This past weekend saw the release of John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum, the latest in Chad Stahelski’s immensely entertaining series about an unflappable (and endlessly pursued) assassin played by Keanu Reeves. These films are generally categorized as action movies, but for me their chief pleasure is their inventive and breathless fight choreography. (Indeed, in my capsule review of the latest John Wick, I compared the series favorably to Gene Kelly’s musicals.) What is the extended sequence of hand-to-hand combat between Reeves and Common in John Wick: Chapter 2 (arguably the highlight of the series) if not a dance between two gifted physical performers? In narrative terms, the sequence stops the movie flat; in aesthetic terms, however, it’s an immersive, celebratory passage about gracefulness and corporeal sensation. Stahelski is clearly aware of this—note how he sometimes juxtaposes the action in Chapter 3 with scenes of a ballet company rehearsing.
The Pajama Game Film scholar Jane Feuer has argued that the Hollywood musical is a politically conservative genre, a notion challenged by the Warners musicals of the 30s, Bells Are Ringing (1960), and this exuberant, underrated 1957 movie. Adapted from George Abbott’s Broadway hit, it concerns a strike in a pajama factory, with Doris Day as the shop steward and John Rait as her boss. Though the sexual politics are far from progressive, this is the sort of labor musical that inspired Jean-Luc Godard’s admiration. Bob Fosse’s airy choreography is terrific, and so is the score, which includes “Seven and a Half Cents” and a steamy “Steam Heat.” Stanley Donen directed with verve and energy. —Jonathan Rosenbaum
