West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

[pistolwink]

I thought the consensus was that Beymer was pretty limp in the 1961 version. He seems like a stand-up guy ... but there's a reason his career didn't take off after starring in one of the highest-grossing films of the 1960s. Elgort was hardly great. but it almost seems like the supporting cast outshining the leads is in this musical's DNA.

I thought the new version was an improvement over the original in most tangible ways — except that I will always prefer the undoctored film look over the over-fussed-with candied digital look that Spielberg's film has. yes, I know it was shot on 35mm, but these days a film goes through so much digital tinkering in post that this doesn't matter as much as it might. there were a few moments where the film felt a little overdirected and Spielberg might have been wise (no pun intended!) to let the scene play out a bit longer in long shot. but the film is a tremendous feat in coordinating choreography, camerawork, and editing. makes me wish Spielberg had been making musicals for decades, and didn't wait until he was in his 70s.

[The Curious Sofa]

This is one of the rare remakes of a classic film which fully justifies its existence and I'd place it alongside the great movie musicals of any period. It's also Spielberg's best film in at least a couple of decades.

I liked the Robert Wise film as a delivery system for Jerome Robbins' choreography and for what I think is the most beautiful score of any musical. The film's graphic mid-century look can also be beautiful but its artificiality jars when considering the subject matter. The browned up cast members have looked bad for a long time, while the actors cast as tough gang members were always impossible to take seriously. Now that the Spielberg film exists, I doubt I will ever go back to it. The only aspect where the original equals the remake is in the choreography, otherwise the new version is a huge improvement in every way.

I'm not going over every aspect where this scores over the old movie as it strikes me as obvious how much better the cast and the dialogue are here or where this feels like a movie while the original resembles a filmed stage play. Just one aspect as a fan of the original musical is how alive the score sounds when compared to the Marni Nixoned original, that in itself is a total joy.

What a shame this flopped, Spielberg has shown himself a natural for the movie musical and has made a later career masterpiece.

[soundchaser]

I'm not going over every aspect where this scores over the old movie as it strikes me as obvious how much better the cast and the dialogue are here or where this feels like a movie while the original resembles a filmed stage play.

I know this is objectively a virtue, but I found it to the film’s detriment. Obviously the choreography is never going to match Robbins’s original, so taking a different approach to the cinematography was probably smart, but I found myself begging for Spielberg to calm down and shoot from the front with no movement for a single shot during a musical number. There’s SO much movement on screen, and not all of it feels particularly motivated. It’s especially egregious during the gym scene, which, again, is on the surface impressive but feels less exciting than the original — all the diagonal bird’s-eye shots are pretty but obfuscate the dancing in a way I find difficult to articulate. It would have benefited, I thought, from some straight-on, theatrical shooting mixed in.

Still, for every choice Spielberg makes here that bothers me, there’s another that I enjoyed — often in successive shots! It’s a very pretty film, and I realize my critique may be a little idiosyncratic.