Musical

West Side Story

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: West Side Story (2021)
  • IMDb: link

It’s been 60 years since Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise gave us their award-winning adaptation of Robbins’ stage musical West Side Story. That’s a long time to wait for a remake. Enter Steven Spielberg to create a new version which may last for the next 60 years in a throwback musical that should delight both old and new fans.

Choosing to keep to the play’s original timeline, the opening feels a bit dated, but that is quickly excused for the vibrant spectacle Spielberg offers complete with large-scale song and dance numbers. The director also gives us a talented cast that avoids the whitewashing of Maria from 60s film by casting Rachel Zegler in the role who, along with Ariana DeBose as Anita, are the movie’s real stand-outs. The only casting I question is Ansel Elgort in the role of Tony who looks like a lumbering catalog model completely out of place compared to the rougher characters making up the competing gangs of the Sharks and the Jets.

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Encanto

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Encanto
  • IMDb: link

Encanto introduces us to the magical Family Madrigal, living together in a magical house in a small town in a hidden valley from the dangers of the outside world. When reaching the appropriate age, each child of the family is gifted with a special power. That is, each member of the family except our main character Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz). 

More notable for its cultural perspective and its eclectic characters than its plot, Encanto struggles a bit early finding its rhythm before picking up momentum, both in story and in the strength of the songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, as Mirabel attempts to save the family from a threat no one else sees. It’s a solid film, whose final act outshines the rest of the movie and (in typical Disney fashion) offers a nice moral for kids who are obviously the target audience for the film.

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tick, tick… BOOM!

/ / Home Video
  • Title: tick, tick… BOOM!
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from Jonathan Larson‘s stage musical, the semi-autobiographical work takes us inside the struggles of aspiring musical theater playwright and composer attempting to complete an 8 year project of a dystopian futuristic musical called Superbia before his thirtieth birthday. Pressured by needing to compose a crucial song to complete the musical as the workshop for its one and only performance begins, his girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp) needing an answer to a crucial relationship question, another of his friends hospitalized after becoming HIV Positive, and the daily struggles of working at the Moondance Diner and finding ways to pay his bills, a constant ticking reminds Jon that he’s running out of time.

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In the Heights

/ / Home Video
  • Title: In the Heights
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the stage musical, In the Heights follows the lives of several characters in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood. In a reverse of an immigrant chasing the American dream, our main character is a bodega owner (Anthony Ramos) saving his money to leave New York and return to the the Dominican Republic to restart his father’s beach-front business. Other characters include his crush (Melissa Barrera), Olga Merediz as the neighborhood’s matriarch, and the neighborhood’s brightest star (Leslie Grace) returning in failure from Stanford who can’t articulate her problems to her father (Jimmy Smits).

In the Heights is a story about dreamers. Each character is chasing a dream or trying to help others achieve their own. The eclectic neighborhood of Dominican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other nationalities is punctuated by vibrant musical numbers around dreams, love, and everyday life.

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Come from Away

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Come from Away
  • IMDb: link

“We honor what was lost, but we also commemorate what we found.”

Twenty years after 9/11 and 14 months into the COVID shutdown, Broadway reopens for a performance of Come from Away featuring many of the original Broadway performers for a live recording on the musical about 7,000 strangers from all over the world stranded in the small town of Gander for five days. While originally planned to be a more traditional film, with scenes filmed in Newfoundland, the live performance of the first returning Broadway show brings its own kind of magic that is wonderful to watch unfold.

Based on true events, the Canadian musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein offers plenty of both laughter and tears over its 106-minute running time featuring a small cast playing multiple roles of both the shaken visitors and incredibly hospitable locals. And director Christopher Ashley knows just how to frame each sequence, giving us the best seat in the house. 

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