆☆

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Baby Driver (2017)

Baby, a getaway driver for thieves, blocks out the bad around him by listening to killer music on his iPod all day, but eventually he has to de-bud and deal with the chaos closing in around him, not just that created by the psychopaths he is inextricably tied up with and who are growing more trigger-happy by the second but also the chaos of director Edgar Wright's plot which, like the psychopaths, starts off stylish and engaging but quickly becomes unreasonable and descends into a loud mess with little pay-off.

★★★☆☆

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Burlesque (2010)

An appreciation of burlesque will help you enjoy this backstage musical that is pretty much Coyote Ugly but instead of a squeaky voiced talent dancing on a NY bar, this has divas Cher and Christina Aguilera treading the boards of a struggling burlesque theatre in LA, and if you don't like burlesque, the movie features some pretty good humour that will help sustain you through the umpteen musical numbers.

★★☆☆☆

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Into the Woods (2014)

If you can look past the fact this whole elaborate tangle of fairytales could have been avoided if the characters stopped their incessant singing and just sat down and calmly talked to one another, and if you are not repelled by the movie's several unpleasant adult-child relationships, you might enjoy this star-studded film version of the long-running Broadway musical featuring Meryl Streep doing her best Witchy Poo.

★★☆☆☆

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This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Behind the big stadium theatrics of all the world's mega rock'n'roll bands, you just know there are the inflated egos, the writhing masses of petty differences, the overblown personalities and idiocy and mismanagement of the sorts portrayed in this classic and hilarious rock mockumentary.

★★★★☆

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Moulin Rouge (2001)

After Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet, Baz Luhrmann's next big breakout success was this showy "jukebox musical", a carry-on set in Paris featuring a forlorn playwright, a pompous Duke financing his play, and the leading lady they both love, and for all its showiness, boisterousness, fandango, and hot air, it is about nothing much at all and suffers dreadfully from the casting of a partucularly low-aspect Nicole Kidman as the focus of so much passion.

★★☆☆☆

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