West Side Story ~ A Capsule Movie Review

West Side Story image 2
West Side Story
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~

A pattern has been established. Every sixty years, there is a new movie version of the classic American musical stage play, West Side Story. The 1961 movie version was a smash hit, winning eleven Oscars, and starring the late Natalie Wood as Maria. It remains a classic, landmark film sixty years later. The 2021 movie version of West Side Story uses all the modern-day film techniques that didn’t exist in 1961, while retaining the flavor and the spirit of the original stage play. The next version of West Side Story will be in 2081. We’ll be watching for it.

Almost every person in the world knows that West Side Story is a retelling of William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. The star-crossed lovers here, though, are not named Romeo and Juliet, but Tony and Maria. Tony is a “white” boy of Polish descent and Maria a “brown” girl from Puerto Rico. (Right away we see there is going to be a problem.) Tony has been in prison for almost killing another boy in a fight. He works, and lives, in a drug store owned by a kind elderly woman named Valentina (played by Rita Moreno, who won a Supporting-Actress Oscar for the 1961 film version). Maria works as a cleaning woman in Gimbel’s department store. “I’m poor,” Maria tells Tony. “I’m poorer,” he says.

The story is set, of course, in New York City in 1957, giving the entire movie a retro look and feel. On the “West Side” of the city, where many Puerto Rican immigrants live, whole sections are being demolished to make way for new buildings. Most of the outdoor scenes are set against piles of rubble.

The young Puerto Rican men in the neighborhood have a gang called the Sharks. The young Anglo men have their own gang called the Jets. The Sharks and the Jets despise each other and are engaged in turf warfare. Each gang wants to be the dominant gang in the neighborhood. This is not going to end well.

Of the lovers Tony and Maria, Tony is a Jet. Maria, while not a member of the rival gang herself, is close to the gang because her intense brother, Bernardo, is the leader of the gang. Bernardo is appalled that Maria, his sister, is cavorting with a member of the Jets. It brings out his killer instinct. The rival gangs are planning a big “rumble” to resolve the issue. They have weapons and, more importantly, high levels of testosterone.

Tony, during one of his romantic interludes with Maria, tells her not to worry. As a member in good standing of the Jets, he can reason with his fellow gang members and persuade them not to fight the Sharks. The year he has spent in prison has made him into something of a pacifist. When the two gangs come face to face in the “salt shed” to fight it out, however, his efforts to bring about “peace” are ineffective. The inevitable consequence is tragedy.

There are many fine moments in West Side Story, some exuberant dance numbers and beautiful, though familiar, music. The whole thing is beautiful to look at. Ansel Elgort as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria are sincere and believable. There is lots to like in this remake of West Side Story. If you don’t see anything here to like, then it probably isn’t your kind of movie.

Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Nightmare Alley ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Nightmare Alley (2021)
Nightmare Alley
~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp ~ 

If you are a grown-up movie fan and you are not interested in movies about comic book super heroes (or other youth-oriented claptrap), you might want to take a look at a 2021 movie called Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro and based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham. It’s a movie that’s bursting with intelligence, cinematic artistry and vintage atmosphere. A feast for the eyes, the ears and the mind.

The story is about the rise and fall of a fake “mentalist” named Stanton Carlisle (played brilliantly by Bradley Cooper). He comes from out of the gutter and, purely by chance, begins working in a seedy traveling carnival. He falls in with a fortune teller/tarot reader named Zeena (Toni Collette), who, if you haven’t guessed, is a complete fake. Zeena has an old, booze-addled husband named Pete. The two of them (Zeena and Pete) teach Stanton their elaborate “code” for reading minds. The idea is to dazzle the audience and make them believe they are truly witnessing the miracle of mind-reading, while, in reality, it’s only a paper moon.

Molly (Rooney Mara) is a fresh-as-a-rosebud girl working in a sideshow in a skimpy outfit with electricity coursing through her body. She believes in Stanton Carlisle and comes to love him. (Can anybody truly love him?) Stanton tells Molly that the two of them can transcend the traveling carnival and graduate to the high-class big time.

A year or so later, Stanton and Molly have “made it.” They have perfected the mind-reading code and are performing before white-tie audiences in swanky nightclubs. (Stanton does the reading of minds while Molly feeds him the cues.) One night, a “consulting psychiatrist” named Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) sees the show and is impressed when she tries to fool Stanton and he sidesteps with a clever dodge. She arranges to meet Stanton later, when she tells him how he can make some real dough with a “spook show” in which he convinces wealthy “marks” that they are reconnecting with long-lost loved ones. These heart-broken rich people, it seems, will pay any amount to believe they are communicating with their dearly departed.

In reptilian Dr. Ritter with her scary red lips, Stanton Carlisle has met his match. He tells her in one of their more intimate moments that she is no good; he knows this because he is no good, either. She tells him he is an “Okie with straight teeth.” We come to see by the end of the movie that she is actually worse than he is.

Stanton Carlisle does some horrible things throughout the two hours and thirty minutes of the movie, but we can’t help liking him (even just a little bit), so that makes him (in my book, at least) an anti-hero. He somehow manages to capture, and keep, the sympathy of the audience through to the end. What a movie! I loved it!

Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Bridge of San Luis Rey ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Bridge of San Luis Rey first edition cover
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

American author Thornton Wilder lived from 1897 to 1975. He wrote his most famous novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in 1927, when he was thirty years old. The novel is set in Peru in 1714. A certain primitive bridge that had been constructed by the Incas a hundred years earlier falls into the ravine below, killing the five people who happen to be on it at the time. The question the novel poses is this: Was the collapse of the bridge just a matter of “chance,” or was there some “design” to the deaths of the five victims?

Those who die in the bridge collapse are male and female, young and old:

  • The Marquesa de Montemayor is an aristocratic woman, all alone in the world except for a daughter who marries and moves to Spain. The mother and daughter do not get along well when they’re in the same location, so they communicate by letter, between Peru and Spain. Since it is the eighteenth century, a letter takes six months to reach its destination. She and her servant girl, Pepita, die in the bridge collapse.
  • Pepita is a girl from the convent whom the Marquesa de Montemayor takes as a companion.
  • Esteban has an identical twin named Manual. They have been educated in the convent and become scribes, writing letters for people for pay. Esteban and Manual are so close they develop a secret language between them. When Manuel falls in love with a famous actress in the theatre named Camila Perichole, the relationship of the twins is tested. Manuel meets a sad fate before Esteban dies in the bridge collapse.
  • Uncle Pio is an old man who works for Camila Perichole, as a kind of all-purpose servant and father figure. Camila Perichole isn’t very kind to Uncle Pio, but he persuades her to let him take her only son, Jaime, to Lima with him to educate him.
  • Jaime is with Uncle Pio on the bridge when it collapses. He is the fifth victim of the collapse.

After the bridge collapse, Brother Juniper spends years investigating the lives of the five victims to try to make sense of the collapse and to ascertain if there was any design in the accident or if it was all purely chance. Of course, in the end he realizes he has wasted his time and effort. It is a conundrum, a question without an answer.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is one of the twentieth century masterpieces of American literature and ranks number 37 on The Modern Library List of the 100 Best Works of Fiction in English of the twentieth century.

Copyright © 2022 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997