I missed this interview, but better late than never. Quentin Tarantino was recently a guest on the Bret Easton Ellis podcast, and couldn’t stop gushing about Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”:
I loved “West Side Story.” The best movie of 2021, should have won the Oscar and the guy who played Riff should have won the Oscar. It’s the only film that I’ve seen, on my own, at the theater, twice. It was beyond the beyond. It was right up there with “Fury Road”
Ellis agreed with Tarantino, adding he originally believed that Spielberg’s last great film was 2005’s “Munich,” and that he thought the filmmaker had for sure “lost it,” but “West Side Story” made him shout “he’s back!”
“West Side Story” earned great reviews when it was released in late 2021. It was also nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. If you remember, this was the same year that “Coda,” for some reason,” won the big prize. We’re all still puzzled by that win.
The Best Picture nominated films that year were “Coda,” “West Side Story,” “The Power of the Dog,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Dune,” “Belfast,” “Drive My Car” and “King Richard.”
Hate to disagree with Bret, but “Munich” still remains the best Spielberg of the last twenty or so years. “West Side Story” didn’t do much for me.
In September of ‘22, I polled close to 100 film critics and asked them to name Spielberg’s best films. It’s interesting to note how poorly many of the post-“Munich” films did on the poll: “Lincoln” (#13), “West Side Story” (#16), and “Bridge of Spies” (#19) were his highest ranked films of the last 15 years.