littlebigness

I must address this first... Andrew Garfield was magnificent. It's close, but I do believe this edges out The Social Network as my pick for Garfield's best performance of his acting career. His performance as Jonathan Larson is so deep and just absolutely magnificent throughout the entirety of the film. Very well shot musical numbers, nice cinematography within confined sets.

The film does suffer from some pacing issues and I can find myself getting bored at times between musical numbers, but the narration is captivating throughout the film. The supporting cast does suffer a little bit here too, but I find that it's hard to match Garfield's energy, so I don't find the supporting cast's failure to match the prowess Garfield has on screen to be so poignant. Definitely Lin Manuel-Miranda's best work of cinema.

West Side Story does just about everything right. The musical numbers, the choreography, the cinematography, all beautiful. A set of spectacular performances, particularly Rachel Zegler. Spielberg directed the quintessential version of West Side Story and one of the best musicals in a very long time.

The only place West Side Story falls short for me is that a lot of the Jets performances fell a little flat for me. Ansel Elgort in particular as Tony just didn't work for me. Aside from that, West Side Story is nothing short of spectacular, and one of the best releases of 2021.

I too love a "re-quel" that opens up and showcases what Scream would look like with smart phones, yet every home in the film still has a landline for some reason!

I'm thoroughly disappointed by this film, but there were definitely some laughs for me. Mainly because the dialogue was so corny. The new young cast disappoints a lot without any memorable characters, and legacy character motives are questionable at times. David Arquette stood out as easily the best performance in the film, but every other actor was fairly weak. Not a lot in this movie makes sense when you give it some thought, which led to a distracting viewing experience, as I was questioning why events were happening more often than I was enjoying the product in front of me. Jump scares were relied on, but predictable at every turn. The action sequences often lacked variety. Most characters were just attempting to shove off Ghostface in every action sequence, and there was little suspense because of it. In every Ghostface encounter, it's a coin flip whether the character gets stabbed or not, then a coin flip whether the relentless stabbing kills them or not, and tension is lacking.

The film constantly points out horror tropes, but the constant breaking of the fourth wall isn't very charming most of the time. If you're a horror fan that wants a movie to poke fun at horror films, just go watch another recent movie like Malignant where it's done much better. I still see potential in the Scream franchise, but this was easily my least favorite Scream film. At least when it's bad, it's laughable, rather than just downright bad. That kept me engaged.