Curator Watchlist
A glossy, overstuffed musical biopic with real visual energy and a strong sense of spectacle, but its politics are muddled and the central performance divides viewers. It’s worth it if you want a big, stylized, emotionally heightened take on a controversial historical figure; less so if you want nuance or a fully… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 2h 15m
Director: Alan Parker
Starring: Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce
The hit musical based on the life of Evita Duarte, an Argentinian actress who eventually became the wife of Argentinian president Juan Perón, and the most beloved and hated woman in Argentina.
Alan Parker
Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce
A glossy, overstuffed musical biopic with real visual energy and a strong sense of spectacle, but its politics are muddled and the central performance divides viewers. It’s worth it if you want a big, stylized, emotionally heightened take on a controversial historical figure; less so if you want nuance or a fully convincing dramatic portrait.
Evita is the kind of movie that arrives in a blaze of confidence and never really stops moving. Alan Parker turns the story into a feverish pageant of ambition, image-making, and national myth, with big production numbers that keep the film from feeling like a static stage transfer. It’s polished, propulsive, and often genuinely thrilling as cinema, even when it’s clearly more interested in momentum than in political clarity.
The film’s biggest problem is that it can’t quite decide how it feels about Eva Perón, or how deeply it wants to interrogate the machinery around her. The result is a portrait that feels both grand and oddly evasive. Madonna’s performance is a major point of contention, but the movie’s larger issue is tonal: it wants tragedy, satire, and hagiography at once, and those impulses don’t always mesh.
Still, there’s enough craft here to make it memorable. The editing is sharp, the musical staging is often inventive, and Antonio Banderas gives the film a charismatic, watchable counterpoint. If you’re in the mood for a flamboyant historical musical that values spectacle over restraint, Evita has enough force to justify the ride.
Arantza (2★) · 1218 likes
Madonna and Antonio Banderas, two well known Argentinians,
skimblebanks (2★) · 738 likes
madonna can't really act but at least her singing is also bad
Cameron Bertram (3★) · 455 likes
I wonder if Alan Parker was listening to the radio and "La Isla Bonita" came on and he was like "Yea, she'll do."
emmy klein (2★) · 406 likes
yes we CAN sing everything…. but MUST we?
Anna🍓 (5★) · 323 likes
Evita starring the wonderfully talented Rachel Zegler closed tonight at the London Palladium and instead of seeing that we had to sit in my living room and watch Madonna massacre the role
Another glossy, heightened musical adaptation that leans into romance, spectacle, and theatrical excess.
For viewers who like showbiz energy, sharp editing, and a satirical take on fame and performance.
A maximalist musical with the same love of emotional excess and stylized storytelling.
A sweeping historical portrait of power, image, and the loneliness of rule.
A polished political character study about public perception and the burden of iconography.
For the blend of stardom, performance, and tragic self-mythologizing.
A classic musical where performance and politics collide in a decadent, uneasy atmosphere.
If the appeal is the show-business intensity and self-dramatizing energy.
A formally bold, reverent historical portrait with a strong sense of icon-making.
Another ambitious, politically charged biographical drama about power and public image.
A stylized, music-driven biopic that privileges mood and myth over strict realism.
A colorful biographical drama about a larger-than-life figure shaped by art and legend.
political ambition, rise and fall, public image, national mythmaking, celebrity and power, historical drama, ambition versus morality, spectacle
musical, biopic, historical drama, political intrigue, camp, spectacle, ambition, 1990s cinema, melodrama, adaptation