'tick, tick...BOOM!' serves up movie musical magic on Netflix
#152: "tick, tick...BOOM!," "Belfast," "Love Hard," "The Deer Hunter," "Rent"
Edition 152:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week’s newsletter: A triumphant movie musical is coming to Netflix, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. As if that’s not enough, we’ve also got one of the Best Picture front runners on tap in Belfast, and a cheesy Netflix rom-com to go with your usual streaming suggestions. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” we’ve got an official trailer for Adam McKay’s star-studded climate change thriller Don’t Look Up.
tick, tick … BOOM!
(Theaters, Netflix)
The thing you realize when you attend an event like a red carpet premiere at the Chinese Theatre, as I was fortunate enough to do for Lin Manuel Miranada’s directorial debut, is the distinct difference between Hollywood and movies.
It’s hard to get more Hollywood, at least in the romantic ideal of Hollywood that exists in our imaginations, than an event like this. The stars that walked the carpet up those steps continued the tradition dating back through nearly every major release since 1962 with Gene Kelly in the opening scene of Singin’ in the Rain, a scene which itself portrays a premiere on the same spot in 1927.
It was surreal before and after the screening, and again at the after party at The Roosevelt Hotel — site of the very first Oscars in 1929 (un-televised and only 15 minutes in duration, if you can imagine) — to be in such close proximity to fame. Truly a bucket list type of experience. At any given moment I may have been within ten feet of everyone from Vanessa Hudgens to Weird Al Yankovic, Andrew Garfield to Dominique Fishback, Ben Schwartz to Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Yet for every creative artist around that gilded courtyard there numbered a dozen producers, executives, assistants and money men, a reminder that the only art in Hollywood is the art of the deal. Amidst the unrelenting shop talk, success is measured in execution rather than quality. Truly, once one sees how the proverbial sausage gets made behind-the-scenes, stuffed with negotiations and leverage and concessions and lawyering, it’s a miracle that anything coming out the other end is edible, let alone tasty.
Which is why the most interesting part of the night is the one not mentioned here, yet. It’s those two hours when the lights dim and everyone, no matter how famous, surrenders to the experience of the silver screen. I’m talking about movies, not Hollywood. And in that moment, what matters is whether it’s good or not, and everyone is hoping it’s not only good but maybe even special.
tick, tick…BOOM! is definitely good, and might just be special.
It’s the story of Jonathan Larson, before he wrote the musical Rent and then died of a sudden aoritc dissection at the age of 35. He’s broke and staring down his 30th birthday, wondering when he’s going to become the person he thinks he should be. Originally it was a stage show, or really more of a rock monologue, written by Larson about his own life working on a previous stage show. It’s meta on a number of different levels.
In this newsletter we’ve talked about movie musicals a lot (like a lot a lot), and their struggles in adapting from stage to screen. This movie avoids the issue by just capturing Larson on stage performing the monologue and intercutting it throughout like a narrative spine.
In most cases that might seem hacky, but here it works because the story is so personal. Literally the entire narrative exists inside Larson’s head, which is portrayed as a genius if entirely chaotic place to be. His struggles over money, getting older, ambition and friends with AIDS serve as sort of a source text for Rent, mirroring that theme of time amplified by Larson’s premature demise.
Reverence for a Broadway legend is to be expected from the creative duo behind this project, writer Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) and director Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton), Broadway legends in their own right.
The movie feels very Broadway, in every way. The tone is very earnest, very theater kid, very jazz hands. One could lodge the complaint that the movie is perhaps even emotionally manipulative, but not more so than most stage musicals pouring on the string music and quivering vocals until every eye in the theater is moist. In many ways, this is really more musical than it is movie.
Miranda deserves credit for making it still feel cinematic, and the marriage of the two forms produces a few moments of musical movie magic that truly take your breath away.
He also feels like the only one who could’ve told this story, having perhaps more than any current celebrity had to come to terms with the “genius” label thrust upon him, while grappling with the enormous responsibility Larson felt of staring at that blank page and attempting to create something original out of nothing. That said, it is difficult to imagine Miranda directing any future projects that are not musicals.
The real star of the movie here is Andrew Garfield.
Lest we’ve forgotten as of late, this is one of the most talented actors on the planet. He embodies Larson with a bipolar energy and a high-strung anxiety that makes him as magnetic as he is unpredictable. It’s a charismatic performance, especially when performing Larson’s songs (he apparently learned to sing for the role, and nails it), but it’s also a generous one towards co-stars Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus and Vanessa Hudgens (to name a few). What’s more to say? Garfield is just fantastic. Most of the Best Actor hopefuls come in movies yet to be released, but for my money I believe it’s doubtful anyone could be as good as Garfield is here.
The real decision point for musicals is whether or not the songs are good (much like the binary of whether a comedy is funny or a horror movie is scary, etc.). I’m happy to report that they are, from the show-stopping set pieces down to the emotional ballads, and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be swept up in that emotion machine mentioned earlier.
I really shouldn’t be saying this, but I actually liked the music and story of this movie more than Rent, though I admit they’re quite similar.
I’ve currently got it as my No. 2 movie of the year (behind CODA, though there are at least a half dozen movies still to come which will be strong contenders for the top spot).
With the accessibility of Netflix, that’s more than enough reason to devote two hours of your time this week to this musical. I can’t wait to rewatch it!
Something New
Belfast (Theaters): This is a lovely and life-affirming movie saddled with the unfair expectations of now being a Best Picture front-runner. One of the main reasons for that expectation is the movie’s frequent comparisons to Alfonso Cuaròn’s Roma, in that both are nostalgic retellings of the director’s childhood shot in black and white, and perhaps Roma’s dynamic and profound storytelling is giving Belfast prestige by proxy.
However, this movie reminded me far more of Cinema Paradiso, a cheerful movie of modest ambition. It’s heart-warming, crowd-pleasing, and incredibly personal. Writer/director Kenneth Branagh is far more interested in the life of his nine-year-old protagonist than he is in The Troubles going on around him. Things like his crush on a classmate and his relationship with his grandparents are given far more weight than the violence between Catholics and Protestants erupting on his street, which figures neatly into the psychology of our point of view character but skirts away from the complexity (or at least the appearance of complexity) that would endear it to Academy voters. On the whole, I believe the movie to be an absolute lock to be nominated and give it a very slim chance at winning.
That distinction matters for general audiences, since this is such a small movie which most people won’t have a chance to see in theaters — which is a shame, because the visuals are great and the music needle drops are even greater — and won’t seek out on VOD unless it receives the distinction of Best Picture. Still, it features excellence across the board technically and magnetic acting from Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds and Jude Hill as the very rare child actor who can offer more than just precociousness. It’s altogether a modest story, well told.
Love Hard (Netflix): This movie is an almost overwhelming collection of cheesy rom-com cliches — everything from getting catfished, to someone pretending to be someone else’s girlfriend, to someone helping their crush impress someone else, to the attractive girl falling for the ugly guy, to the ultimate test of compatibility being whether or not you think Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and on and on and on. We’ve seen these things a million times before.
It’s almost hilarious how shamelessly it patches these things together, but it doesn’t do so entirely without charm, thanks to lovable (if uncomplicated) performances from leads Nina Dobrev and Jimmy O. Yang. Still, a movie like this makes you appreciate just how special Happiest Season was last year, a similar yet entirely superior cheesy Christmas rom-com (streaming on Hulu).
Something Old
The Deer Hunter (1978): I’ve been reading a book on the making of the movie Heaven’s Gate, which essentially bankrupted the entire United Artists studio in a sort of cinematic Chernobyl (maybe a topic for a future newsletter). But the reason UA entertained the nightmare of that movie was because director Michael Cimino had just won Best Director and Best Picture for The Deer Hunter, a movie whose legacy has endured across the decades.
It’s long and leisurely paced, but the scenes of Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken as POWs in Vietnam playing Russian roulette are among the most iconic movie images of all time, and the cumulative effect of the movie’s pathos becomes genuinely affecting as it reaches its conclusion. Add to that cast a young Meryl Streep and the immortal John Cazale, plus some truly stunning cinematography, and you’ve got a classic bucket list movie for any aspiring cinephile.
Something to Stream
Rent (HBO Max): As the credits roll on tick, tick…BOOM!, your first reaction will likely be appreciation for Jonathan Larson as a creative genius. Which, if you’re like me and have never seen the musical Rent, will send you immediately over to HBO Max to witness his magnum opus. It’s about a group of young creatives in New York City, struggling with money and getting older (the autobiographical elements seem to be a Larson signature), plus the ever-encroaching AIDS epidemic. It wasn’t my favorite musical of all time but the songs are undeniable — 525,600 minutes, La Vie Bohème and One Song Glory have been stuck in my head all week.
I laughed when I found out we had a Ben Platt situation going on here. The movie’s main character is played by Anthony Rapp, who originated the role off-Broadway and then on Broadway a full 11 years before the movie came out. But he’s surrounded by serious talent: a young Rosario Dawson, Idina Menzel and Taye Diggs, to name a few. While I think tick, tick is better in just about every way, this musical is still worth a watch.
Trailer Watch: Don’t Look Up
Here’s the cast of this movie in order of appearance in the trailer: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Rob Morgan, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalamet, Ron Perlman, and Kid Cudi.
Adam McKay has assembled one of the greatest movie casts of all time for this climate change thriller, which appears to showcase he signature biting comedy a la The Big Short and Vice. There’s really no way this movie is anything below like a 7.5 out of 10.