The Unfettered Critic – March 2022

You were up at five AM on February 8, anxiously awaiting revelation of the 2021 Oscar nominations, right?

Yeah, neither were we, but then, we’re old hands at this. We slept in, and looked them up on the ‘net later in the day. We felt pretty smug because we’d actually seen a surprising number of the nominees despite being unable to visit the multiplex during this never-departing pandammit. But lucky us, Hollywood streamed the multiplex to us! As a result, we got to view blockbusters in our cozy living room, chomping grilled cheese sandwiches instead of popcorn.

In the Best Picture category, The Power of the Dog got a whopping twelve nominations. It’s a dark, suspenseful, beautifully photographed story with a cold, cold heart, and definitely not “family entertainment.” Proving that a movie doesn’t have to “feel good” to score accolades.

Steven Spielberg’s heartfelt remake of West Side Story is the sentimental favorite in the Best Pic category this year. It’s undeniably brilliant, but to date, hasn’t drawn a big audience. Had Steven asked our opinion, we’d have recited our cardinal rule of filmmaking: Don’t remake beloved classics. They inevitably get compared to the original, scene by scene, star by star, line delivery by line delivery. The original version of West Side Story won Best Picture in 1961, and still inspires matching lumps in our throats each time we see it. As beautiful as this one is, it…didn’t.

The remakes that do work are those where the original turned out somehow flawed, or the casting now seems hopelessly dated. For example, Ocean’s Eleven, The Fly, True Grit, or The Thing. Hmmm. Maybe if Spielberg had refashioned West Side Story as a zombie musical…

Speaking of remakes, Dune received ten nominations, and while it’s eons better than David Lynch’s 1984 effort, the pacing is slooooow. And once audiences realize they’ll have to wait for Part Two—whenever that happens—to learn whether Paul will defeat the evil Baron, ride a sandworm, or get the sand out of his stillsuit, their patience will be tested. Sure, there are plenty of pages to cover in Frank Herbert’s sacred source, but Peter Jackson managed to condense Tolkien’s equally wordy Lord of the Rings tomes into three entertaining movies. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is as dry as Arrakis.

(Sidenote: the best picture doesn’t always win Best Picture. How else to explain Citizen Kane losing to How Green Was My Valley in 1941, and Oliver beating out 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968? Open the ballot box, HAL! We demand a recount!)

Perhaps our favorite of the big 2021 movies wasn’t on the Best Pic list (although lead actor Andrew Garfield received a nod): tick, tick…BOOM!, director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s take on playwright Jonathan Larson’s struggles while creating his never-to-be-produced musical Superbia. The resilient Larson tried and failed throughout the Eighties, but had more success later by repurposing that experience into a “real-life rock monologue” (also titled tick, tick…Boom!). That production gave him the momentum he needed to create his masterpiece, the groundbreaking musical RENT, which ran on Broadway for twelve years!

Miranda’s film on Larson has much in common with Bob Fosse’s 1979 semi-autobiographical All That Jazz. Each deals with a creative soul’s stress-filled experiences as a public artist. Every aspect of tick tick…BOOM! presents loving homage to these giants of musical theater. It comes as no surprise that seeing RENT as a teen inspired Miranda to, in his words, “. . .go from admiring musicals, to thinking I could make one.”

Which means we have Larson’s RENT to thank for Miranda’s Hamilton.

Bravo, good sirs.