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      The Eight Film Festival Movies That Got the Biggest Awards Boost

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      “Women Talking,” women fighting, a pair of Brendans and more: After Toronto, Venice and Telluride, here are the titles and performances in the conversation.Who are the front-runners, the dark horses and the long shots? After major film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, where most of the year’s remaining prestige films have screened, the awards season has finally begun to come into focus.There are still a few significant contenders yet to debut, like Damien Chazelle’s glitzy Hollywood drama “Babylon,” and the industry is buzzing that Apple will soon announce a year-end release for its big-budget slavery drama, “Emancipation,” even though the film’s leading man, Will Smith, was banned from attending the Oscars for the next decade. And some tantalizing questions from these festivals still linger, like whether “Glass Onion,” the rollicking sequel to “Knives Out,” can score the best-picture nomination that the first film missed out on.But in the meantime, here are the eight films that came out of the fall festivals with the biggest awards-season pop.‘The Whale’There are few things Oscar voters prefer more than a transformational role and a comeback narrative, and this season, Brendan Fraser’s got both. In Darren Aronofsky’s new drama, Fraser wears a prosthetic bodysuit to transform into a 600-pound shut-in named Charlie, who attempts to reconnect with his angry daughter (Sadie Sink) as his health falters. Interest is high in the 53-year-old actor’s return to the limelight, and every time a clip hit social media of the emotional Fraser soaking up applause in Venice and Toronto, a young generation raised on his heroics in “The Mummy” reliably made those videos go viral. Though some festival pundits have taken issue with the film’s depiction of an obese protagonist, awards voters will still be wowed by Fraser’s work, making him this year’s prohibitive best-actor favorite.‘The Fabelmans’Steven Spielberg’s new film about his own coming-of-age was warmly received in Toronto, where Michelle Williams won best-in-show notices as Mitzi, the theatrical mother of the movie’s young Spielberg stand-in. Expect the actress to pick up her fifth Oscar nomination and, if she is run as a supporting performer, her first win. Even before its festival debut, awards watchers thought Spielberg’s film would land at the top of their best-picture prediction lists, but the film isn’t juggernaut-shaped — it’s lighter, more intimate and an appealing ramble in a way that people might not have anticipated. That may mean that the field is still open for a best-picture favorite to emerge, or perhaps “The Fabelmans” could sneak its way there in the end without earning the resentment accrued by an early-season front-runner.‘The Woman King’ and the Art of WarViola Davis leads a strong cast into battle in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action epic inspired by real women warriors.Review:  “‘The Woman King’ is a sweeping entertainment, but it’s also a story of unwavering resistance in front of and behind the camera,” our critic writes.Viola Davis: As our reporter visited her on the set, Davis spoke about how powerful it was to watch Black women transform into warriors.Director Q&A: In an interview with The Times, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet.Anatomy of a Scene: Prince-Bythewood had the actors perform their own stunts in the film. In some cases, that meant pulling off flips to the dirt as well as wrestling scenes.‘Tár’It’s been 16 years since Todd Field last directed a film, but expect his third feature, “Tár,” to hit the Oscar-nominated heights of his predecessors, “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children.” It will certainly be one of the year’s most talked-about movies: The story touches on hot-button topics like cancel culture and #MeToo as it follows a famed conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose career begins to crumble when her past catches up with her. Blanchett earned career-best raves at Venice for the role — and taught herself German, piano and conducting to boot — so a third Oscar is well within reach. Still, a strong year for best-actress contenders will make Blanchett’s battle a fierce one.‘The Banshees of Inisherin’Five years after “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” earned Oscars for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, the writer-director Martin McDonagh is back with a dark comedy whose cast could run the table, too. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are longtime friends whose relationship is severed in the most baffling way, and Farrell’s constant attempts to mend the rift push their petty grievances into the realm of tragedy. Both men are wonderful and will probably earn their first Oscar nominations, but if voters really flip for the film — and I suspect they will — then the supporting performers Kerry Condon (as Farrell’s sister) and Barry Keoghan (as a cockeyed friend) will be in the mix as well.‘Women Talking’This Sarah Polley-directed drama about Mennonite women in crisis was Telluride’s most significant world premiere this year, and in that Colorado enclave, which regularly draws a large contingent of Oscar voters, “Women Talking” did quite well. With a sprawling ensemble cast that includes awards favorites Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy — as well as three-time best-actress winner McDormand in a small role — “Women Talking” should nab several nominations, even though some of the male viewers I spoke to after the film’s Toronto screening proved surprisingly resistant to the film’s feature-long debate about sexual violence.‘The Woman King’Forget “Women Talking,” how about women fighting? This old-fashioned action epic from the director Gina Prince-Bythewood played through the roof in Toronto and stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, an all-female group of warriors defending their kingdom in 1820s West Africa. Davis is an Oscar winner (with three more nominations, too) who called “The Woman King” her magnum opus while introducing the film, and a performance this passionate and athletic should be in contention all season. But a notable box-office haul will be crucial to the film’s fate (it opens Friday), since even bigger action films like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are due at year’s end and will be following Oscar-nominated predecessors.‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’The expansion of the best picture race to 10 nominees has made room for all sorts of previously snubbed movies, from Marvel spectaculars to Pixar tentpoles. But when will a documentary be nominated for best picture? Laura Poitras’s new film, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” beat all fiction narratives at Venice to take the Golden Lion, the fest’s top award, and this portrait of photographer Nan Goldin as she protests the wealthy Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis will be distributed by Neon, the company that managed an Oscar first with the Korean-language best picture winner “Parasite.” At the very least, “All the Beauty” will be a strong contender for the documentary Oscar that Poitras won for her 2014 film about Edward Snowden, “Citizenfour.”‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’This A24 film from the directing team Daniels opened way back in March, but you’d hardly know that based on the major festival tributes to its star, Michelle Yeoh, in both Toronto and Venice. A flag was planted in both places: This indie hit has now entered its awards-campaign phase, and since the fall festivals didn’t produce major front-runners in the picture and directing categories, expect “Everything Everywhere,” to gun for recognition in both races as well as the supporting actor category (where Ke Huy Quan could be this year’s Troy Kotsur), original screenplay and more. Yeoh’s best-actress nomination is almost certain, though she’ll face plenty of competition from Blanchett. Both women were handed dazzling signature roles this year, and their race should be the season’s most exciting. More

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      In ‘The Fabelmans,’ Steven Spielberg Himself Is the Star

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      But it’s Michelle Williams who burns brightest in this film based on Spielberg’s childhood, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” is the movie every fall film festival was dying to have, but only Toronto got it. And at the Saturday-night premiere, the collective excitement was making people lose their minds.It wasn’t just the enthusiastic audience, many of whom had come straight from the well-received premiere of the “Knives Out” sequel “Glass Onion.” And it wasn’t just the giddiness of Cameron Bailey, who runs the Toronto International Film Festival, as he introduced the filmmaker for the first time. Even Spielberg himself got carried away in the madness.“I’m so glad I came to Toronto,” he said. Thank you, Steven. Same. #TIFF22 pic.twitter.com/wLAwQW58IW— Cameron Bailey (@cameron_tiff) September 11, 2022
      “I’m really glad we came to Toronto!” exclaimed the 75-year-old director, noting that this would be the first time a film of his had played at a film festival. That claim would appear to sweep away the New York Film Festival showings of “Bridge of Spies” and “Lincoln,” the Cannes premieres of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “The BFG,” and the South by Southwest bow of “Ready Player One,” but hey, sometimes you’ve got to clear the table before you can set it.And at least his lie felt emotionally true, since the stakes were so significant: By landing “The Fabelmans,” Toronto could fortify itself after two pandemic-diminished years, while Spielberg could claim the friendliest possible audience for his most personal film yet.Written by the director and his frequent collaborator Tony Kushner, “The Fabelmans” is an only slightly fictionalized retelling of Spielberg’s own coming-of-age. Sammy Fabelman (played as a teenager by Gabriel LaBelle) is a movie-mad kid who stages increasingly elaborate short films that star his sisters, classmates and semi-supportive parents. His dad, Burt (Paul Dano), is too swept up in his computer-programming job to understand Sammy’s artistic inclinations, but his mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), is a free spirit who never got to realize her dreams of working as a pianist and encourages Sammy to follow his bliss.Their mother-son bond is strong, and when Sammy films her dancing on a family trip and later shows her the edited footage, Mitzi beams. “You see me,” she says. But Sammy sometimes sees too much: As he gets older, he notices that Mitzi’s strong bond with her husband’s best friend (Seth Rogen) borders on an emotional affair. And as the family moves from New Jersey to Arizona and then finally to California, the ties that bind begin to fray.I found “The Fabelmans” to be only secondarily Spielberg’s origin story; primarily, it’s a look-at-what-she-can-do Michelle Williams vehicle, and the actress really goes for it, attacking this part like someone who knows she’s been handed her signature role. Based on Spielberg’s late mother, Leah, Mitzi is a dramatic personality, prone to flights of fancy and intense mood swings, and at any given moment, she’ll laugh, cry, sing or pack the kids into the car for an impromptu tornado chase. You love her, but she’s a lot — on this, the viewer and Sammy both agree — and Williams finds exactly the right moments to dial back the bigness and remind you that there is something private and vulnerable at the core of this very outgoing woman.Spielberg told the Toronto crowd that he’d had Williams in mind to play his mom ever since he saw her work in “Blue Valentine” (2010), which earned Williams the second of her four Oscar nominations; if she is campaigned as a supporting actress for “The Fabelmans” (as I suspect she will be, despite her ample screen time), this could very well propel the well-respected 42-year-old to her first win, just a year after Spielberg’s “West Side Story” actress Ariana DeBose topped that same race.Spielberg films always have plenty of Oscar upside, and “The Fabelmans” will be a strong contender in the picture and directing categories (and could even score a nod for Judd Hirsch, who puts in a scene-stealing cameo as Mitzi’s uncle), but the film is gentler, shaggier and more intimate than some of his other awards-season juggernauts, and there’s no need to oversell it at this early date. Even Spielberg, sensing all the hype in the room, sought to downplay speculation that “The Fabelmans” served as any sort of magnum-opus finale.“This is not because I’m going to retire and this is my swan song,” he told Toronto. “Don’t believe any of that!” More

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      Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present

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      Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present“Blade Runner,” “E.T.,” “Tron,” “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Thing” all arrived that one season 40 years ago to become indelible and influential.The future is now: The photographer Sinna Nasseri captured images of present-day New York City as it might have been predicted by science fiction films of the 1980s. Above, a replica of the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” was on display in Times Square. Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.At the end of Christian Nyby’s 1951 sci-fi chiller “The Thing from Another World” — about an Arctic expedition whose members are stealthily decimated by an accidentally defrosted alien monster — a traumatized journalist takes to the airwaves to deliver an urgent warning. “Watch the skies,” he insists breathlessly, hinting at the possibility of a full-on invasion in the final lines. “Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”This plea for eagle-eyed vigilance suited the postwar era of Pax Americana, in which economic prosperity was leveraged against a creeping paranoia — of threats coming from above or within. The final lines of movie were prescient about the rise of the American science-fiction film, out of the B-movie trenches in the 1950s and into the firmament of the industry’s A-list several decades later.The peak of this trajectory came in the summer of 1982, in which five authentic genre classics premiered within a one-month span. After its June 4, 1982, opening, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” set an unexpected record by grossing about $14 million on its first weekend. Seven days later, Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” debuted to $11 million but proved to have stubby, little box office legs, eventually grossing more than half a billion dollars worldwide. June 25 brought the competing releases of Ridley Scott’s ambitious tech-noir thriller “Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s R-rated remake of “The Thing,” visions several shades darker than “E.T.”; both flopped as a prelude to their future cult devotion. On July 9, Disney’s technologically groundbreaking “Tron,” set in a virtual universe of video-game software, completed the quintet.Not all of these movies were created equal artistically, but taken together, they made a compelling case for the increasing thematic flexibility of their genre. The range of tones and styles on display was remarkable, from family-friendly fantasy to gory horror. Whether giving a dated prime-time space opera new panache or recasting 1940s noir in postmodernist monochrome, the filmmakers (and special-effects technicians) of the summer of ’82 created a sublime season of sci-fi that looks, 40 years later, like the primal scene for many Hollywood blockbusters being made — or remade and remodeled — today. How could five such indelible movies arrive at the same time?Whether the summer of ’82 represented the gentrification of cinematic sci-fi or its artistic apex, the genre’s synthesis of spectacle and sociology had been underway for some time. Following the pulp fictions of the ’50s, if there was one movie that represented a great leap forward for cinematic science fiction, it was Stanley Kubrick’s epically scaled, narratively opaque 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which not only featured a massive, mysterious monolith but also came to resemble one in the eyes of critics and audiences alike.The film’s grandeur was undeniable, and so was its gravitas: It was an epic punctuated with a question mark. Almost a decade later, “Star Wars” used a similar array of special effects to cultivate more weightless sensations. In lieu of Kubrick’s anxious allegory about humans outsmarted and destroyed by their own technology, George Lucas put escapism on the table — “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” — and staged a reassuringly Manichaean battle between good and evil, with very fine aliens on both sides.The same year as “Star Wars,” Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” rekindled the paranoid alien-invasion vibes of the ’50s with an optimistic twist. The film had originally been titled “Watch the Skies” in homage to Nyby’s classic, but it was an invitation to a more benevolent form of stargazing: Its climactic light show was as patriotic as Fourth of July fireworks, with a distinctly countercultural message worthy of Woodstock: Make love, not war (of the worlds).What united “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters,” beyond their makers’ shared sense of genre history (and mechanics), were their direct appeals to both children and the inner children of grown-ups everywhere. In The New Yorker, the influential and acerbic critic Pauline Kael carped that George Lucas was “in the toy business.” Like the scientist at the end of “The Thing From Another World,” she was raising the alarm about what she saw as a powerful, pernicious influence: the infantilization of the mass audience by special-effects spectacle.Yet even Kael submitted to the shamelessly populist charms of “E.T.,” which she described as being “bathed in warmth.” She wrote that the film, about the intimate friendship between a 10-year-old boy and a benign, petlike thing from another world, “reminds you of the goofiest dreams you had as a kid.”What The Times Said About These Five Movies in 1982Card 1 of 5Blade Runner. More

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      Streaming Has Won the Hollywood Debate. Is Best Picture Next?

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      A few years ago, the entertainment industry was arguing over whether movies on streaming services even counted as a film. Now, one is poised to win the Oscars’ top prize.Three years ago, Hollywood was engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight over the future of cinema — what, exactly, constitutes a film — with the Oscars as the boxing ring.Netflix and other streaming insurgents insisted that the delivery route was irrelevant, that a film could be primarily viewed on an iPhone and still be a film. Theaters? Ticket sales? It didn’t matter.The Hollywood establishment, or at least most of it, was incensed: Big screens, they argued, are part of the very definition of cinema. “Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie,” Steven Spielberg told a reporter at a European press junket at the time. “You certainly, if it’s a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar.”And now?Unless the predictions are wrong and something unexpected awaits inside those gold leaf-embossed envelopes at the 94th Academy Awards on Sunday, a streaming service film — in a first — will win the Oscar for best picture. “CODA,” a dramedy from Apple TV+ about the only hearing member of a deaf family, is favored to receive the prize, having already won top honors at the predictive Producers Guild Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards.A Netflix film, “The Power of the Dog,” could nudge past “CODA” to win the best picture trophy, awards handicappers say. But most are not predicting a win for nominees from traditional studios, including “Belfast” and “West Side Story.” Apple TV+ and Netflix have both campaigned aggressively, with Apple spending an estimated $20 million to $25 million to promote “CODA” and Netflix’s push for “The Power of the Dog” costing even more.“CODA,” which stars Troy Kostur and Marlee Matlin, has already won top honors from the Screen Actors Guild.Apple TV+For an industry in turmoil, with tech giants like Apple and Amazon upending entertainment-industry business practices and threatening Hollywood power hierarchies, the welcoming of a streaming service into the best picture club would amount to a seismic moment. Television and film have been merging for years, but lines of demarcation remain, with the Oscars as one. (Last year’s winner, “Nomadland,” from Searchlight Pictures, a traditional studio, was mostly seen on Hulu, but only because a lot of theaters were closed; it played in roughly 1,200 theaters in the United States and had an exclusive IMAX run.)Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.The Hosts: Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes plan to keep the show moving and make it funny, though they will acknowledge the war in Ukraine.‘Seen That Before?’: Four of the best picture nominees this year are remakes or reboots of earlier films.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage. Hollywood Legend: Danny Glover will receive an honorary Oscar for his activism. He spoke to The Times about his life in movies and social justice.Return to the Playground: For his Oscar-nominated short film “When We Were Bullies,” Jay Rosenblatt tracked down his fifth-grade classmates.Among this year’s best picture nominees, “I think there’s a lot of the academy that might not even know what is a streaming movie and what isn’t a streaming movie,” said the producer Jason Blum, whose Oscar-nominated films have included “Get Out,” “Whiplash” and “BlacKkKlansman.”The digital forces that have reshaped music and television have been chipping away at cinema for a long time. “If ‘CODA’ and Apple win, which seems pretty likely, it will be in part because of Netflix, which has been banging on the academy door for years, and fighting the good fight — or the bad fight, depending on who you ask — to get streaming movies considered,” Mr. Blum said.The pandemic accelerated the disruption. Traditional studios like Paramount, Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney rerouted dozens of theatrical films to streaming services or released them simultaneously in theaters and online. For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, citing the coronavirus threat, allowed films to skip a theatrical release entirely and still be eligible for Oscars. The academy had previously required at least a perfunctory theatrical release of at least a week in Los Angeles.This is about more than Hollywood egotism. The worry is that, as streaming services proliferate — more than 300 now operate in the United States, according to the consulting firm Parks Associates — theaters could become exclusively the land of superheroes, sequels and remakes. The venerable Warner Bros. has slashed annual theatrical output by almost half and built a direct-to-streaming film assembly line. Last week, Amazon boosted its Prime Video service by acquiring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the old-line studio behind “Licorice Pizza,” which is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture.In a year when Hollywood largely failed to jump-start theatrical moviegoing, streaming services solidified their hold on viewers. Global ticket sales totaled $21.3 billion in 2021, down from $42.3 billion in 2019, according to the Motion Picture Association. (Theaters were closed for much of 2020.) Some theater companies have gone out of business, others have merged; the world’s biggest theater chain, AMC Entertainment, racked up $6 billion in losses over the past two years and its stock has dropped 66 percent since June. At the same time, the number of subscriptions to online video services around the world grew to 1.3 billion, up from 864 million in 2019, the group said.One film that struggled at the box office was Mr. Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” which received an exclusive run in theaters (per his wishes) of about three months. It collected about $75 million worldwide (against a production budget of $100 million and global marketing costs of roughly $50 million). “West Side Story” is now available on not one but two streaming services, Disney+ and HBO Max, where it has almost assuredly been viewed more widely than in theaters. But the film was never able to recover — among Oscar voters — from being branded a box office misfire. It received seven nominations, and is poised to win in one category, for Ariana DeBose as best supporting actress.Mr. Spielberg’s also-ran presence in the current Oscar race makes the ascendance of streaming contenders all the more striking: a lion in the fight to keep the Academy Awards focused on theatrical films is pushed aside. However unlikely, it is possible that “West Side Story” could come from behind and win the best picture trophy. So could Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” for that matter. Such an outcome would be a bit like 2019, when academy voters, turned off by an over-the-top campaign by Netflix to push “Roma” to best picture glory, instead gave the prize to “Green Book,” a traditional film from Universal Pictures.“The Power of the Dog,” from Netflix, is seen as another strong contender for best picture.Kirsty Griffin/NetflixIn 2019, the Oscars-centered clash between Old Hollywood and New was so heated, particularly on Twitter, that the Justice Department sent an unusual letter to the academy warning that changes to its eligibility rules could raise antitrust concerns. At the time, there was a push inside the 10,000-member academy to come up with a reasonable way to ensure that only films with robust theatrical releases were eligible for Oscars.Flickers of resistance remain.“There are many great companies that are streamers that like to loosely throw around the word ‘cinema’ without supporting it as cinema,” said Tom Quinn, chief executive of Neon, the indie studio behind “Parasite,” which won the 2021 Oscar for best picture, and “The Worst Person in the World,” a screenplay and international film nominee this year. He was referring to the tendency by the majority of the streaming companies to limit a film’s theatrical release, opting instead to release it on their apps.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Rachel Zegler, ‘West Side Story’ Star, Is Invited to the Oscars After All

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      On Sunday she revealed on Instagram that she had not been invited to the ceremony, prompting an outcry. She has since been added as a presenter.It looks as if Rachel Zegler, who plays Maria in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” is going to the Oscars.She has been invited to be a presenter at the Oscars, and Disney is working to rearrange the production schedule on her current project, a live-action version of “Snow White,” to make it happen, according to two people briefed on the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid a conflict with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars.How the arrangement came together provides a glimpse into how the Hollywood gears can sometimes grind.It started on Sunday, when Zegler, 20, posted a photo of herself in a blue gown on Instagram. A follower commented, “Can’t wait to see what you’ll be wearing on Oscar night.”Zegler replied that she had not received an invitation to the ceremony, during which “West Side Story” is up for seven awards. The ceremony will be broadcast this Sunday on ABC from Los Angeles. ABC is owned by Disney, which released the film last year.“I’m not invited,” she wrote, “so sweatpants and my boyfriend’s flannel.”She added that she would support the film from her couch. “I hope some last minute miracle occurs and I can celebrate our film in person,” she wrote, “but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess.”The challenge involves much more than invitations. Zegler is filming “Snow White” in London, and getting her to the Oscars and back will require Disney to rework schedules for hundreds of cast and crew members. The film, already on a tight schedule because of delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, is a $200 million production.A spokeswoman for the academy, which confirmed Zegler’s addition to the presenter lineup in a statement later on Wednesday, declined to comment. A representative for Zegler did not respond to a request for comment.Word that Zegler had not been invited to the ceremony drew a swift backlash from her followers and others on social media, including Russ Tamblyn, who played Riff, the leader of the Jets street gang, in the original “West Side Story” in 1961. They wondered why a lead actress in a film that had received a best picture nomination would not be invited to the ceremony.The film’s Oscar nominations include best picture, best director for Spielberg and best supporting actress for Ariana DeBose. Zegler, who is not nominated for an Oscar, won a Golden Globe for her role.Vimal Patel More

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      Directors Guild Nominations Focus on Veterans Like Jane Campion and Steven Spielberg

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      The Directors Guild of America announced its feature-film nominees on Thursday, recognizing Paul Thomas Anderson (“Licorice Pizza”), Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”), Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”) and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”). Branagh is the category’s sole first-time nominee; the others have each been nominated by the guild before and Spielberg holds the record for most DGA wins with three.All five of the nominated directors also saw their films recognized earlier Thursday by the Producers Guild of America, which suggests they comprise the upper tier of this Oscar season’s best-picture contenders. The Directors Guild’s nominees also tend to match four out of five when it comes to the Oscars’ best-director category. Last year, only DGA pick Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) fell out; he was replaced in the Oscar nominations by Thomas Vinterberg (“Another Round”). The year before, the Oscars went for Todd Phillips (“Joker”) instead of Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”).Campion’s inclusion marks the first time in DGA history that women were nominated in back-to-back years: Last season, both Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) and eventual winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) made the cut. And in the DGA category recognizing first-time filmmakers, four of the six nominees were women this year.Here is a rundown of the nominees in the major film and television categories. For the complete list, including commercials, reality shows and children’s programming, go to dga.org.FilmFeaturePaul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast”Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”Steven Spielberg, “West Side Story”Denis Villeneuve, “Dune”First-Time FeatureMaggie Gyllenhaal, “The Lost Daughter”Rebecca Hall, “Passing”Tatiana Huezo, “Prayers for the Stolen”Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Tick, Tick … Boom!”Michael Sarnoski, “Pig”Emma Seligman, “Shiva Baby”DocumentaryJessica Kingdon, “Ascension”Stanley Nelson, “Attica”Raoul Peck, “Exterminate All the Brutes”Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, “Summer of Soul”Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, “The Rescue”TelevisionDrama series“Succession,” Kevin Bray (for the episode “Retired Janitors of Idaho”)“Succession,” Mark Mylod (“All the Bells Say”)“Succession,” Andrij Parekh (“What It Takes”)“Succession,” Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman (“Lion in the Meadow”)“Succession,” Lorene Scafaria (“Too Much Birthday”)Comedy series“Hacks,” Lucia Aniello (“There Is No Line”)“Ted Lasso,” MJ Delaney (“No Weddings and a Funeral”)“Ted Lasso,” Erica Dunton (“Rainbow”)“Ted Lasso,” Sam Jones (“Beard After Hours”)“The White Lotus,” Mike White (“Mysterious Monkeys”)Television Movies and Limited Series“The Underground Railroad,” Barry Jenkins“Dopesick,” Barry Levinson (“First Bottle”)“Station Eleven,” Hiro Murai (“Wheel of Fire”)“Dopesick,” Danny Strong (“The People vs. Purdue Pharma”)“Mare of Easttown,” Craig Zobel More

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      What Is ‘West Side Story’ Without Jerome Robbins? Chatty.

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      Justin Peck takes over choreographic duties in the Steven Spielberg adaptation of the 1957 musical in which words, not bodies, rule the screen.It’s been days since I watched the Steven Spielberg reboot of “West Side Story,” and I still can’t get a scene out of my head: The fateful meeting of Tony and Maria at the gym.In the 1961 film, the pair lock eyes and move closer and closer as bodies spin around them, and the background, a rich red, envelops them. When they stop, they’re face to face swaying softly. Suddenly, their arms lift to either side and they begin to dance. In the new movie, they spot each other in the gym and meet behind the bleachers. Tony (Ansel Elgort), staring hard at Maria (Rachel Zegler), casually drapes an arm on the metal structure. But before he can speak, Maria stretches her arms out and gives a little snap.This dance — Justin Peck’s reframing of the original choreography by Jerome Robbins — may not be as luminous, but it is a surprise: a slice of unexpected loveliness that speaks to the subtle power of movement. Tony raises an eyebrow, but joins Maria fluidly without questioning the strangeness of it all.“You don’t like dancing?” Maria (Rachel Zegler, center) asks Tony (Ansel Elgort, left). “I like it,” he says. “I like it a lot.”20th Century StudiosHere, in a rare instance, they communicate without words. Yet throughout this film, when there is a right turn, a wrong one tends to follow. More than movement, words are the dominant language of this “West Side Story.” So, brace yourself. Something’s coming — a conversation.“I wasn’t planning on showing up tonight,” Tony says.“You don’t like dancing?” Maria asks.“No, I mean, yeah,” he says. “I like it. I like it a lot. Dancing with you. It’s just you’re— —”Maria interrupts his thought with an observation. Staring up at him wistfully, she says, “You’re tall.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}You’re tall? It’s as if “Riverdale” met “The Bachelor” — or “The Bachelorette” — and you know there’s plenty more drama to come. “West Side Story,” an updated “Romeo and Juliet,” used to be a musical told through movement. Now it is a musical, full of back stories, told through words. So many, many words.For this “West Side Story,” the screenplay, originally by the playwright Arthur Laurents, is by Tony Kushner. Leonard Bernstein’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics are still here to guide the Sharks and the Jets along as they war it out in the streets of New York City. And then there are Peck’s dances, which have their own life, yet can come off as breezy excursions from the story — and sometimes as reminiscent of numbers from “In the Heights” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” — instead of being authoritatively knitted into the whole.The dance at the gym.20th Century StudiosWith so much emphasis on dialogue and character development, the tension — the very glue of “West Side Story” — seeps away. Tony, we learn, is on parole for almost killing a kid. Who cares? He talks about how he first saw the Cloisters, where he takes Maria on a date, while being carted off to prison. It’s hard to imagine how that could have happened, yet again, who cares? It’s like watching dancers with lead in their shoes.It’s not as if back stories weren’t important to Robbins, who conceived, directed and choreographed the stage musical. (He choreographed the 1961 film and directed it, with Robert Wise.) He wanted his actors and dancers to flesh out their characters’ pasts in order to give them greater dimension. But in the new version, there’s another war raging as action and sensation battle a continual need for context.In a 1985 symposium with the four collaborators — Robbins, Laurents, Bernstein and Sondheim — the subject of Cheryl Crawford came up. She was a producer who ultimately dropped out of the original stage production because, Sondheim said, “She wanted us to explain more why these kids were the way they were, and the more we tried to explain to her that this was not a sociological treatise,” but rather “a poetic interpretation of a social situation, the less she understood what we were saying.”She wanted, he said, for “West Side Story” to be more realistically grounded. “If we had gone that way,” Sondheim added, “we would’ve killed the piece.”The new movie hasn’t killed “West Side Story,” but it has muted it considerably — and packed it full of starts and stops. Now when the dances come, they’re less a part of the show’s fabric than an escape.At least they’re there. But how could they not be? Robbins has always been an influence on Peck, the resident choreographer and artistic adviser of New York City Ballet, where, as a dancer, he performed Robbins’s works — including the role of Bernardo in “West Side Story Suite.” In an interview Peck said the experience of working on the film made him realize “how much dance is built into the DNA and the structure of this musical.”Peck, photographed in New York, said working on the film he realized “how much dance is built into the DNA and the structure of this musical.”Lia Clay Miller for The New York Times“You can’t really derail that,” he added. “It’s like dance has to be a part of it. And I think that really speaks to his belief in it and his innovation with it.”But in Spielberg’s film the choreography doesn’t drive the action with the same force. So where does the dancing fit in? Certainly, there are moments of beauty and energy in Peck’s contributions, yet often the impetus behind the dances seem to be more about camerawork than choreography. It’s out of his control.One of the biggest changes is confusing. It was critical to Robbins that the Jets had a different dance language than the Sharks. He even enlisted the choreographer Peter Gennaro — he was credited as co-choreographer — to help create the Latin numbers. In the new film, it’s hard to put a finger on just how the Sharks move differently than the Jets. Peck brought on Patricia Delgado, his wife and a former principal at Miami City Ballet, and Craig Salstein, a former soloist at American Ballet Theater, as associate choreographers. Delgado helped with the Latin influence, but as the groups dance together, what’s clear is that they are dancing together — it’s one language, not two.Peck said he was more interested in creating a cohesive company of dancers, to build camaraderie among them. And if you know Peck’s work that makes sense. The group aesthetic of “West Side Story” reflects the dance communities that Peck builds onstage, too, at City Ballet and beyond. (Peck is an in-demand choreographer who makes works for many ballet companies and won a Tony for “Carousel.”) This is “West Side Story” as seen through the eyes of a choreographer who started out making dances on his friends.They want to be in America: Ariana DeBose, center, as Anita.Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosThat brings a different kind of velocity to “West Side Story.” Sometimes the dancing is so joyful, so light, that the performers seem to forget who they are. As the brooding Bernardo, David Alvarez is spectacular. Yet when he is dancing, should his expression be so full of bliss? He is the leader of a gang — and, sigh, here reimagined as a boxer.Watching the back stories unfold — and, later, trying to keep track of them — made me think of the way this movie could really have leaned into dance. What if the dream ballet, part of the original musical, had been included? In it, Tony and Maria sing “Somewhere” in her bedroom until the walls open up and the room disappears; now members of both gangs unite, dancing together in harmony “in a world,” as the script reads, “of space and air and sun.”The dream ballet probably never stood a chance. To most, the language of dance can be trusted only to a point. But what if it had been included — and updated? Now that would have been a thrill, a progressive act.That sense of harmony echoes how many of Peck’s dances look on the stage. When they work — the two I love are “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes” and “The Times Are Racing” — they rise beyond steps and structure to land in a place of feeling, sweep and scope. That is what you think of when you think of the poetic, elusive “Somewhere.”But there’s another scene that follows in the stage musical, which is even more rarely performed: The dream turns into a nightmare. Riff and Bernardo appear, their deaths are re-enacted and Maria and Tony are separated amid chaos and violence. They end up back in the bedroom, where they sing together: “Hold my hand and we’re halfway there. Some day, Somehow, Somewhere!” I would have voted for the dream ballet — all the way to the nightmare. It had so much more to say. Maria and Tony, after all, are desperate. They’re holding onto air, and that calls for a dance. More

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      ‘West Side Story’ Review: In Love and War, 1957 Might Be Tonight

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      Steven Spielberg rediscovers the breathing, troubling essence of a classic, building a bold and current screen musical with no pretense to perfection.“West Side Story” sits near the pinnacle of post-World War II American middlebrow culture. First performed on Broadway in 1957 and brought to the screen four years later, it survives as both a time capsule and a reservoir of imperishable songs. What its creators attempted — a swirling fusion of literary sophistication and contemporary social concern, of playfulness and solemnity, of realism and fantasy, of street fighting and ballet — hadn’t quite been attempted before, and hasn’t been matched since.The idea of harnessing the durable tragedy of “Romeo and Juliet” to the newsy issues of juvenile delinquency and ethnic intolerance must have seemed, to Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, both audacious and obvious. In the years since, “West Side Story” has proved irresistible — to countless high-school musical theater programs and now to Steven Spielberg, whose film version reaffirms its indelible appeal while making it feel bold, surprising and new.This isn’t to say that the show has ever been perfect. Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics (and who died just after Thanksgiving at 91), frequently disdained his own contributions, including the charming “I Feel Pretty.” The depiction of Puerto Rican and Anglo (or “gringo”) youth gangs has been faulted for sociological imprecision and cultural insensitivity. Shakespeare’s Verona might not translate so easily into the slums of mid-20th-century Manhattan.But perfection has never been a relevant standard for musicals. The genre has always been a glorious, messy mash-up of aesthetic transcendence and commercial ambition, a grab-bag of styles and sources held together by the energy, ingenuity and sheer chutzpah of scrappy and resourceful artists. This may be especially true at the movies, where the technology of cinema can enhance and also complicate the artistry..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Spielberg’s version, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner that substantially revises Laurents’s book and new choreography by Justin Peck that pays shrewd tribute to Robbins’s genius, can’t be called flawless. The performances are uneven. The swooning romanticism of the central love story doesn’t always align with the roughness of the setting. The images occasionally swerve too bumpily from street-level naturalism to theatrical spectacle. The seams — joining past to present, comedy to tragedy, America to dreamland — sometimes show.But those seams are part of what makes the movie so exciting. It’s a dazzling display of filmmaking craft that also feels raw, unsettled and alive. Rather than embalming a classic with homage or aggressively reinventing it, Spielberg, Kushner, Peck and their collaborators (including the cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, the production designer Adam Stockhausen, the editors Sarah Broshar and Michael Kahn and the composers Jeanine Tesori and David Newman) have rediscovered its breathing, thrilling essence.The 1961 movie, directed by Robbins and Robert Wise, was partly filmed on location in a neighborhood that was already vanishing. In Spielberg’s 1957, the destruction is well underway. Wrecking balls and cranes tower over piles of smashed masonry that were once tenement buildings. A sign posted at one of the demolition sites shows a rendering of the shiny Lincoln Center arts complex that will rise where the slums once stood.This “West Side Story” is explicitly historical, grounded in a specific moment in New York City’s past. Kushner (whom I profiled in a recent issue of T, The New York Times Style Magazine) has brought a level of scholarly care to the screenplay far beyond what Laurents and the others were able or willing to muster.Shakespeare’s play supposes “two households, both alike in dignity”; in Act III, Mercutio famously calls down “a plague” on both of them. But such symmetry, while structurally necessary to the source material — who were the Montagues and Capulets, anyway, and who really cares? — doesn’t map easily onto the West Side as Kushner and Spielberg understand it.David Alvarez at center as Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, in the film.Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosThe Jets and the Sharks, a white teenage gang and their Puerto Rican antagonists, aren’t mirror images of each other. Ostensibly contending for control over a few battered blocks in the West 60s, they collide like taxis speeding toward each other on a one-way street.The Sharks are children of an upwardly striving, migrant working class, a generation (or less) removed from mostly rural poverty in the Caribbean and determined to find a foothold in the imperial metropolis, where they are greeted with prejudice and suspicion. Bernardo (David Alvarez), their leader, is a boxer. His girlfriend, Anita (Ariana DeBose), works as a seamstress, while his younger sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), toils on the night shift as a cleaner at Gimbels department store. Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), who Bernardo and Anita believe would be a good match for Maria, is a bespectacled future accountant. (But of course Maria falls for Tony, a reluctant Jet played by the heartthrobby Ansel Elgort.) All of them have plans, aspirations, dreams. The violence of the streets is, for Bernardo, a necessary and temporary evil, something to be overcome through hard work and communal cohesion on the way to something better.The Jets, by contrast, are the bitter remnant of an immigrant cohort that has, for the most part, moved on — to the Long Island suburbs and the bungalows of Queens, to a share of postwar prosperity. As the policemen Officer Krupke (Brian D’Arcy James) and Lieutenant Schrank (Corey Stoll) are on hand to explain — and as the Jets themselves testify — these kids are the product of family dysfunction and societal neglect. Without aspirations for the future, they are held together by clannish loyalty and racist resentment — an empty sense of white entitlement and a perpetually expanding catalog of grievances. Their nihilism is embodied by Riff (the rangy Mike Faist), the kind of brawler who would rather fight than win.As the song says: “Life can be bright in America/If you can fight in America.” But what lingers after this “West Side Story” is a darkness that seems to belong more to our own angry, tribal moment than to the (relatively) optimistic ’50s or early ’60s. The heartbreak lands so heavily because the eruptions of joy are so heady. The big comic and romantic numbers — “Tonight,” “America” and, yes, “I Feel Pretty” — burst with color and feeling, and the silliness of “Officer Krupke” cuts like an internal satire of some of the show’s avowed liberal pieties.The cast members — notably including Rita Moreno, who was Anita in 1961 and who returns as a weary, wise pharmacist named Valentina — bring exactly the sincerity and commitment that a movie like this requires. There’s a reason “West Side Story” is a staple of the performing arts curriculum, and for all the Hollywood bells and whistles, the essence of Spielberg’s version is a bunch of kids snapping their fingers and singing their hearts out.The voices are, all in all, pretty strong. Zegler sings some of the most challenging numbers with full-throated authority, but she and Elgort don’t fully inhabit the grand, life-altering (and -ending) passion that their roles require. Tony and Maria are sweet and likable, but also a bit bland, and their whirlwind progress from infatuation to eternal devotion, which unfolds over a scant two days, feels shallow against the big, complicated forces moving around them.This is partly a consequence of Kushner and Spielberg’s commitment to realism and historical nuance, and in some ways it works to the movie’s advantage. The center of tragic gravity shifts away from Tony and Maria to Bernardo and Anita, and also to Riff. It helps that Alvarez, Faist and — supremely — DeBose are such magnetic performers. When DeBose is onscreen, nothing else matters but what Anita is feeling. But the characters also have a deeper, more complicated stake in the story. They aren’t just foils or catalysts for the action, as their counterparts are in Shakespeare. They are the ones for whom the question of what it is to be in America becomes a matter of life and death.West Side StoryRated PG-13. Never was a story of more woe. Running time: 2 hours 36 minutes. In theaters. More