Sightlines · reception
How tick, tick... BOOM! was received
2021 · Lin-Manuel Miranda · tick, tick... BOOM! on Sightlines
The arc
Landed in late 2021 as a Netflix awards player, with near-universal praise for Andrew Garfield even from people allergic to movie musicals — and it hit right at peak Miranda-fatigue (In the Heights and Encanto the same year), so some wrote it off as theater-kid catnip. A few years on it's settled in as the consensus 'actually the good Lin-Manuel Miranda movie' and a comfort rewatch for anyone staring down a milestone birthday.
What’s debated
The eternal split: is this a genuinely great film about creative desperation, or is it inside-baseball Broadway self-mythologising that only lands if you already care about Jonathan Larson — plus a side debate that Garfield was robbed at the Oscars.
Its footprint
The diner 'Sunday' sequence became a spot-the-Broadway-legend parlor game (Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Joel Grey, André De Shields and more packed into one scene), and '30/90' turned into the unofficial anthem of Letterboxd users logging the film on their 30th birthdays.
Where it stands
A theater-kid Letterboxd favorite and the standard exhibit A in any 'Andrew Garfield is a great actor' argument.
Did you know? Andrew Garfield had never sung professionally before taking the role — he spent about a year in vocal and piano training to play Jonathan Larson, and the performance earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win.
Named by the director
- All That Jazz (1979) — Miranda cited Fosse's self-portrait of an artist as a touchstone for showing a creative mind blurring life and performance.