Cyrano (2021)

Oh goody! Another musical (I'm sincere)! We both loved this retelling of the 125 year old play about a writer too self-conscious to woo his love and allows another man to use his words. The casting of the brilliant actor Peter Dinklage, who is 4'5" tall, as Cyrano de Bergerac was an inspired move. Haley Bennett is wonderful as Roxanne as is Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Christian. I particularly appreciated the cinematic staging and the visuals. The dancing and singing are superb, including one song by a trio of guards that includes Glen Hansard, creator of the musical Once. Shout out to Ben Mendelsohn for his Captain Hook-like portrayal of the evil De Guiche.

Joe Wright's fine direction is aided by Erica Schmidt's screenplay. She wrote and directed the 2018 Off-Broadway musical on which this movie is based. It also starred Dinklage, who happens to be her husband of almost 17 years now.

The music is by Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner, who are members of the band The National. The soundtrack, including vocals and instrumentals, can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere.

There have been dozens of versions of this story, and in most of them, Cyrano's handicap is a big nose. Dinklage said on Marc Maron's podcast in January, “My size is not a substitute for lack of a nose” but it draws upon insecurity. He also made mention of the “M word.”

The costumes by Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran were nominated not just for an Oscar but also by their peers in the Costume Designers Guild. The cinematography by Seamus McGarvey should've gotten a nod as well.

Dinklage was last blogged for I Care a Lot, Harrison for JT LeRoy, Mendelsohn for The Land of Steady Habits, Wright for Darkest Hour, the Dessners for C'mon C'mon, Durran for Spencer, and McGarvey for The Greatest Showman. Parrini is new to me.

Jack and I had no idea it was a musical until it began, just that it was nominated for several awards (I keep track here––it won AARP's Best Love Story for Grownups) and well reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes (85% critics and 86 audiences).

We rented it on Apple TV March 19.

Encanto (2021)

Jack loved and I didn't hate this animated Disney musical about a magical family living in a magical house in Colombia, dealing with familial and community relationships as well the effects of past war. The Oscar voters loved it, too, as it won Best Animated Feature. Its voice actors include Stephanie Beatriz as Mirabel (the protagonist), John Leguizamo as Bruno, Diane Guerrero as Isabela, and Wilmer Valderrama as Agustin. The cast and crew are mostly Latinx.

Three directors are credited (Jared Bush, Byron Howard, Charise Castro Smith), two screenwriters (Smith and Bush), and six wrote the story (all of the above plus Jason Hand, Nancy Kruse, and the omnipresent Lin-Manuel Miranda).

The Oscar-nominated original instrumental score by Germaine Franco comprises the middle half of the Apple Music soundtrack and most of the songs' music and lyrics were written by Miranda, including the Oscar.-nominated song Dos Orugitas (two caterpillars which become mariposas, or butterflies).

Beatriz was last blogged for In the Heights, Leguizamo for Nancy, Valderrama for Larry Crowne, Bush and Howard for Zootopia, and Miranda for In the Heights.

Guerrero is best known for 57 episodes of Orange Is the New Black as Maritza Ramos and Smith is an accomplished playwright making her co-directing debut here. Hand has graduated from art and animation departments to writing as has Kruse, who worked on animation for 71 episodes of The Simpsons and directed 25. Franco is the first woman to score a Disney animated feature. Her previous work includes six episodes of Vida, Little, and Yearly Departed 2020, all of which were diverse female-centric projects.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are enchanted, averaging 91 and 93%, respectively. If you watch it with kids, keep the credits going for a change, because the characters are sprinkled about, doing things that follow the story.

I watched it March 18 on Disney+ with English audio and captions. Jack watched it some time before that.

tick, tick…BOOM! (2021)

Loads of fun for us lovers of musicals, this creatively staged movie starts in 1992, when the late composer/playwright Jonathan Larson performed his show of the same name, telling the story of his previous musical Superbia, and moves to 1990 as he was about to turn 30. Andrew Garfield makes a wonderful singing debut and shines as the ebullient Jonathan (Garfield was nominated for both an Oscar and SAG award, among others, for this role). The enormous cast includes Alexandra Shipp as Susan, Robin de Jesus as Michael, Vanessa Hudgens as Karessa, and Bradley Whitford as Stephen Sondheim (who died just before this premiered but lent his own voice––and wrote the lines––off screen to one scene).

Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut and has a cameo as a cook at the diner. Steven Levenson adapted Larson's play and all the music is Larson's. Larson is best known for the musical Rent, but died unexpectedly the night before that premiered off-Broadway in 1996.

One scene at the diner is jam-packed with stars, including Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo (original Angelica and Eliza in Hamilton), Joel Grey, Chita Rivera, André de Shields, Bebe Neuwirth, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phylicia Rashad, Bernadette Peters, and Rent original cast members Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Wilson Jermaine Heredia.

The other Oscar nomination went to editors Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum, and they deserve it for cutting together the flashbacks, flash-forwards, and musical numbers.

There are many juicy trivia items and I recommend that link.

Garfield was last blogged for The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Hudgens for Spring Breakers. I wrote about Whitford in Destroyer and barely mentioned him in How It Ends. Shipp's resume includes Straight Outta Compton, Deadpool 2, and Shaft, and Levenson's includes eight episodes of Masters of Sex, eight of Fosse/Verdon, as well as the book of Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway and the screenplay of the 2021 film adaptation (haven't seen it yet but it's high on my list). De Jesus is new to me. Kerstein worked on Garden State (2004), Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, Going in Style, Crazy Rich Asians, and In the Heights, and Weisblum on The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox, Black Swan, Isle of Dogs, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and more.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics were not watching the clock, with their average of 87% and its audiences are explosively happy at 96. We watched it on Netflix on March 16.

Dune (2021)

This sci-fi saga of a young man called upon to travel to a sandy planet to protect his people is visually spectacular and has many fans, including the Academy, but I agree with Jack, who said that he could see the technical nominations but not Best Picture. This is part one and part two is slated for next year.

Timothée Chalamet, a proven talent, heads up the cast of dozens, not one of whom got an acting nomination. Some of the other talents are Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, and Charlotte Rampling.

Director Denis Villeneuve works from a script that he co-wrote with Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth, based on the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. It's a testament to the failure of multi-tasking that I read the book during college classes and don't remember much of either.

Hans Zimmer's Oscar-winning score can be streamed on Apple Music and elsewhere. It's very good and features some newly invented instruments as well as vocals by Lisa Gerrard. The movie also won for cinematography (Greig Fraser), production design (Patrice Vermette), editing (Joe Walker), and sound and visual effects (big teams), with nominations for makeup and hair, costumes, adapted screenplay, and best picture.

Chalamet was last blogged for The French Dispatch, Isaac for The Card Counter, Brolin for Deadpool 2, Zendaya for Spider-Man: Far from Home, Rampling for The Sense of an Ending, Villeneuve for Blade Runner 2049, Spaihts for Passengers, Roth for A Star Is Born, Zimmer for Wonder Woman 1984, Gerrard for Samsara, and Fraser for Vice.

I'm not sure if I've seen any of Momoa's work, other than that cringey gag at the Oscars Sunday when Regina Hall patted down him and Brolin. (That's all I'm going to say here about the show.) I have seen plenty of Vermette's, including The Young Victoria, for which he was Oscar-nominated, Vice, Sicario, and Arrival (the latter two directed by Villeneuve and edited by Walker). Walker was Oscar-nominated for 12 Years a Slave.

Fans should read the multitude of trivia items.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have not deserted this movie, averaging 83%, while its audiences are even sunnier at 90. We streamed it on HBO Max on March 10.

West Side Story (2021)

Jack and I love musicals, we love period pieces, and we loved this adaptation/remake of the 1961 movie, based on the 1957 Broadway musical about star-crossed lovers from rival New York gangs. After watching it we listened to the other two soundtracks (some of the lyrics have been switched around) and I became even more impressed with the genius of composer Leonard Bernstein (oh, those duets!) as well as the voices of Ansel Elgort and Rachel Zegler as Tony and Maria. All of the singing, dancing, acting, choreography, sets, you name it, are first rate.

Since I'm just getting around to writing this three weeks after watching, I now know that Ariana deBose won the Oscar for Supporting Actress. The movie had six other Oscar nominations, as well as a raft of nods from other organizations. Rita Moreno, now 90, who played Anita (DeBose's part) in the 1961 version, plays a new character, the widow of the storekeeper Doc.

Steven Spielberg directs from Tony Kushner's screenplay, credited as an adaptation of Arthur Laurents' stage book. There's no mention of Ernest Lehman's 1961 screenplay, Jerome Robbins' contribution to the 1957 play, nor William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics and sadly died four days before this movie's premiere.

The actors playing Latinx characters in this 2021 version are all actually Latinx. They occasionally lapse into speaking Spanish, and Spielberg felt it was respectful not to subtitle the Spanish. However, the closed caption version, while subtitling the English, merely said "[Spanish]," which was cruel to us who rely on captions for all dialogue. 

There was an all-Spanish revival of West Side Story on Broadway from 2009-11.

The cinematography by Janusz Kaminski, costumes by Paul Tazewell and production design by Adam Stockhausen were all nominated and rate mentioning here.

Elgort was last blogged for Baby Driver, Spielberg for The Post, Kushner for Fences, Kaminski for The Judge, and Stockhausen for The French Dispatch.

Bernstein (1918-1990) had a storied career in composing, conducting, performing, and educating, with too many highlights to summarize here. My personal connection is that I sang in the choir of a production of Bernstein's Mass when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early 1970s. I have a closer degree of separation from Sondheim (1930-2021), because his younger half-brother Herb was in my brother's high school class in New York. Stephen Sondheim was a prolific composer and lyricist and many of his works have been made into movies.

Zegler makes her film debut but has been performing as Maria since high school (maybe five years ago) and has been cast as Snow in an upcoming live action version of Snow White. DeBose sang and danced in Hamilton on stage and screen, as well as The Prom and the series Schmigadoon!. Moreno's 164 credits include 780 episodes of The Electric Company (1971-77), five of Jane the Virgin (2015-19), and 46 of the Latinx remake of One Day at a Time (2017-20), as well as The King and I (1956), Carnal Knowledge (1971), and so many more. Tazewell designed the wardrobe for Harriet and Hamilton, among others.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences feel pretty good about this one, averaging 91 and 94%, respectively. We watched it on March 8 on HBO Max.

The Worst Person in the World (Verdens verste menneske - 2021)

Unlike nearly everyone in the world, I didn't love this story of a Norwegian woman searching for love and a career and finding herself. Perhaps it was the way I watched it (many distractions). It's been quite a while since I saw it and I don't remember much. I think I found it too disconnected, despite its twelve chapter headings. Renate Reinsve stars as Julie.

Apparently it's the third part of director/co-writer Joachim Trier's Oslo trilogy, all of which got by me unnoticed. Trier's co-writer is Eskil Vogt.

It has Oscar nods for Original Screenplay and International Film among its 84 nominations and 19 wins, many of which are for Reinsve as Julie. The actress had been thinking of quitting acting when she got this part.

The score is by Ola Fløttum and here is a list of good songs.

Much press has been devoted to this picture. One article I read today says "the worst person in the world" is a common expression in Norway, much as an American would describe someone as the nicest guy in the world, so we shouldn't put too much weight on the title.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics' average of 96% suggests it's close to being the best movie in the world, while its audiences are right behind at 87.

You can rent it now on iTunes, Amazon, etc.

Licorice Pizza (2021)

This charming multi-layered rom-com, set in 1973, about a 15 year old actor and the 25 year old girl he's crushing on is great fun and stars newcomers Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim literally running around the 1973 San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson grew up in the Valley, though he turned only three in 1973, but he experienced the coexistence of Hollywood and suburban California. The big and noteworthy cast includes Sean Penn, John Turturro, Christine Ebersole, and Bradley Cooper as stars playing stars in some funny bits. Jack DiCaprio, Leonardo's father, has a cameo in a black and white wig.

There are too many juicy trivia bits to recount but here are a few of my favorites. Licorice Pizza was the name of a vinyl record store chain in L.A. around that time (including when I moved there nine years later), as well as being slang for a vinyl record, but those facts are inexplicably omitted from the movie. Haim's character's first name, Alana, is the same as her own and her parents and sisters are played by her parents and sisters, using their own first names as well as improvising most of their dialogue. Anderson says he was infatuated with Alana's mother Donna when she was his elementary school art teacher.

I was a little confused about the character Alana's age, since she says 28 early on, but apparently it was a goof that Anderson decided to keep in.

Jonny Greenwood is credited with the score, and I found one track on YouTube, but you may not notice his music because of the great soundtrack of 70s songs, available on Apple Music and elsewhere.

Anderson was last blogged for Phantom Thread, Penn for The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Turturro for Landline, Ebersole for The Wolf of Wall Street, Cooper for Nightmare Alley, and Greenwood for The Power of the Dog. Haim and Hoffman may be making their feature acting debuts in this movie, but she is in the Grammy-winning band Haim with her sisters, and he is the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, acclaimed actor and frequent Anderson collaborator and friend.

As of this writing, the movie has 53 wins and 184 nominations, including Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. Here's my running list of awards and nominations sorted by title.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are spinning over this one, averaging 91%, but its audiences abandoned their turntables with a tepid 65. I was too eager to see it to wait for renting, so we bought it on iTunes on March 4, a few days after its release, and we're glad we did!

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

This masterpiece, filled with sound and fury (and magnificent pictures), signifying director/screenplay adaptor Joel Coen's first movie without his brother Ethan, has earned, as of this writing, fifteen wins and 108 nominations. 

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand (the latter married to Joel Coen since 1984) splendidly lead the cast as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and are supported by, among others, Brendan Gleeson as King Duncan, Corey Hawkins as Macduff, and Stephen Root as Porter. Shout out to Kathryn Hunter who plays all three witches, speaking in a satanic gravelly voice and bending and twisting her body into seemingly impossible shapes without any special effects added.

And oh, the photography! Black and white, beautifully framed, stark images, filmed almost exclusively on soundstages, are to the credit of both director of photography Bruno Delbonnel and Coen, who scripted the adaptation of William Shakespeare's play. Forty of the wins and nominations are for the cinematography alone. I had to count. Some of them are from awards given to cinematographers by cinematographers. Here is an article about the cinematography. See also my running list of selected wins and nominations, sorted by title.

Carter Burwell's soundtrack, available on Apple Music has a lot of dialogue in it so, although it's good, I could not use it well while writing (who among us can compose sentences while listening to words?).

In all of Joel Coen's previous films with his brother Ethan, they used the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes for their work as editors. In this, Joel's editorial pseudonym is Reginald Jaynes.

Joel Coen was last blogged for co-directing and co-writing (with Ethan) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Washington for acting in Roman J. Israel, Esq., McDormand for The French Dispatch, Gleeson for Suffragette, Hawkins for In the Heights, Root for On the Basis of Sex, Delbonnel for shooting Darkest Hour, and Burwell for scoring The Good Liar. Hunter, better known for her theatre work, is covered in this article.

Perhaps many of Rotten Tomatoes' audience members, averaging an idiotic 77%, hated English class, while its critics were in Advanced Placement, and grade the movie 93.

If you, too, hated English class, this will not move you. But if you, like I, wish you had paid better attention then, you can read the closed captions now to follow Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition and murder. Jack is a retired high school English teacher and Macbeth was among his oft-repeated subjects, so he was my live Cliff's Notes, tutoring me as we watched it on Apple TV March 1.