Our take
If Steven Spielberg had just decided to do a straightforward cover version of West Side Story, it still would have been a wonder of music, movement, and color. But more than the lush camerawork and impassioned performances from Rachel Zegler, Mike Faist, and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, this adaptation is most memorable for its renewed focus on the senselessness of its central turf war. Here, New York City exercises absolute power over the Jets and the Sharks, rendering all this gang violence as a futile attempt to hold on to outdated values in the face of economic desolation. Spielberg might not be able to do much about the story’s weaker Romeo and Juliet-inspired parts, but he still finds a way to let this often ridiculed tragic romance serve a greater purpose.
What it won
Other
1 nom
The story
Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.
Elsewhere
"Spielberg's panache and command are evident in every nook of this handsome film. Yet somehow it feels dutiful, and the duty weighs it down."
— Anthony Lane
"Zegler is the true find, a marvelous singer and a radiant persona, and Spielberg and Kaminski film her like a bright flare in a twilit ocean; her sheer presence papers over some of the more facile aspects of Maria's characterization."
— Bilge Ebiri
Who picked it
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
