West Side Story, Wolf, & Licorice Pizza: Nip Down to the Theater

Last weekend was another busy time at the cinema. Strap in, I’ve got a musical, a weird psychological thriller, and a languid 70s nostalgia piece to tell you about. There’s something in this schizophrenic selection for everyone.

West Side Story: Directed by Steven Spielberg, an adaptation of the iconic musical that is inspired by Romeo & Juliet with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It's a slam dunk! This thing has prestige brimming through its veins and the final product is a thing of beauty. The casting is particularly spot on, with Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler acquitting themselves admirably as the star-crossed lovers (she is a better singer, but he emotes well enough to keep up), but I was far more compelled by the secondary characters of Riff (Mike Faist) and Anita (Ariana DeBose) who almost seemed to command more screen time than the leads and got the best choreography to showcase both their singing and dancing chops. And lest we forget, the magical Rita Moreno, who played Anita in the original 1961 movie, is back in this version as Doc’s wife, a neat little subversion of the original character of Doc since she is playing a Puerto Rican who married a “gringo” and therefore straddles both lines of this insane rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks.

The smartest thing Spielberg did in this adaptation was ensure the Puerto Ricans were all played by Latinx actors (what a concept). What this also means is that parts of the film are bilingual with no subtitles, forcing audiences to steep themselves in this world and truly understand there are two distinct cultures at play here. While the cops and the Irish act as expected when confronted with a Spanish speaker and demand that they “speak English,” along with other racist taunts, it’s interesting to note that even the Puerto Ricans will often stop family members from speaking in Spanish and demand they practice their English in order to assimilate. This movie is set in 1957, but it might as well be set today to reflect the attitudes that some Americas continue to have about English being the national language and that Puerto Ricans aren’t real Americans.

The look and feel of this film is predictably spectacular. Spielberg plays a lot with darkness and shadows, but the love scenes then brim with light and color. The costumes by Paul Tazewell are a riotous joy (give me all of Anita’s dresses), and the balletic choreography by Justin Peck is stunning. I am always intrigued by the juxtaposition of the violence of these alpha male gang members and the graceful and delicate twirls in their dances. If only everyone kept singing and dancing and stopped stabbing each other, this movie could be a splendid romcom instead of a dark tragedy. But ah well, I enjoyed it nonetheless. And hummed "America" for about four days straight after I was done. 

Wolf: George Mackay stars as Jacob, a young man who has species dysmorphia, a mental disorder in which a human firmly believes they are an animal. In Jacob’s case, he is convinced he is a wolf, and his desperate parents check him into a mental institution that specializes in treating this disorder. Jacob truly wants to get better, and when he first enters the facility, he does his best to contain his lupine nature. But then he meets "Wildcat" (Lily Rose-Depp), a young woman who lives in the institution but has some sort of hybrid patient-staff status, and things quickly start to unravel.

Written and directed by Nathalie Bianchine, this is a weird, visceral, and fascinating movie. I wouldn’t ever rewatch it but I was certainly compelled from start to finish during my one viewing. Whoever trained these actors on animal choreography deserves some kind of special category of Oscar because it was amazing to see how Mackay moved when he was on all fours, with his haunches jutting out in a way that made me almost believe he had morphed into a wolf. There’s a boy who thinks he’s the most adorable German Sherpherd, another who is a terrified squirrel, a woman who is a horse with the most amazing whinny, and a host of others. And in the midst of all of this is cinema’s most horrific villain, Dr. Mann (Paddy Considine). He’s the psychologist who runs this place with a brutal method of shame and cruelty that is reminiscent of the horrors of conversion therapy and the film quickly devolves into torture porn as we see what Jacob and his fellow patients will be subjected to in the name of being cured. 

The score by Stefan Wesolowski is appropriately unsettling and certain scenes will make you squirm. But overall, it is inventive and well-acted. It is an unusual look at what it means to be human, and offers up a compelling vision of what it would be like if we all just went feral and chucked it all away. Which, frankly, given how humans act these days, is becoming an increasingly tantalizing proposition.

Licorice Pizza: Oh Paul Thomas Anderson. Here is a straight white man who has been writing and directing movies for ages, and at this point, it is clear that you know what you’re going to get. This man is mostly consumed by his own worldview and nostalgia, and since most movie critics are straight white men, they eat his stuff up with a spoon. But I went into this film warily, expecting I would probably be bored stiff by its preoccupations with maleness. I was cautiously optimistic as the film is his first to actually feature a female protagonist, Alana (a role specifically written for Alana Haim), and the only other PTA movie I enjoyed was Phantom Thread because it featured two incredible performances from Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville, to balance out the tortured male genius motif from Daniel Day-Lewis. However, while I didn’t actively dislike this movie, once I left the theater, I realized that mostly all I got here was a story about a teenage boy (the very likable Cooper Hoffman, looking unsettlingly like his father, the great Philip Seymour Hoffman), and his much-older manic pixie dream girl friend (a dynamic that just seems icky given the age difference and potential illegality of a romance between the two.)

The entire thing is set in California in 1973 and it is resplendent with “vibes” of that era, including ample bralessness. Listen, I haven’t worn a bra for most of the pandemic, but it’s a definite choice to ensure your lead female actress will have her nips out for the majority of the movie, including on all promotional materials in theaters. Frankly, despite all my hopes that PTA might deliver something fresh and nuanced, the minute I saw Alana Haim in a white T-shirt on the movie poster, I knew my hopes would be dashed. There isn’t much plot but a string of vignettes as this boy goes through his life as a child actor and Alana serves as chaperone and then business partner, and is basically a woman who is aimless and needs to be rescued by the love of a good man. Because to auteurs like PTA, isn’t that the lot of all women? 

Go see this movie if you want an indulgent mood piece. And the soundtrack is stellar (plus the score is by Jonny Greenwood, who seems to be doing the score for everything these days). It’s definitely light-hearted and funny, and not as much of a slog as other PTA movies. In fact, I was deceived into thinking I liked it during the act of watching it, but the minute I left the theater I was like wait, that movie has some problems. There’s also a weird subplot involving a Japanese restaurant that is overtly racist but played for laughs, and there’s no point to it except I think PTA is still stuck in the 70s and thinks this is amusing stuff? I don’t know man. My patience has worn thin for movies like this. Can we just let women take the reins and get some fresh narratives in the cinema? I'd like to see some manic pixie dream boys for a change.