Film Review - The Batman (15)

 I AM the shadows.

From Adam West's spandex avenger to Christian Bale's dark knight, there have been near innumerable screen iterations of Batman. The Ben Affleck version is still knocking around, for heaven's sake, so what need one more? Ask writer-director Matt Reeves, who within the past decade has already made The Planet of the Apes his own. Turns out he had designs on Gotham City too, and they were just as revolutionary. Which is good, because when you're rebooting a well-worn franchise again, it's nice to have a reason beyond locked-in ticket sales. Reeves did, and the results are impressive. Darkly so.

It's two years since Bruce Wayne, heir to his murdered parents' company, first assumed his bat alter-ego to become the scourge of Gotham's criminals. In daylight hours he's recluse rather than millionaire playboy, and at night he calls himself Vengeance, backing up the name with brutal efficiency. His relationship with the police is antagonistic, Lieutenant James Gordon his sole ally, while all others resent his vigilante interference. But when a riddling psychopath starts bumping off the city's great and not-so-good, leaving a trail of macabre clues, Wayne's analytical mind proves as invaluable as his kevlar-clad fist. Plus there's the fact that said clues are addressed specifically... 'To the Batman'.

Matt Reeves' screenplay digs into Batman's 80-year history, revitalising the character's image as a brilliant detective (he first spread his wings in a 1939 issue of Detective Comics after all), while recreating the raw, unconstrained anger and storylines of comic book sagas Year One and The Long Halloween. In cinematic terms the film is multi-layered. The characterisation of Batman reflects '40s film noir (although his booted feet hit the sidewalk more heavily than those of any Bogart-style gumshoe), with Selena Kyle/Catwoman channelling more than a little femme fatale. The investigative aspects and grimy city-scapes evoke the feel of '70s police procedurals like Chinatown and The French Connection. And this new Riddler, with his twisted justification of serial slaughter, reflects the obsessions of David Fincher in Se7en and Zodiac. The movie's major strength is that it's forged from these combined ingredients, and filters its superhero content through them, resulting in a Bat-tale for more than just fans.

It's there in every element of the design, and how it's shot. This Gotham isn't a faux kind of Gothic like Tim Burton's movies, but something far closer to reality, and embracing the physical darkness just as Nolan worked in stark daylight. This is a rain-obscured, neon-illuminated hell, where you almost have to squint at the screen to cut through the murk. (A good 80% of this movie is shot at night, and not the starry kind - this is pure oppressive gloom.) It makes you work that little bit harder and the nocturnal lighting, however creative, may be problematic for some. But it also puts you squarely in the moral and investigative headspace of the main character, as he negotiates the city's mob-ruled underworld along with its hopelessly corrupt civic institutions, all the while tracking down a grotesque and certifiable maniac. Oh and if you're in any doubt regarding the movie's dark-as-pitch nature, Michael Giacchino's magnificently doom-laden score will constantly remind you.

So what of Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne/Batman? Frankly it's time for the last of the ex Twilight vampire's critics to drop it. Pattinson sells this damaged antihero as convincingly as the character's punching arm metes out a concept of vengeance, making the most of his sparse word-count with sheer presence. There's chemistry too, and not just with Zoe Kravitz's sinuous, yet fully fleshed-out Catwoman (though their empathetic connection serves as a major plus). This Batman also has a terrific rapport with Jeffrey Wright's Lt. Gordon, while his Bruce-side demonstrates a more combative relationship than we're used to with butler and father figure Alfred (the ever-excellent Andy Serkis). And then there's the rogue's gallery. John Turturro adds seedy grace to mob kingpin Carmine Falcone, while the Penguin's prosthetic make-up disguise a certain A-list character actor (if you don't already know, see if you recognise him), but not the quality of his richly villainous performance. However it's Paul Dano as the Riddler who's most likely to stay with you - a creep-inducing study in mundane guy-next-door insanity, however brilliant in nature. The face-off between this murderous genius and his caped crusading nemesis comes late in the game - but when it finally happens, it's more than worth the wait.  

Comic-book movies can seem ten-a-penny in 2022 and while I'm a fan, Marvel and DC universes included, I get why the genre earns some high-profile detractors. The Batman, however, is a different kind of film. It joins the like of Logan and Joker in possessing a unique vision - Matt Reeves' from start to finish - that transcends genre while still paying homage to its source material. Those (like me) whose acquaintance with the Bat mythology is limited, will be surprised, while devotees are already largely loving it. But this is just as much a film for anyone who enjoy well-crafted storytelling cinema possessed of its own identity. I've no confidence that it will shake off its 'super-hero' tag during the 2023 award season, but it damn well should do. This most grounded of Batman features deserves some serious metaphorical wings.

Gut Reaction: Lots of leaning in, peering through obscurity to the story's dark heart - plus some genuine thrills, a tear courtesy of Andy Serkis, and a hand clasped to my head when one Batman leap goes shockingly wrong.

Memorable Moment: For all this film's investigative intrigue, it's the Batmobile's introduction that really got me. Driving in rain has never been so treacherous.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. One or two questionable editing choices aside, this is terrific blockbuster cinema - slow-paced, thoughtful and daringly dark, and brought to the screen by someone who knows what story they're trying to tell. There'll be future visits to this grim, wet Gotham, of that there's zero doubt, and I (unlike the new Penguin) will have my umbrella at the ready. 

Film Review - The Power of the Dog (12A)

 He's just a man, Peter. Only another man.

Gist: Phil and George Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons) are well-heeled ranch owning brothers in 1920s Montana - Phil a grimy and uncultivated son of the range, and George his mild-mannered, soft-spoken opposite. The status quo of their working relationship is challenged when, on a cattle drive, George meets and falls for widowed inn owner Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst). Phil, however, takes an instant dislike to her, convinced that she's more interested in George's money than in him. His contempt is no less intense for Rose's son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who as a willowy and effeminate teenage boy is the antithesis of everything George and his fellow cattle-drivers hold to be masculine. George is actively antagonistic to the Roses, but surfaces belie unexpected depths in more than one of these closely entangled characters, taking them down a path that defies all prediction. 

Juice: Thirteen years have passed since Kiwi director Jane Campion's last feature film, and it took a near-forgotten Western novel by Thomas Savage to spur her into directorial action. It's not hard to see why. The Power of the Dog may lend itself to magnificently shot vistas reminiscent of the classic John Ford/John Wayne era, but aside from that this tale is more American Gothic in nature - a stately paced and dark human drama that peels away the layers of its characters' psyches till raw truth is laid bare. And it's not any truth you'd expect. Directed and shot with forensic expertise (Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner exhibits the same brilliance she showed in 2016's Lady Macbeth), these characters are scrutinised as deeply as the unforgiving landscape on which their fates play out. The quietly unsettling drama is complimented too by Jonny Greenwood's atonal, stripped-down music; he created an equally inspired score for last year's Spencer, but this one may just land the Radiohead maestro his much-deserved Oscar. 

Speaking of Oscars, all four of The Power of the Dog's key players are nominated in the acting categories. Plemon's understated gentleman rancher is up against Smit-McPhee's enigmatic youngster in the supporting actor category, while Dunst should run her supporting actress competitors a tight race as the compassionate but fragile Rose. And Cumberbatch, arguably surpassing all earlier work as his character's complexities are teased out, has perhaps the best shot at an award this fiercely contested year. He's sufficiently compelling in the movie's first act where Phil's macho charisma is pure antagonism, but even more so as the narrative bores deep into the rancher's calloused soul. 

Judgement: 9/10. Campion's atypical Western (settings in place, but genre-wise undercutting every Wild West trope you can think of) will be rather too slow-burn and alienating for some tastes, and that's fair enough. As meticulous drama that opts for psychological conflict over physical, and subtle character revelations over wilder plot-twists, this film will, however, win many fans. It's outstanding work from all involved, and deserves its crop of nominations. Plus, all dramatic subtleties aside, the ending packs quite the unexpected wallop. (Unless of course you get that cunning reference in the title. I should have, but I didn't.)

Film Review - CODA (12A)

 The song you sang tonight. What was it about?

Gist: Meet Ruby, the only hearing member of the Rossi family, hence CODA - Child of Deaf Adults. She divides her time between high school and the fishing boat operated by her father and brother, where aside from hauling lobster pots around, she serves as their ears in treacherous waters off the Massachusetts coast. Then on attending the school's music society, Ruby discovers she can sing - as in to potentially professional quality. That's the route her music teacher, the flamboyant Mr Villalobos encourages her to take, but these new aspirations fly in the face of all that's become expected of Ruby, leaving her torn between the family she loves and the possibility of a whole other life.

Juice: The story in those terms - talented child in a family that can't quite understand them - has been done before, Billy Elliot springing immediately to mind. What's totally fresh here is the family dynamic that's captured on screen. CODA is a remake of 2014's La Famille Belier, but unlike the French original this version cast deaf actors in the roles of Ruby's parents and brother. It seems a no-brainer in retrospect, but was something that Oscar-winning Marlee Matlin (cast as Ruby's mother Jackie) insisted on to secure her involvement with the project. The result is a tangibly authentic connection between these actors - a sense of family so strong you can smell it. They bicker, spar, laugh and argue, with all the inter-generational misunderstanding, embarrassment and love of any family, only while signing. True Emilia Jones as Ruby isn't CODA in her own right, but the bond established between her and her fellow-actors as she learned to communicate with them is up there on the screen, and is the movie's chief joy. 

The music element is another reason for watching. London native Jones had an established if low-key career, but CODA's Oscar buzz and the way she soulfully owns a certain Joni Mitchell classic here promises to launch her somewhere stratospheric. She's terrific in the role, never less than when she emotes in song, and her spiky relationship with Eugenio Derbez' musical mentor raises another potential movie cliche into something to relish in each shared scene. But the most memorable performance is that of awards-nominated Troy Kotsur as father Frank. Pithy, demonstrative and frequently hilarious, he's a heart-on-sleeve fisher-wild-man, who owns every frame he's in. Yes - the Rossis are great in there own terms and individually, but it's the hairy, salty dad of the bunch who'll stick with you.

Judgement: 8/10. Writer/director Sian Heder learned to craft complex character interactions through TV work, mostly on Orange is the New Black. CODA is a huge leap for her in directorial terms, and it's a success on all levels. Beautifully shot (no less than when the story takes to the water) and crisply edited, her work behind the lens compliments everything that she's made unfold before it, with the help of some A-grade acting and production talent. In terms of story beats - conflict and resolution, setback and success - this will all feel familiar, predictable even. But the getting there is everything, and CODA does it with such emotional insight, humour and heart, that you enjoy step of the journey. It's a humane, empathetic hug of a film, and I defy you not to be wiping away tears by the end.

Film Review - Belfast (12A)

 You know who you are. You're Buddy from Belfast, where everybody knows you.

If you're not from Northern Ireland, there's no particular reason you'd know actor/director Kenneth Branagh hails from Belfast. That's unless maybe you saw him in Graham Reid's 'Billy Plays', the early '80s trio of TV dramas where he played the troubled son of the working-class East Belfast Martin family alongside late great Ulster actor James Ellis. Aged nine Branagh left with his family to travel 'across the water' to England, where he adopted an English accent, so he tells it, in reaction to teasing over the way he talked. Belfast is his lockdown-written passion project, an attempt to get in touch with his roots fifty years on. While a scattering of moments suggest how long he's been away, this is still a crowd-pleasing semi-autobiographical tale, not least due to a great central turn from newcomer Jude Hill.

Young Jude is Buddy, at nine years old the same age as Branagh when the modern Troubles were sparked in Northern Ireland's capital city and beyond. He's the younger son of a warm if bickering Protestant working-class family affected by mounting sectarian turmoil; paramilitary types are threatening scary consequences if the area's Catholic residents don't make themselves scarce. Buddy's Pa (Jamie Dornan) spends time in England as a joiner, trying to ease the family's debt, while his Ma (Catriona Balf - best known to fans of TV drama Outlander) does her best to maintain a sense of calm on the domestic front. Rounding out the family are Buddy's older brother and his beloved Grannie and Pop (played by Dame Judi Dench with a serviceable Norn Iron accent and Ciaran Hinds playing the Best Grandad Ever). Meanwhile the local cinema provides escapism, while Buddy's chief concern amid all the political shenanigans is how to get a seat beside Catherine, the girl he likes a school.

Let's say first that this is not a political film. Anyone seeking enlightenment regarding the reasons behind the Troubles will get as much as a nine-year-old boy could expect to understand. This is first and last a story of childhood and love of home, and how a young lad reacts when that home turns dangerous and chaotic. It's reminiscent in that way of Hope and Glory, John Boorman's 1987 film memoir of his youth in Blitz-torn London. People's lives might be going to hell around him, but for Buddy it's still a place of love and acceptance, adventure even, however scary. Hill, from Gilford, County Down (six miles from my family home) is a pure joy in the role - winsome and authentic, the kind of schoolmate I might have had myself back in the day. He's earnest in his pursuit of romance, hilarious when justifying his viewpoints, and downright heartrending when faced with the threat of having to leave the only community he knows.

Around him orbit that great cast. Balfe is fierce and compassionate as his mother - no disrespect to Dame Judi, but that Best Supporting Oscar nomination should have gone to the younger actress - while Dornan is a real Ulster working-class dad, as far from Christian Grey's tailored suaveness as you could imagine, and clearly loving a role this close to home. The grandparents steal it though, as they're given scope to do. Dench is great, because of course she is. But Hinds is the grown-up performer you'll remember most clearly - grandfatherly wisdom, humour and kindness emanating from the heart and the gut, showing off the best of Branagh's writing, while showcasing what an outstanding actor this man has been decades.

Belfast is, as the film's name suggests, a character in itself. The Tigers Bay estate of Branagh's youth was recreated brick by brick in Berkshire, lockdown restrictions having prevented use of the location itself. The production team did a great job - central to Belfast's success is the reminiscence of a time and place, one that's rooted in the set's very foundations, showing in the fashions and the wallpaper, the Subbuteo and the biscuit tins. This is the '60s, the working-class Northern Irish variety, and I'm guessing those who lived there through that era will feel it in every shot. The film's pristine black and white only serves to enhance that sense of childhood memory, with technicolor used sparingly to highlight very particular moments of wonder. 

I have nitpicks with the film - things that prevent me from scoring it higher. A third-act plot beat that feels a bit too daft to fit with the overall tone. A Van Morrison song that however touching is several decades out of place. A later sequence that's somewhere between fantasy and reality and that didn't quite land for me - not on a first watch at any rate.

I'm going to push those things aside though, because overall this is terrific - a memorable rites of passage tale from a writer-director getting in touch with his past through the inevitably wonky medium of memory. Belfast has universal resonance in its portrayal of familial bonds and painfully fractured community, but it will hit home most profoundly, I think, for those viewers who lived it - whether they left or stayed. 

Gut Reaction: I grew up later than Buddy in a town called Lurgan and this wasn't exactly my family, but Belfast did make me feel my own childhood - a lot. 

Memorable Moment: The family cinema outing - they showed that film in our Primary School every damn year!

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. As a recollection of childhood, place and era this is a huge success - warm, funny, and inevitably tinged with sadness. Those who criticise it for not being more 'Troubled' miss the point. When you're nine years old, you work with what you're given, just like Buddy does.

2021 Film Review Catch-up - Being the Recardos (15) - Prime Video

 I'm Lucille Ball. When I'm being funny, you'll know it.

Gist: It's a trying week in the lives of US TV legend Lucille Ball and her husband/comedy partner Desi Arnaz, aka Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. A media outlet is reporting rumours of Arnaz' infidelity, something he vehemently denies, while the House Un-American Activities Committee is making an accusation yet more damaging - that Ball has a communist past. Meanwhile on the set of the couple's beloved sitcom I Love Lucy, there are creative and personal tensions among cast and crew, including the broaching of an incendiary idea, one set to break a major television taboo of the era. (It's the unpalatable fact that women get pregnant in order to have babies.) Basically, this is a busy five days on set.

Juice: These events, while all based in reality, occurred independent of each other over several years. Screenwriter and director Aaron Sorkin conflates it all into one working week, however, to create a jumping off point for this portrait of arguably the most influential couple in US entertainment history. Flashing back, it takes us to the fateful first meeting of Lucille and Desi and provides insight into how their on-screen pairing (the first inter-racial couple to grace American TV screens) came about. It's biopic done right, the man who wrote The West Wing drawing out the complexities of the stars themselves, while lovingly recreating the look and dynamics of the early television era, all by drawing out the crises of a single week in time.

The core of the film's success is the chemistry between Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. She (with the screenplay's help) finds the steely intelligence and neurosis behind Ball's screwball comedy persona, while he is every inch the suave entertainer fans of the show would expect in Arnaz. Whether squabbling or flirting, they bring to life the visceral connection that turned I Love Lucy into such a global favourite. Add support from J. K. Simmons and Stan and Ollie's Nina Arianda as the couple's co-stars (Fred and Ethel in the show), and you've got the right stuff to bring Sorkin's witty and nuanced period drama to life. 

Judgement: 8/10. It's not as dynamic as say The West Wing, nor does it have the high stakes of Sorkin's recent The Trial of the Chicago 7. But Being the Ricardos is still an incisively written delight, digging as it does into the sexual and racial politics of America's burgeoning TV entertainment industry, while exploring the romance and the heartbreak behind a still-beloved pairing of comedy greats. And if you ever wondered how Lucy's iconic grape-trampling scene came about, just maybe it happened the way it's portrayed here.

Film Review - Spider-Man: No Way Home (12A)

 You have a gift. You have power. And with great power...

I don't know where to begin. I don't know what to say, and what not. Either you've seen Spider-Man: No Way Home by now, in which case I can wreak no spoiler havoc, or you haven't, in which case you possibly don't care. But just maybe you've not yet made it due to family or work commitments and still want to experience the movie fresh. I'm going to assume that last scenario, also that you've not seen so much as a trailer for this Spidey outing. Because if you are such a person - someone who loves the whole Peter Parker teen-super mythology but who gets to watch this movie cold, then you're in for the treat of your Spider-loving life. 

The starting point of this film is the end to the previous one, and that much I'll assume you have seen. Peter's precious anonymity has been shattered by J. Jonah Jameson, played with muck-raking gusto by J. K. Simmons (reprising the role from Tobey Maguire's Spider-Era). Jameson is likewise promoting the lie that Parker/Spider-Man is responsible for recent villainous events internationally. With his cover blown, Peter finds his reputation and college chances ruined, along with those of girlfriend MJ and best friend Ned. It's more than a high-school lad can take, so this being the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he calls on Doctor Strange's mystical powers, to see if the world can forget that Spider-Man is really Peter Parker in spandex. But spells have messy consequences when cast in the presence of excitable teens, and the consequences here are remarkable - not least for long-term fans of the webslinger on page and screen.

2002 was my proper introduction to Spidey with Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, this Maguire iteration of the character probably being the purest in terms of adherence to comic-book lore. The hard-on-the-heels reboots brought a skater-boy cool to the character, Andrew Garfield's likeable interpretation hampered by variable narrative choices, but still not without its entertainment value and dramatic punch. Finally the MCU and Tom Holland effectively made the character Spider-Boy, with less of the angst that plagued Peter in the other versions and greater emphasis on high-school dating and friendship. 2017's Homecoming and 2019's Far From Home majored on fun, including amusing support players and more jokes. (Thankfully the latter had a high hit-rate.) But No Way Home, the final part of director Jon Watts' Home trilogy, does something unprecedented, in terms of Spider-Man and of popcorn cinema. It begins with the jokey Holland style with which audiences have become familiar, and then it goes old-school, taking enormous storytelling risks. This might all have resulted in a disastrous mess, but instead it creates a magic that's little short of alchemical.

No Way Home begins with all the wit and charm of its MCU predecessors - but in focusing on the consequences of Peter's identity reveal, it highlights the burden of personal responsibility on a teenager that has always made Spider-Man uniquely compelling. And that's only the start of what turns out to be an emotionally turbulent and constantly surprising story. Holland is as welcome a presence as ever in the lead, being called on to find constantly greater range in the character and meeting the challenge every time. He and Zendaya become steadily more endearing as the Peter/MJ paring, with Jacob Batalon's Ned rounding out the trio of friends in a way that takes it from purely knockabout to something considerably more touching. 

With great support also from Marisa Tomei (the most impactful and - let's say it - hottest Aunt May ever), Jon Favreau ever loveable as Happy Hogan and Benedict Cumberbatch bringing the weight and humour of his ever-evolving Doc Strange, it's an engaging and pacy prologue, but that's all it is. For when the story's antagonists arrive, they do so from a place and in a form that will steal the breath of those few Spider-Fans who've bunkered up and avoided all publicity. And from there the surprises keep being sprung - not cheaply, but in ways that reforge expectations of what this kind of live-action film can achieve, while deconstructing the Spider mythology to build it into something more impressive than before. Never has the Parker/Spider-Man duality been explored with such invention and import.

If I were to quibble, it'd be to say that certain choices made in the story's early stages are more to facilitate the amazing plot twists that come later, rather than a natural extension of how you might expect certain characters to behave. Yes there's an element of contrivance, but what it leads to is so thrilling and so punch-the-air joyful that it's okay in this case to let such conveniences lie. Look, I'm not going to claim straight out that No Way Home is the best film in the wider Sony-related franchise (though it certainly stakes a claim). What I will say is that it takes Spidey enthusiasts to places they probably never dreamed they'd go, and puts a big goofy, teary grin on their faces once they get there. If you've paid any attention to the big screen adventures of Spider-Man over the past two decades, you might end up wearing a similar grin yourself.

Gut Reaction: Spellbound by a sense this was more than just Spider-business as usual. Then grinning a lot and tearing up for reasons of both sadness and joy. 

Memorable Moment: I can't say much, just that it was one of the most audacious reveals I've ever experienced in a cinema.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Hugely satisfying block-buster entertainment - less from its scale and effects (both stunning), more from big emotions, rooted in a plot that embraces its ambition with a bear-hug and doesn't let go. This everyday neighbourhood hero has never blown so many minds.

Film Review - West Side Story (12A)

 Could it be? Yes it could. Something's coming, something good.

Can you wait for that 'something good'? Cinema-goers worldwide have done, sadly. West Side Story is only the latest stage-to-screen musical adaptation to bomb in 2021, and in this case, as with June release In the Heights, it's not for want of quality. That latter movie was a colourful and exuberant version of Lin Manuel Miranda's first full-length stage show, a celebration of the New York Latino community in which he grew up. West Side Story, meanwhile, is made by Steven Spielberg, for heaven's sake, the veteran filmmaker's first full-scale venture into the musical genre. It's also one of the best films he's made in years and a worthy companion to the Oscar-laden 1961 adaptation, which makes it lamentable that the footfall into theatres to see it hasn't been any heavier.

You're familiar with the story, right? Tony and Maria are a New York City Romeo and Juliet, the familial conflict replaced by an ethnic one between white street gang the Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. Tony has distanced himself from the Jets, much to the chagrin of his best friend and gang leader Riff, while Maria is feeling pressured by her lead-Shark brother Bernardo to accept the romantic advances of a safe bet named Chino. But then there's a dance, and a chance meeting, and soon Tony and Maria going all swoony and singing to each other, even as gangland rivalries threaten to swallow up their new-found happiness. All that classic star-cross'd stuff.

The stage musical - with its formidable combination of Leonard Bernstein's score and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics - is Spielberg's favourite, the one he'd sworn to adapt if any. With a largely fresh-faced cast delivering equally fresh versions of the songs, it's the screenplay that diverges most sharply from both play and '60s movie. Tony Kushner's script (he screen-wrote both Munich and Lincoln, two of Spielberg's 21st century best) digs into the New York slum clearances of the 1950s and how an established group's sense of under-class grievance gets directed at first generation immigrants. There's lightness and humour too, but less dance-fighting and considerably more gangland grit, along with some interesting character tweaks. Doc, dispenser of wisdom and soda to the Jets, is replaced by his Puerto Rican widow Valentina and played with compassion by Rita Moreno (Anita in the 1961 film). And wannabe Jet 'Anybodys' is turned from tomboy to transgender without any jarringly overt wokeness. In fact the remarkable - and sometimes depressing - thing about this West Side Story is how relevant mid-20th century social commentary still feels in the midst of contemporary news stories.

But what about the music? you may well ask. Frankly it's terrific - not just the vocals and choreography, but Spielberg's unerring sense of how to shoot action of whatever kind. While the story's grimmer elements have a bleached-out look, everything bursts into primary colour in moments of romance and exuberant song, like that well-worn celebration of Hispanic culture America. Where the 1961 version kept the number to a single location (superbly so), this one takes it around several blocks and involves an entire community to rousing and brilliantly shot effect. That's what Spielberg knows better than virtually anyone else - where to place the camera (and in what light, and with what colour) to serve the story best. Thus romantic interludes, macho banter and girlish gossip (that's Tonight, Officer Krupke and I Feel Pretty) are all reinterpreted with heart and verve. As for the lyrical content, Steven had Stephen on hand, Sondheim that is, to provide feedback on how his words might be rendered potent in 2021. Sadly the great man of Broadway didn't live to see just how potent in the finished film.

The performances are pretty powerful too. Ansel Elgort is a restrained Tony (perhaps a tad too restrained?), with a tougher backstory than the 1961 version, but an equally angelic voice. And as Maria, first-time film actor Rachel Zegler is a focal point of sheer charisma - all youth and innocence, but with the expression and depth of a performer twice her age. He's good, she's downright mesmerising. That said, and for all the central pair's fraught love story, it's David Alvarez and Ariana DeBose, the new Bernardo and Anita, who arguably steal the movie. DeBose in particular (a stage veteran of Hamilton) makes hearts soar, before ripping them out in a magnificent performance that runs to the core of the musical's deepest cultural and political themes. 

Ariana DeBose

On hearing that the director of Jaws and the rest of it was taking on this theatre classic when there's already a beloved film version in existence, the question 'Why?' did occur. In purely creative terms Spielberg has answered that question; this is a terrific retelling, that showcases the musical elements beautifully, while adding a sharp relevance to the drama. Post-lockdown film-goers, however, are saving their cash for other films, and that's a shame, one that doesn't bode well for the movie-musical's immediate future. As of this review it's still showing in most cinemas, however, so if you've got half a mind, mask up and go see it. This exhilarating audience-pleaser supplies more emotional punch than you might think, and there are worse earworms than Maria. Or Jet Song. Or There's A Place For Us. Or... You catch my drift. Go and sing along.

Gut Reaction: The tuneful parts felt a bit like old friends, while the drama struck with its immediacy. And all of it entertained.

Memorable Moment: I like to be in A-Mer-I-Ca! Okay for me in A-Mer-I-Ca!

Ed's Verdict: 8.5/10. There's nothing lazy about this film-making choice. There's pure, vibrant Spielberg/Bernstein/Sondheim magic in every sequence.