Rating: 
Summary: A Feast of Creativity
Review: If you are alert, creative, and intelligent, and if you appreciate those qualities in your entertainment, watch -- no, experience Moulin Rouge. I saw this in a wonderful theatre, and now I've seen the DVD, and I must say that while the DVD is top quality, and I will certainly purchase it, I feel truly sorry for anyone who missed this in the theatre. There's so much to catch your mind won't wander for a moment. The suggestion by a few that Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman cannot sing is absurd. From lead to supporting actors, the performances are terrific. John Leguizamo must be nominated for something! This guy has talent to spare. Here is the reason you needed to purchase surround-sound and a wide-screen TV. Don't blame this musical or DVD for the limitations of your television or your imagination.
Rating:
Summary: The Movies' Movie.....
Review: Moulin Rouge - from start to finish - is what every other movie aspires to be. With flash, with (yes!) spectacle, this movie (not "film") entertains and reminds us that we are in a theater, watching and enjoying ourselves. De Mille must be green with envy, wherever he is.The DVD doesn't do too badly, either. All the extra bits can lead one astray, if one is not very, very, careful. I got lost in the costume stills, myself, but that is my own personal obsession. Baz Luhrman and the team that supports him in his dream, making movies, shows no fear in painting a world that doesn't exist, but one that might have existed - if only someone had followed the Green Fairy, perhaps. This is what has made Luhrman unique in his endeavours, this lack of fear in doing what he knows is necessary to realize his ideal. The results have been wondrous, from Strictly Ballroom to Romeo + Juliet to Moulin Rouge. Juxtaposing contemporary music with period location, sets, and costumes adds another layer of story-telling and grabs the attention of the audience. Immediately there is a connection, no matter who in the audience feels that this juxtaposition may be taking things a bit too far (not me! taking things too far often isn't far enough). It also frees up set and costume design, in that anachronism becomes just another method of highlighting a character or place in the story. The story itself is over the top, more than a fairytale, Gothic in romance, grand in scale, but ultimately simple in message. It keeps reminding us that we are the watchers, not the participants. We are the people the message is being brought to, and all the song and glory is for us, so we will remember the message forever.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars+: Best Movie of the Year!
Review: This is simply the most stunning movie of the year. Everything from the acting, cinematography, set design, and musical score culminates in an astonishing visual feast never seen before in American cinema. The behind the scenes documentaries, picture galleries, interviews and cut scenes are a must for any fan. Luhrmann is phenomenal and his movie is a masterpiece; Baz rises above Spielberg with this film. If you buy one DVD this year, make it Moulin Rouge.
Rating: 
Summary: Arrrrggghhh!
Review: Okay, first off I would like to say that these oh so referentially hip and ironic types pieces of pop culture fluff are wearing dreadfully thin. The singing in this film is amateurish, but I could have dealt with that (as I did in "Everyone Says I Love You".) The visuals are pretty, but they are candy and are ultimately empty images. The story is a pure drag with terribly slow pacing for having such hyperactive editing techniques. The acting is truly awful, from all parties involved. I could not suffer through this turgid movie one more time. Maybe if you dig on movies like "Shrek" and "10 things I hate about you", this is your kind of flick. Or maybe if you like cinematography for it's own sake you will like the stylishness of the shots. I found this movie aggravating to no end. Oh, yeah....the arrangements under the singing were awful as well.
Rating:
Summary: 2001. Results. The best love story.
Review: I liked Romeo + Juliet and hoped that next Lurmann's picture wouldn't be worse. And it wasn't. It's very original musical and there are a lot of things about this side of the film, but... This is a story of love. Young poet and courtesan. Their life. Their fate. Their love. Above everything - there is only one thing. And it is love. The main thing in the world. And it is beautiful and light feeling even if it is a tragical love. Romeo + Juliet was about it. Moulin Rouge! was about it. And it is so great that in our pragmatic and cynical world there are people who understand, that
ALL WE NEED IS LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Best movie of the year!
Review: I think this movie deserves it's "movie of the year nomination."All about the Boheamean Revolution, truth, beauty, freedom, and love.The acting was great!The singing was even better, I didn't even know Kidman could sing, very good too.The costumes were very detailed and amazing.The coreography deserves an award of it's own, with the thrilling can-can to the love betraing tango.A must have-must see kind of movie.
Rating:
Summary: Come what may...
Review: Everyone is a critic in today's time of the internet. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I honestly don't know how anyone could not love this movie, unless you are some kind of grinch who can't stand love stories... Personally, I thought Ewan McGregor has a great voice, and I can't immagine anyone else filling the role, not Tom Hanks, not Tom Cruise, not even Brad Pitt. Not to mention that Ewan is pure eye candy. This DVD is truly astonishing, from the special features to the crisp video playback. Definately a movie that needs to be in everyone's collection.
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant combining of cliches
Review: This is an excellent film. What makes it excellent is not its songs nor the voices that sing them, not its plot, not the actors nor their performances. The songs are reworkings of classic pop tunes, and the voices are decent enough for anyone except those expecting professionally trained vocalists (at least it isn't dubbed!). The plot and its execution are patchworks of cliches: boy falls in love, loses girl, gets girl, tragedy strikes; lowly writer wins the love of "high" and beautiful courtesan. This film's spectacular accomplishment is the combining of film AND musical theater cliches into a cohesive whole in a way that, to my knowledge, has never been done before. In theater, it is impossible to change settings in the course of a song as many times as they do - the rendition of "Roxanne" is particularly brilliant in this respect. In the movies, where everything is "believability," it is difficult to get away with the overdone acting that is characteristic of this film. The transitions between dialogue and song are often much smoother than in theater (except in the beginning, where it is intentional), as if one were simply weaving a thread of musical theater into and out of the film. The principle on which the movie was built seems to be an over-the-top representation of both genres: the close-ups are, at times, outrageous; the classic musical numbers are exaggerated (see the "Can-can" or "Like a Virgin"); the scenes in the Moulin Rouge are often enormously disorienting to the point of disrupting one's sense of space and time; the acting is intentionally overdone to the point of melodrama. All of these techniques create an atmosphere in which sincere, straightforward emotion have no place. But when such emotions ARE expressed, they are set in such high relief against the rest of the film that the viewer forgets that they are "cliche" or as old as time. And that ability to do that is nothing short of brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: Oui Oui for Moulin Rouge!
Review: I find it amusing that so many people are only rating and reviewing the film "Moulin Rouge" here. This is a film where there is little room for shades of gray - you either love it or hate it. If you did not see this film in the theaters, by all means go to you local rental store and take the DVD home for a night or two before buying it here on Amazon. If your brain warps or your eyes roll back into your head or you are beset with moans or giggles, be thankful that you only spent a couple of dollars on the rental and proceed on with your life (don't worry I hear the recovery time is relatively short). If this is not the case, by all means, buy this DVD and immerse yourself in the lavish treatment the film receives in this 2-disc set. Director Baz Luhrmann has simply created one of the most impressive DVD packages on the market today. There are so many extras (deleted scenes, extended dance sequences, music videos, hundreds of still photos) that it would be difficult to list them all out without exceeding the 1000-word limit for reviews. Although the DVD contains two separate audio commentary tracks, one small quibble is that neither contains any from the actors. Nevertheless, it is a disc that you will pop into the DVD player time and time again. This is the reason to buy any DVD in the first place, right? If all these features are possibly not enough, fifteen "easter eggs" are hidden on Disc 2 with more brief behind-the-scenes snippets. Is this all excessive? Sure! But would we expect anything less from Luhrmann who already showed us how over-the-top he likes to go with his previous film "Romeo & Juliet"? But there is no denying his passion and this DVD is certainly a love letter to the filmmaking process. The "Moulin Rouge" DVD is exhaustive -- but just may leave you wonderfully breathless!
Rating: 
Summary: Wow . . . why is this movie getting panned so badly?
Review: I'm reading the reviews for Moulin Rouge, and I am really disappointed that people are panning it so badly. What the heck did you all expect? First off, it's the closest thing to a musical that you're going to get these days. If you don't like musicals, don't see the movie. I keep reading over and over again how people were "surprised" that it was a musical, or that they were "disappointed". Umm . . . how could you miss that? It was advertised as a musical expose'. That means that there's going to be (gasp) singing and dancing! Secondly, admittedly (as a fan of musicals in general) Nicole and Ewan's voices aren't perfect, but they're not bad. They're more than bearable. Is Nicole Kidman the next Patty Lapone? NO, but she can carry a tune and her voice is sweet if not powerful. I actually LIKED Ewan's voice, but apparently that is a taste thing because more than one person has said that he can't sing, which I disagree with. And thirdly . . . the story line. Yes, it is melodramatic cliché. Yes, the whole whore with a heart of gold thing has been done before, but you know what? There is NO way that they could do this movie any other way. The music and the visuals are SO extreme, that if you attempted to bring in a congested, complicated story, it would get lost in the visuals. This movie is to watch with an artistic eye - the colors, the scenery, the beauty of it would outshine ANY plot-line. Sticking with a tried and true story (the story of Orpheus, a greek hero/demi-God) was a bright idea. People can follow it without too much effort - imagine trying to watch this movie with it's Can Can and dancing and singing and huge sets and ALSO trying to follow a plot bogged down in detail - it's sensory overload and you'd HATE the flick. Thank you to the producers of Moulin Rouge for keeping something simple - otherwise, it would have been WAY too heavy. Honestly, I can see where this flick is not for everybody. Yes, there are bits of it that make you roll your eyes (thus, my 4 star rating and not 5), but if you like to see beautiful things, if you like artistic movies, or if you like musicals, Moulin Rouge would be for you. It's spectacular in its own way - I have not seen a movie as ambitious as this in a long while. Happy viewing!
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