'West Side Story,' 'Nightmare Alley' and 'Being The Ricardos' Kick Off Cram-For-The-Exam Week
#155: "West Side Story," "Nightmare Alley," "Being the Ricardos"
Edition 155:
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!
PROGRAMMING NOTE!!
Every year around the holidays there’s a crush of new movies vying for attention. This newsletter is meant to be something of a consumer guide to which of those things are worth your attention and why you should care about them, but every year I fall behind schedule (too busy whooping my family in board games, I guess).
In a perfect world, as of today I’d provide you with my thoughts on these SEVEN movies: West Side Story, Being The Ricardos, Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Matrix Resurrections, and…sigh, Spider-Man: No Way Home. One super long mega-edition would take too long to read (and write, frankly), but the deadline of New Year’s Eve and my much-anticipated year in movies rankings are looming.
So I’m planning a kind of “cram for the exam” week. It’ll be two (ish) movie reviews per day leading up to the big reveal on Friday morning, when I’ll rank every 2021 release I saw this year (a list with well over 80 entries already).
Tuesday (today): West Side Story, Nightmare Alley, Being The Ricardos
Wednesday: Don’t Look Up, The Matrix Resurrections
Thursday: The Tragedy of Macbeth, Spider-Man: No Way Home
Friday: 4th Annual! Every Movie in 2021, Ranked
West Side Story
(Theaters)
Think about the number of creative geniuses who have had a hand in this latest rendition of West Side Story.
It’s directed by Steven Spielberg, perhaps the most iconic filmmaker of all time (Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Shindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan); written by Tony Kushner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and Oscar nominee for Best Screenplay on both of his previous movie scripts; it’s remaking a 1961 movie that won 10 Oscars, the most awarded to a single movie ever; it’s adapted from a stage musical that won two Tonys, with music from legends Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim; and it’s updating the “Romeo and Juliet” story by a guy you may have heard of named William Shakespeare.
Despite the original movie’s pedigree, which left many asking why anyone would want to remake it (a position I ordinarily agree with), the legacy of the 1961 classic is complicated by numerous social shortcomings, most notably that several of the Puerto Rican characters were played by white actors (including star Natalie Wood) donning thick accents and what essentially amounts to Brown Face.
That original movie is a wonderful time capsule of 1960s Hollywood (warts and all). It’s pure artifice, all about bright lights and singing and dancing and *jazz hands* showbiz baby. Despite the grimy setting of a low income neighborhood in 1950s New York City, it’s incredibly glamorous. And the greatness of the music is undeniable.
Still, it was ripe for a revisit. Spielberg, not an obvious choice to direct a movie musical, was able to bring to that preexisting baseline of excellence his once-in-a-generation mastery of moviecraft.
This new movie captures the grittiness of mid-century tenement buildings and hoodlums, but in all their romantic glory, producing nothing less than the most gloriously “old school” Hollywood spectacle released by a major studio in years — the full treatment of lens flares, silhouetted back light, huge song-and-dance numbers and perfectly synchronized camera movement with the choreography.
This was far from slapping a fresh coat of modern technology paint on a classic tale. To watch the original movie and the new version on successive nights, as I did, is to appreciate all of the subtle changes that not only updated the story but made it altogether better.
This may seem sacrilegious against a movie that won 10 Oscars, but this remake improves on the original in every way.
The decision to cast the entire story in the direct shadow of a gentrifying Manhattan more clearly underlines the stakes and creates an urgency that brings the conflict between the “Jets” (the European immigrant gang) and the “Sharks” (the Puerto Rican gang) into focus as a war between two equally poor communities grasping to control what’s left of their home.
Most notably, in this version there’s a great leveling of racial portrayals. Not only are all the PR characters played by Hispanic actors, the bare minimum, but the two sides are actually valued equally. This includes the decision to not put any subtitles on the liberal use of Spanish dialogue in the movie, normalizing it without sacrificing any narrative cohesion (any necessary information is also said in English).
That move could’ve come across as woke glad-handing, especially because the primary filmmakers behind this project are still old rich white guys, but instead it plays incredibly sincere.
Several characters, including our protagonist Tony, are given additional backstory that creates deeper and clearer motivation for the events told in the story — the leaders of each gang are somehow harsher and more sympathetic, lynchpin character Chino is given a necessary arc before his tragic final act, and somehow, impossibly, the towering Rita Moreno performance from the original is topped by the utter brilliance of Ariana DeBose’s Anita.
The acting performances across the board are strong and, I believe, mint rising new stars out of DeBose and Rachel Zegler, who plays the previously flat protagonist character of Maria (the Juliet) with newfound warmth and complexity. And while many object to the personal decisions of Ansel Elgort (look it up), and rightly point out how miscast he is here as an obviously late-20s-looking “Romeo” to the teenage Maria, I can’t help but compliment his physical presence, his impressive dancing ability and, though this may sound like a backhanded compliment, his ability to play the male version of the “manic pixie dream girl” movie trope.
All minor sins can be forgiven by the music. It’s hard to think of many American Songbook moments more iconic than “…Tonight, Tonight…” or “I like to be in a A-me-ri-ca!” or “Gee, Officer Krupke” or “I feel pre-tty, oh so pre-tty!” In the musical genre, songs are like the car chases and fistfights of an action movie, and these more than bring the show-stopping appeal. In this newer version, their order in the movie and in a couple cases the person singing them are changed to surprising and (once again) wonderful effect.
The result of all this tweaking is a proper capital “M” Movie. It feels big and important and the emotional punch hits home like a ton of bricks.
I saw it in the theaters with a friend who cried through the final probably 30 minutes. She works in movie development, and her comment after the screening was simply, “that movie reminded me why I want to make movies,” followed up later with a more dramatic, “if I can make one movie like that in my career I’ll be happy.”
My suggestion to her was to get Spielberg, working off the groundwork laid by Kushner, Robbins, Wise, Bernstein, Sondheim, and Shakespeare. That’s a heck of a place to start.
Nightmare Alley
(Theaters)
What movie should you make after you win Best Picture? Maybe you think it’s time to taste that sweet sweet Marvel money like Chloé Zhao (Nomadland→Eternals), or you immediately go for the back-to-back crowns like Alejandro Inarritu (Birdman→The Revanant), or you have a midlife crisis and decide you want to become Batman like Ben Affleck (Argo).
Guillermo del Toro was patient after his win for The Shape of Water, waiting a full four (pandemic-affected) years to bring us Nightmare Alley, his take on a classic noir story about a traveling circus trickster in the 1940s.
One of the signature aspects of noir, a genre I explained fully earlier this year, is that all of the characters are at least partially evil, and in fact they have to be somewhat evil in order to survive in a harsh world. That feeling can make movies like this one someone alienating to a generation trained by the clean good vs. evil lines of Marvel movies.
Bradley Cooper plays a carnie with the ambition to rise above his station by becoming a “mentalist,” a type of magician who appears to have supernatural powers. His Icarus-style arc gives the movie a satisfying structure, but the movie is more interested in the way he interacts with a truly astounding array of noir characters and the world class actors who embody them — the femme fatale (Cate Blanchett), the love interest (Rooney Mara), the mark (Richard Jenkins), the father figure (Willem Dafoe), the mentor (David Strathairn), the confidante (Toni Collette), plus colorful one-offs played by Mary Steenburgen, Ron Perlman, Holt McCallany and Tim Blake Nelson.
They inhabit a spooky noir world almost too beautiful to describe in words. The lighting and production design, the costuming and colors, it’s gorgeous on a level above anything else I’ve seen this year, creating each frame like it’s a painting that could hang in a museum.
When you assemble a troupe of actors this astoundingly impressive and put them in a world as visually arresting as this one, you’ve ensured audience participation through any amount of craziness or weirdness you want to present.
Which, incidentally, is a lot. The movie rests on the unstable ground of magic and mysticism, leaving viewers feeling quite often as if the rug beneath them could be yanked out at any time. del Toro is willing to stay in that uneasiness longer than most directors, not pulling the strings on the movie’s plot twists until very late into its (annoyingly long) two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
Anyone who watches this movie will have no choice but to surrender to the overwhelming care and craft put into it, to call it a “good movie.” Fewer will walk away from it and say they truly enjoyed the twisted, diabolical world of grifters and hucksters del Toro has created here, which, like many great noir movies before it, leaves one with little hope for the real world outside the theater walls.
Being The Ricardos
(Theaters, Amazon Prime)
Usually show business movies aren’t really about show business. The familiar settings and allure of celebrity provide a nice backdrop to tell stories about jealousy (All About Eve), clinging to the past (Sunset Boulevard), the cost of achieving your dreams (La La Land), politics (Argo), creative control (Mank), or how hot Brad Pitt looks shirtless (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood).
Rarely have I seen a movie so laser-focused on the nuts and bolts of television production than Being The Ricardos, the latest directorial project from screenplay maestro Aaron Sorkin. Going behind the scenes of a production (broadly defined) is Sorkin’s M.O., and without listing his whole résumé I bet you can think of the times he’s done this for the White House, S.N.L., ESPN, Facebook, Apple, and even an MLB baseball team.
So fear not, Sorkin fans, because this deep dive into the world of 1950s smash TV hit “I Love Lucy” gives ample space for walk-and-talks, hyper-literate ping-pong dialogue and soaring philosophical monologues.
It’s also a proving ground for Sorkin’s directorial ability, which is not only more stylish but also more cogent here than his previous efforts (Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7).
Still, there’s a lingering feeling that the movie doesn’t quite make a convincing argument for its own existence. As a nostalgic exploration of the public and private lives of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, it’s worthwhile, but I doubt those names carry much significance for viewers under the age of 50. As a story about a woman’s fight for empowerment, respect and ultimately power, it’s effective, but Sorkin is an odd avatar and not entirely interested party in making a message movie.
Which leaves us with TV production, followed here with incredible detail: script read throughs, re-writes, costuming, blocking, camera tests, line readings, creating the narrative arc of a season, sponsorships, dealing with executives, and all the other details that would seem tedious if applied to any other line of work other than Hollywood.
It’s incredible that the climax of this movie is whether or not the setup to a joke in one episode will get a laugh from the studio audience, and incredibly Sorkin to mine some deeper resonance out of perhaps the show’s most iconic line: “Lucy, I’m home!”
Perhaps the inconsequential nature of this ultimately very fun movie would’ve felt less important had its leading actors not been miscast. Both Nicole Kidman (as Lucille Ball) and Javier Bardem (as Desi Arnaz) are incredible actors, and talented enough to play any part while lending their Academy Award-winning gravitas to it. They simply aren’t right for these roles — not even counting the social media outcries for Deborah Messing’s almost spooky likeness to Ball.
Sorkinism as a style requires avatars who are loose and neurotic and linguistically dexterous, which doesn’t quite match the nervy determinism of Kidman or the laid-back patience of Bardem. Plus, they are a full 10 years older than their real life counterparts during the “present” time of the movie, and in frequent flashbacks as much as 30 years older than the supposedly youthful and vivacious pair of showmen.
A younger or maybe even less deathly serious lead pairing would’ve fit better with a knock-out supporting cast, particularly J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda and Alia Shawkat, all of whom burn through the warpspeed comedy and amply shift on a dime into sad or sentimental moments.
As with most Sorkin, the baseline for entertainment is so incredibly high you’ll never regret investing your time in it. And though this movie falls a little short of excellence, it’s clear Sorkin is honing his craft and seems likely to me he will eventually direct a masterpiece.
Trailer Watch: The Northman
Usually when we talk about artistically-inclined directors going mainstream, it comes after the dispiriting news that they’ve signed on to make another cookie-cutter Marvel movie. Not so with Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The VVitch), who is cashing in his success to make this hyper-masculine revenge thriller with the star-power of Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman and Ethan Hawke.
It’s got real Beowulf vibes but it’s shot like The Revenant, including one absolutely show-stopping moment in the trailer where our title character catches a javelin out of mid-air and throws it back, a moment so impressive I had to rewind and watch it three or four times. It may well be the first great movie of 2022!