Part of Staff Picks and Music City Mondays and programmed by C.J., who says “Notorious for its saccharine charm and gothic spectacle, Schumacher’s frenetic iteration of Gaston Leroux’s “Phantom of the Opera” will leave you breathless and clutching your pearls— and thanking your lucky stars that the Belcourt’s almost a 100-year-old ceiling is free of chandeliers. This is a can’t miss theatrical event and one very dear to little me’s heart, as I paraded around my childhood home using a velvet comforter as a cape, singing ‘Angel of Music’ to my cocker spaniel. And the first 30 arrivals might just receive a rose…”

Deep in the passageways below the Paris Opera lives a lonely, talented, horribly disfigured man who revels in terrorizing the theater’s employees as The Phantom of the Opera. But when the masked Phantom sees young Christine Daaé, his heart melts. He secretly trains her, transforms her into a star … and loves her. But when she cannot return his affection, as her heart already belongs to another, all the pain that the Phantom has held within is revealed with horrifying results.

“It's hard to imagine a more faithful celluloid translation of the stage phenomenon. The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.” —William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Dec 21, 2004)

“Schumacher has indeed delivered the lavish, lushly romantic film that fans have envisioned for years.” —Michael Dequina, Film Threat (Dec 22, 2004)