{"id":375415,"date":"2021-12-02T17:00:48","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/"},"modified":"2021-12-02T17:00:48","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:00:48","slug":"watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch &#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a256f4c37555\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a256f4c37555\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98West_Side_Story_Review_Steven_Spielbergs_Gritty_Rousing_Upgrade%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/#%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98West_Side_Story_Review_Steven_Spielbergs_Gritty_Rousing_Upgrade%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;&#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/#optional_screen_reader\" >optional screen reader<\/a><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><ul class='ez-toc-list-level-4' ><li class='ez-toc-heading-level-4'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-west-side-story-review-steven-spielbergs-gritty-rousing-upgrade\/#Read_More_About\" >Read More About:<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98West_Side_Story_Review_Steven_Spielbergs_Gritty_Rousing_Upgrade%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98West_Side_Story_Review_Steven_Spielbergs_Gritty_Rousing_Upgrade%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;&#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n                        Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story\u201d has a brash effervescence. You can feel the joy he got out of making it, and the kick is infectious. Directing his first musical, Spielberg moves into the big roomy space of a Broadway-meets-Hollywood classic, rearranges the furniture (the film\u2019s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, has spiced up the dialogue and tossed out the most cringe-worthy knickknacks), and gives it all a fresh coat of desaturated, bombed-out-city-block, gritty-as-reality paint. He makes it his own. At the same time, Spielberg stays reverently true to what generations have loved about \u201cWest Side Story\u201d: the swoon factor, the yearning beauty of those songs, the hypnotic jackknife ballet of \u201950s delinquents dancing out their aggression on the New York streets. There are scenes in Spielberg\u2019s version that will melt you, scenes that will make your pulse race, and scenes where you simply sit back and revel in the big-spirited grandeur of it all.<\/p>\n<p>The setting is Hell\u2019s Kitchen in 1957, something the film lets us know with a wink that nods to how Spielberg and Kushner are going to tinker with the material. Robert Wise\u2019s 1961 screen version opened with that God\u2019s-eye panoramic sweep of Manhattan, but Spielberg\u2019s opens with a panorama of rubble, the camera swooping over what looks like a war zone, which turns out to be the wrecking-ball \u201cslum clearance\u201d that will make way for the construction of Lincoln Center. The turf war between the film\u2019s white and Puerto Rican teenage gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, now has a bigger-picture backdrop. Both are being crushed by gentrification \u2014 which is to say, part of their tragic folly is they never realize they\u2019re in the same boat.<\/p>\n<p>The Jets start off slathering paint on the mural of a Puerto Rican flag. As the boys move and groove to their inner thug, singing \u201cJet Song\u201d <em>(\u201cWhen you\u2019re a Jet you\u2019re a Jet all the way\u2026\u201d<\/em>), Justin Peck\u2019s choreography plays off the hypnotic, limb-thrusting, rhythm-of-the-city athleticism of Jerome Robbins\u2019 original dances, and Spielberg, working with his dynamic cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, has the camera moves to match. We seem to be gliding through the streets right along with the Jets, channeling their reckless exhilaration, and the \u201950s-punk acting has been liberated so that the snarls and struts aren\u2019t tr<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ed in that bubble of old-movie corniness. (The 1961 \u201cWest Side Story\u201d felt dated\u2026in 1961.) As Riff, the leader of the Jets, Mike Faist has a lean sociopathic squint, and David Alvarez plays Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, with a mean swagger of self-righteousness. Bernardo is now a boxer (fighting is what gets him high), and his problem is that he has never embraced his life in America. The racial antagonism he faces each day has singed his soul, and Alvarez infuses the character with a dark-side-of-rock-star bravado.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, at the center of \u201cWest Side Story\u201d is something \u2014 maybe I should say \u201cSomewhere\u201d \u2014 softer and more tenderly lyrical. And Spielberg has done an ace job of casting his two romantic leads. Before now, I\u2019ve never been a fan of Ansel Elgort. One\u2019s first thought about him may be that he\u2019s Ashton Kutcher without irony \u00ad\u2014 and that you miss the irony. But in \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d Elgort, with lips like Brando\u2019s, has a brooding heart and personality that pop, and he\u2019s a wonderfully expressive crooner. Tony, updated by Kushner\u2019s script, has now spent a year in prison for nearly punching someone to death, and Elgort, speaking in understated street vowels, strikes just the right balance of sweetness and danger. At the high-school dance, which Spielberg stages with a hip-twirling electricity that rivals the big school dance number in \u201cGrease\u201d (yes, that\u2019s a compliment), Tony has his first glimpse of Maria (Rachel Zegler), the girl who will burn down what\u2019s left of his gang loyalty, and she has her first glimpse of him, and\u2026well, it could all spearhead a revival of love at first sight. Singing \u201cMaria,\u201d his voice soaring into the upper register, Tony is transported, and so are we.<\/p>\n<p>In the Oscar-winning 1961 film version, adapted from the 1957 Broadway show, Maria was mostly a perky, saintly innocent, but here she gets a spitfire upgrade. The charismatic newcomer Rachel Zegler gives her a touch of fierceness and a boldly chiseled stare of longing. When Maria and Tony sing \u201cTonight,\u201d the most transcendent song in \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d they\u2019re on the fire escape, in vintage Romeo-and-Juliet-of-the-tenement fashion, and Spielberg stages their duet with an intimate choreographed flow, so that the words seem to spin and dance. Their love is an oasis of hope in the concrete jungle. And that\u2019s an emblem of how \u201cWest Side Story\u201d now lands in the larger movie world: as a heady nostalgic crowd-pleaser that offers the rare alternative to both blockbuster overkill and indie angst. Can the Oscars possibly say no to it?<\/p>\n<p>That said, I\u2019ve always had a love\/gripe relationship with \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d It has what may be the greatest set of songs in any American musical, composed by Leonard Bernstein as if he were the magic link between Richard Rodgers and Brian Wilson. The lyrics, by the late Stephen Sondheim, are as peerlessly playful as they are poetic, and the choreography remains a marvel of expressionistic street movement.<\/p>\n<p>For me, though, the original film version goes off the rails during the big rumble. I could never buy that Richard Beymer\u2019s Tony would pick up that switchblade and do what he does. And Natalie Wood\u2019s Maria gets angry at Tony for killing her brother for about five seconds, before she seems to forget all about it. There\u2019s an unconscious racist element to that (quite apart from the horrendous decision to cast Natalie Wood as the Latina Maria), and it gums up the emotional flow. The unintentional subtext seems to be: Bernardo was a Latino hothead, so his death doesn\u2019t even matter to Maria all that much. \u201cWest Side Story\u201d may owe its story to Shakespeare, but that doesn\u2019t mean it parses. The last act is less a romantic tragedy than a belabored gang-war scramble that turns into a tidy plea for tolerance.<\/p>\n<p>And those are problems I don\u2019t think the new version completely solves. Given how Kushner has retooled and enriched the script \u2014 Tony and Maria\u2019s romance, for instance, isn\u2019t the melodramatic secret it was before \u2014 I was surprised to see that the rumble climaxes in the same old hyped-up but unconvincing way. (No, even with Tony having been in prison, I didn\u2019t buy it.) And once that happens, you feel an energy leak out of the movie.<\/p>\n<p>Up till then, \u201cWest Side Story\u201d is a parade of delights. Spielberg has staged \u201cAmerica,\u201d with its rousingly patriotic yet naughty tongue-twisting lyrics, as a swirling, roving block party of triumphant feminine bluster. \u201cOne Hand, One Heart\u201d is now a gorgeous hymn, shot through stained-glass sunlight, and where \u201cGee, Officer Krupke,\u201d set inside a police station, is the number you\u2019d think would have dated most, it\u2019s actually a witty wonder, since the Jets are using the new furrowed-brow therapeutic \u201cunderstanding\u201d of delinquency to defend themselves, and the joke is that they know it\u2019s all bunk. Ariana DeBose makes Anita a radiant force of nature, and the legendary Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the original film, is on hand as Valentina, widow of the soda-shop owner Doc. The 89-year-old Moreno, with a no-frills luminosity, steals every scene she\u2019s in, and her reprise of \u201cSomewhere\u201d is a highlight. The whole film feels as contemporary as it needs to, since topicality is baked into its tribal dance of racial animosity. \u201cWest Side Story\u201d is a bursting, live-wire pageant of a movie. I just wish it had a final act that soared instead of lumbering to what feels like an overly determined message-movie landing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-tags \/\/ a-children-icon-bullet lrv-u-font-family-primary u-letter-spacing-012 lrv-u-line-height-large lrv-u-color-brand-primary\">\n<h2 id=\"optional-screen-reader\" class=\"lrv-a-screen-reader-only\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"optional_screen_reader\"><\/span>\n        optional screen reader  <span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<nav class=\"o-nav  o-nav lrv-u-border-b-1 u-border-color-brand-secondary-40 lrv-u-border-t-1 lrv-u-text-align-center lrv-u-padding-b-025 u-padding-t-050@desktop u-padding-t-050@tablet u-padding-t-050@mobile-max lrv-u-margin-t-2 lrv-u-margin-b-2\" data-dropdown=\"\">\n<h4 id=\"\" class=\"o-nav__title lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-font-family-secondary o-nav__title a-content-ignore u-line-height-140 u-letter-spacing-0002\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Read_More_About\"><\/span>Read More About:<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<\/nav>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n  !function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n    if (f.fbq) return;\n    n = f.fbq = function() {\n      n.callMethod ?\n          n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);\n    };\n    if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n    n.push = n;\n    n.loaded = !0;\n    n.version = '2.0';\n    n.queue = [];\n    t = b.createElement(e);\n    t.async = !0;\n    t.src = v;\n    s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);\n  }(window, document, 'script',\n      'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('init', '586935388485447');\n  fbq('init', '315552255725686');\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-movies-tv-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Movies &#038; TV Series <\/a><\/span>category<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2021\/film\/reviews\/west-side-story-review-steven-spielberg-ansel-elgort-rachel-zegler-1235122664\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221; &#8220;&#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Review: Steven Spielberg&#8217;s Gritty, Rousing Upgrade&#8221; Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story\u201d has a brash effervescence. You can feel the joy he got out of making it, and the kick is infectious. Directing his first musical, Spielberg moves into the big roomy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":375416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/west-side-story-steven-spielberg.jpg?w=1000","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watch-movies-tv-seriess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}