Chicago

8/21/2018

**_Beautiful women frolicking around in showgirl costumes_** In mid-20s' Chicago Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) find themselves on death row for murdering their lovers and fan the fame that will keep them from the gallows with the assistance of a slick lawyer (Richard Gere). John C. Reilly plays Roxie's likable but dimwitted husband while Latifah is on hand as the avaricious prison matron. People criticize this amusing satirical musical for being sleazy, but it would be hard to lampoon and ridicule the corrupt targets of the media and the legal (in)justice system without showing, um, sleaze. That's the point of the original 1926 play "Chicago" and all its successive incarnations, including this acclaimed 2002 movie: illustrating and sarcastically

8/29/2018

SPOILERS AHEAD! From Rob Marshall ("Into the Woods") and Bill Condon ("Dreamgirls") comes this charming satirical stab on celebrity criminals. Based on the 1975 stage play and starring Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere. Set in the jazz age of Chicago, Illinois. "Chicago" tells the story of two women on murderess row who hope that fame and fortune will keep them out of the gallows. Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) is a vaudevillian performer who plugs her sister and husband right before a performance. Roxie Hart (Zellweger) is watching the performance while idolizeing Velma and hopes one day to be on the stage just like her. Convinced that with Fred Casely's (Dominic West) help she will get what she wants. But, when Casely turns out to be an abusive lying womanizer Rox

3/29/2022

Hats off to Rob Marshall for taking a cast not necessarily obvious for this story and moulding them into an entertaining trio. The screenplay has been sanitised a bit, and proves really quite thin: "Roxie" (Renée Zellweger) and "Velma" (Catherine Zeta-Jones) are both convicted murderesses who will do just about anything to escape death row. Using their skills as dancers, and their gifts for attracting publicity they must try to engage dodgy lawyer "Billy Flynn" (Richard Gere) to help get them out of the clutches of prison warden "Mama Morton" (a superb Queen Latifah). That's all pretty incidental to the stunning look of this film. At times a little confusing as the costumes seems to straddle timelines from the 1920s to things one might see in "Saturday Night Fever", but it is all about the

4/4/2022

Hats off to Rob Marshall for taking a cast not necessarily obvious for this story and moulding them into an entertaining trio. The screenplay has been sanitised a bit, and proves really quite thin: "Roxie" (Renée Zellweger) and "Velma" (Catherine Zeta-Jones) are both convicted murderesses who will do just about anything to escape death row. Using their skills as dancers, and their gifts for attracting publicity they must try to engage dodgy lawyer "Billy Flynn" (Richard Gere) to help get them out of the clutches of prison warden "Mama Morton" (a superb Queen Latifah). That's all pretty incidental to the stunning look of this film. At times a little confusing as the costumes seems to straddle timelines from the 1920s to things one might see in "Saturday Night Fever", but it is all about the