Cafe Society Movie Review

There’s not much left for Woody Allen to say in his movies, is there? He’s already been walking the same ground for decades, hitting the same themes and even repeating (or so it feels) zingers and one-liners. After fifty plus films in as many years, how could he not? He puts out a new movie every year like clockwork. Sometimes it’s as if he’s going through the motions and occasionally he gives us something inspired, as with Midnight in Paris or Blue Jasmine. His latest is Café Society, which is far better than the recent misfire of Magic in the Moonlight but still falling short of genuine genius.

Irrational Man Movie Review: Woody Allen's 45th Feature

Correction 10 August 2016 - I originally labeled this as Allen's 50th feature. I think I pulled that number from a crude count of his IMDb credits which include TV work and one of the three vignettes in New York Stories. This was actually his 45th theatrically released feature film as a director, including What's Up, Tiger Lily?

Abe and Jill accidentally overhear a troubling story in a diner.

I’ve thought Woody Allen was washed up and done as a filmmaker for almost twenty years, but then every now and then he throws a curve ball of Vicky Christina Barcelona or Midnight in Paris, so I’m not about to make any big pronouncements, but Irrational Man is one that makes me desperately hope he doesn’t close out his career now lest the stink linger forever. That’s not really fair, I guess. No matter how bad an artist’s latter-day sins might be, the great stuff will always maintain a redemptive quality. Just look at Stevie Wonder.

Magic in the Moonlight Movie Review

Jack English

There may not be a filmmaker more grounded in realism who also frequently touches on elements of magical realism than Woody Allen. Here is a man who has a strong philosophical view of life, death, and existence, who seems resigned to the idea that what you see is what you get and that there is no deity or afterlife. Here is a man who dabbled in magic tricks as a boy and who grew up to become one of the late 20^th century’s most important and prolific generators of the greatest magic tricks of all – motion pictures. For what are the movies but an illusion? Not only are the stories told fictional tales through which we, the audience, have a chance to live out fantasy wish fulfillment, but the physical process of film projection is a series of still photographs presented in such rapid succession that it gives the illusion of movement.

Everyone Says I Love You Movie Review

Woody Allen’s career has been a lengthy string of annual hits or misses. Part of what makes him so compelling a filmmaker is how he dives right in and commits himself even to the ones that aren’t so great, just to keep himself working and putting out new material every year. His movies have a way of changing over time – for me at least – so that The Purple Rose of Cairo seemed a lesser effort, a whimsical throwaway, when I was twenty, but when I revisited it at about thirty-one, there was greatness I had missed. Sometimes it goes the other way, as with Everyone Says I Love You, which I liked a lot more seventeen years ago than I did the other day.

25 Years Ago This Month: March 1989

As always I start with what I've seen...

Three of the great filmmakers of the 70s and 80s (Woody Allen; Francis Ford Coppola; Martin Scorsese) collaborated on the omnibus film New York Stories which encompasses three short vignettes. The first and best is "Life Lessons" (Scorsese) starring Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette about an artist living with his former lover, whose sexual escapades with other men fuel jealousy and a spark of creativity. Coppola's segment is "Life Without Zoe," a sort of fantasy about a girl living in a luxury hotel. "Oedipus Wrecks" is Allen's contribution, about a New York lawyer (played by Allen) haunted by his overbearing mother, who appears in the New York skyline to tell the whole city about her son's personal problems.

I reviewed it last year after taking a second look many years removed, but the cult classic Heathers was released a quarter century ago.

Blue Jasmine Movie Review

Woody Allen is well known for writing excellent female characters. They are realistic, they delve into the feminine psyche in a way most male writers never even attempt let alone achieve, and they are great roles for actresses. I’m not sure any other single director has been responsible for directing more actresses to Oscar nominations, at least while also failing to equal the feat for male actors. When you think of the iconic female characters he’s written it’s like a treasure trove of great female roles: Annie Hall; Maria Elena (Vicky Cristina Barcelona); Linda Ash (Mighty Aphrodite). His titular character in Blue Jasmine might very well be his best creation since Annie Hall.

To Rome with Love Movie Review

Woody Allen continues his new millennium tour of Europe with a jaunt to Rome in his latest comedy, To Rome with Love. Perhaps after churning out a movie a year like clockwork for the last 30 odd years, Woody finally tired of New York City as a setting for contemporary stories of relationships and intellectualism. Though the backdrop has shifted recently from London to Barcelona to Paris and now the Eternal City, the signature wit has remained. It hasn’t always worked well but I’m glad that he put out one more fine film in Midnight in Paris before the inevitable end of Woody. To Rome with Love is a bit of a letdown after last year’s wonderful fantasy.

25 Years Ago Movie Review: Woody Allen's Radio Days

This review was originally posted on 20 May 2010. I am re-posting in recognition of its 25th anniversary this month. This year I would like to add one review per month as part of my "25 Years Ago This Month Series" in which Radio Days was featured this month. All the other options from January 1987 are not worth my time.

Whereas watching The Purple Rose of Cairo 12 years on allowed me to bring a new perspective that allowed my appreciation to deepen, the intervening years have not been quite as generous with Woody Allen’s Radio Days from 1987.

Each film is a manifestation of Allen’s deep appreciation for two very different media: film and radio. While the earlier film focuses on the ability of cinema to transport individuals to a fantasy world (or as in the reversal that his film does so brilliantly – to move a fictional character from screen to reality) and has a single central character, the latter has the radio itself as the central figure including the ways it carries information to people, affects individuals in different ways (including the performers), and brings people together emotionally and socially.

Having been born in 1935, Allen would have spent much of his childhood listening to radio programs, either actively or passively. That makes this his most autobiographical film. He doesn’t appear in the film, but provides a voiceover narration for the events depicted and the connections between them. There’s no single main character, but the film centers on the narrator’s family with himself as a child (a young Seth Green) figuring in the occasional scene.

25 Years Ago This Month: January 1987

The January doldrums. Studios traditionally hold back their best films for December to qualify for year end awards season and then dump their garbage in the first month of the year. It seems 25 years ago was hardly any different. The most surprising thing is that Woody Allen's Radio Days saw a January release and then managed to earn two Oscar nominations a full year later. Apart from the Allen highbrow fare there was a cheap comedy, a cheap teen comedy, two cheap horror/thrillers, and a cheap adventure film desperately trying to capitalize on the success of Indiana Jones.

John Cusack Focus: Bullets Over Broadway Movie Review

This may be less a John Cusack film than a Woody Allen film, but it's far enough against type for Cusack that I think it's interesting to include it in this short compendium. I could just as easily file this review under my "Modern Classics" heading. This film almost made my list of the top 5 Woody Allen films. So close!

Of all of Woody Allen’s films, Bullets Over Broadway might be the most underrated. And though John Cusack is just one in a long line of actors to basically perform the Woody role on screen, his is probably the best. Not only does he get the mannerisms, the rhythms of speech, and the mania one hundred percent right, but somehow he makes the role his own. It’s less straight imitation than internal adaptation.

Midnight in Paris Movie Review: City of Lights After Dark

 “It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn’t wait to leave.” – Anatole Broyard

Is there no time as good as the present? Is nostalgia the exclusive purview of fools? How does remembering fondly grow out of proportion until it becomes reliving? Gil Pender is stuck in a rut, hamstrung by pervasive thoughts that Paris in the Roaring Twenties was the absolute pinnacle of living. Because Gil is a character in Woody Allen’s latest addition to his perennially expanding oeuvre, he is a writer (of successful, but empty Hollywood screenplays) working on his first novel and saddled with sarcastic wit, passion for the arts, and a healthy dose of self-doubt and insecurity.

Movie List: Best and Worst of Woody Allen

I just caught this list at Jim Emerson's blog, Scanners, in which he chooses his picks for the 5 best and 5 worst Woody Allen features from the 41 features he's directed since the start of his directing career. Another Woman, one of Emerson's choices for 5 best, is the only Allen film I've not seen. I plan to have my review for his latest, Midnight in Paris, posted before its USA opening this Friday.

This is an off-the-cuff list, without much thought put into it. I'm not going to bother with explanations at the moment. If I find the time later, perhaps I will update and expand it.

The 5 Worst (so many to choose from in the last 10 or 12 years):

1. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

2. Hollywood Ending

3. Scoop

4. Small Time Crooks

5. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Three of my worst choices coincide with Emerson's. I remember really disliking both Husbands and Wives and Manhattan Murder Mystery when I saw them oh so long ago. I now have little memory of them (except that the handheld camera work in the former made me a bit sick) and feel they deserve a second look at some point before I commit them to the worst list.

The 5 Best:

1. Annie Hall

2. Manhattan

3. Hannah and Her Sisters

4. Crimes and Misdemeanors

5. Deconstructing Harry

That last spot was a tough call because I'm very fond of Radio Days and I think Vicky Christina Barcelona deserves a mention, and I really thoroughly enjoy Bullets Over Broadway and of course it's the one damn Allen film I can't get my hands on in Spain for some reason! But I think Deconstructing Harry is truly the better film.

Whatever Works Movie Review: Not Classic Woody Allen, but with a Vintage Appeal

First published at American Madness on 6 November 2009.

I am reposting it here untouched.

Woody Allen has worked tirelessly in the last 30 some odd years turning out a new film every year like clockwork. His great period was from the late 70’s into the mid 80’s when he made such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Radio Days. Through the 90’s he managed to maintain a steady stream of well-written, sharply funny films achieving greatness once again with Deconstructing Harry in 1998. Since then he’s had a series of mostly forgettable films ranging from the atrocious Curse of the Jade Scorpion to the mediocre Melinda and Melinda.

Finally, after four European-set films and a long absence from the New York that he knows so well, he has returned to that familiar territory in Whatever Works, in which Larry David plays Boris Yelnikoff (What a name!). The character is the typical Allen alter-ego – a neurotic, self-obsessed, sarcastic, caustic middle-aged man who thinks he has a better grasp on philosophy and life than anyone else around him (or the women around him anyway).

25 Years Ago This Month: February 1986

January and February are typically where studios dump their garbage because people just don't go to the movies during those winter months. Maybe because there's only crap to see. Hmmm. Valentine's Day is an excuse nowadays for unleashing some insipid romance film, although 1986 seems not to have one.

The two biggest earners that opened that month were Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters which took in $40 million and John Hughes' Pretty in Pink (also $40 million). The latter was a favorite of mine when I was a teenager of course (as were all the Hughes brat pack films of the 80s). Hannah and Her Sisters is a favorite of mine in adulthood and it resides in my personal DVD collection.

In February 1986 Chuck Norris started the Delta Force franchise. If you care.

Anyone remember Wildcats where Goldie Hawn becomes a high school football coach? Well it went on to gross $26 million and features the film debuts of Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes, Mykelti Williamson and LL Cool J.

Incredibly, though 9 1/2 Weeks with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in the flesh is well known now, it grossed a mere $6.5 million at the time.

Pixar Animation Studios, now the most successful animation studio in Hollywood, responsible for such hits as the Toy Story franchise, Finding Nemo and Up, opened its doors for business. Their first short film, Luxo Jr., ended up providing them their logo.

On the 21st, Shigechiyo Izumi died in Japan. He was purported to be the oldest living person, dying a few months before his 121st birthday.

The Soviet Union launched the space station Mir on the 19th.

Sweet and Lowdown Review: A Woody Allen Modern Classic

Sweet and Lowdown doesn’t come across immediately as a very typical Woody Allen film. Sure it’s set in the late 1930s, a time period visited by Allen on more than one occasion. The subject matter is early jazz guitar and anyone familiar with his work and extracurricular activities knows he’s a real jazz aficionado. And of course the visual style is all Woody with wide shots that slowly zoom in on a subject and the writing is unmistakably his.

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona Movie Review

Over the decades Woody Allen has continually returned to the same themes again and again, revisiting them with different characters and settings, always closing his films with a satisfactory resolution, but continuing the ambiguity in his next outing. Chief among these themes has been love, passion and fidelity.

His 2008 film Vicky Cristina Barcelona looks at two sides of the same coin in Vicky (Rebecca Hall), the pragmatist looking for a stable dependable love which she has in her fiancé, Doug, and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), the impetuous free spirit open to new experiences and more willing to find love in whoever comes along. The two are best friends recently arrived in Barcelona – Vicky studying Catalan identity and Cristina tagging along for adventure. Luckily for them and for the audience Vicky has a family connection to Mark and Judy (Kevin Dunn and Patricia Clarkson), who give them a place to stay in their picturesque villa.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: Woody Allen Movie Review

It’s become a matter of routine clockwork that around this time every year the new film from Woody Allen finds its way to cinema screens around the United States. Usually his films open earlier in Europe, as was the case with his latest, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, his fourth London-based film.

As much as I have liked some of Allen’s recent films, none of them have made as indelible an impression on my mind as his earlier classics. I’m relieved and satisfied to accept that he seems to have permanently left behind the sad gimmicks that marred his work in the first half of the last decade: hysterical blindness; hypnosis; parallel stories, to name a few.

Classic Movie Review: Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry

The films of Woody Allen tend to be united by several common themes. Just about all of his films deal with love, relationships and infidelity in one way or another. Many of his films are largely viewed as semi-autobiographical. Or at the very least the characters played by Allen seem very much to be variations on his real life persona. Somehow he manages to unite several of these major themes in the hilarious and deeply philosophical Deconstructing Harry.

When last I saw it during its theatrical release in 1997 I was a Woody Allen amateur. More than a decade later I’ve seen all but one of his 39 feature films, so revisiting it now was quite a treat. It’s still one of most sharply funny movies, written in dialogue littered with great wit and insight.

Allen plays Harry Block, a writer suffering from writer’s block as he prepares to accept an award from his old university. In the meantime, he spends time reflecting on his past wives and girlfriends, the cheating, the deceit and also the characters in his book, who very closely parallel real life.

Classic Movie Review: Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” – Lysander in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

And nor does this film.

Woody Allen’s 1982 film A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is one of the lesser films in the Allen oeuvre. It carries through most of the major themese that have captured his attention throughout his career: marriage; love; infidelity; the inexplicability of attraction and lust. But this time they are manifested in a rather unique approach.

The usual pantheon of Allen characters is represented, to be sure. Allen himself plays Andrew, another version of the nebbish; Mia Farrow (making her first of 11 appearances in a Woody Allen film) is Ariel, the highly desirable woman; Mary Steenburgen is Adrian, the potentially jilted wife; Tony Roberts is Max, the lecherous best friend; Julie Haggerty is Dulcy, the nymphet; and the great José Ferrer is Leopold (such a bold name for a bold part), the pragmatic intellectual. But what’s unique is the setting of a country house in the late 20th century and the adhesion to metaphysics and mystical happenings.

Classic Movie Review: The Purple Rose of Cairo

It came time for me to have a second look at a couple of films from Woody Allen’s undervalued 1980s period. It turns out I myself had undervalued The Purple Rose of Cairo, a sweet little love letter to the magic of cinema. It moves along at a quick pace and clocks in at a crisp 75 minutes.

I remembered it as a forgettable little yarn about an unhappily married woman who meets with the ultimate fantasy of a cinephile – a character from one of her favorite films steps off the screen and falls in love with her. The truth is there is a so much more going on than I was capable of recognizing when I first watched it some twelve years ago.

Mia Farrow plays Cecilia, housewife to the unemployed, gambling and abusive Monk (a quintessential Danny Aiello performance) and part time diner waitress in Depression era New Jersey. Cecilia, like so many others in that time, turned to the movie house for escapist entertainment to forget the terrible troubles of the world for 90 minutes or so. And in those days you could spend all day in the cinema on only one ticket.

After one particularly rough encounter with Monk, she spends all afternoon watching The Purple Rose of Cairo (the film within a film shares its title) until one of the characters, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) notices her and comes down off the screen to meet her and spend some time in the real world. In one motion, Allen blends the world of reality with the fantasy we all secretly want to be our reality.

Daniels actually plays a dual role as both Baxter and the actor Gil Shepherd, who plays Baxter in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Confused yet? At the time Daniels was cast he was not a well-known movie star, but he had the looks and the charisma to pull off playing the cocky actor and the humor and light touch to play the naïve Baxter. Seen today, he comes across as an odd casting choice because his career never really took off to bring him the kind of movie star success that this film suggests.

Allen’s writing, which earned him his fifth Original Screenplay Oscar nomination, is in fine form. It’s got some biting Hollywood satire including this brilliant exchange between Cecilia and Gil:

Gil (speaking about Baxter): He’s my character. I created him.
Cecilia: Didn’t the man who wrote the movie do that?
Gil: Yes, technically. But I made him live. I fleshed him out.

There’s also the sheer absurdity of the Hollywood moguls debating how to handle the fact that one of their film’s characters has walked off the screen. They accept the story as true without verification and discuss the matter in terms of potential lawsuits should he do anything wrong.

But the film goes much deeper than the clever quips as it tries to get at the heart of why we return time and again to the movies for enjoyment. For one thing there’s the security and the comfort – with rare exceptions we generally know what to expect given the genre and a brief plot summary. Hence another wonderful line delivered by a woman at the cinema where the other characters have been milling about on screen waiting for Baxter’s return: “I want what happened in the movie last week to happen this week; otherwise, what's life all about anyway?” This line, with its existential quandary, perhaps best sums up the movie. If we can’t be certain of what’s coming in a movie of all places, what does that say about my existence?

The film has some fascinating comments to make about the nature of fiction writing and character development. Surely there was something at work in Allen’s mind with regard to the common assertion by writers of fiction that their characters come alive within the work, that at a certain point they cease to be the product of the writer’s mind (at least consciously) and begin acting on their own. Allen just drives the point home literally.

SPOILER ALERT: Allen is most interested in the lure of Hollywood and its effect on people. First Cecilia falls in love with Ted Baxter: “I just met a wonderful new man. He's fictional but you can't have everything.” She is drawn in by his charm, his childlike naiveté and fascination with the real world. Later she meets Gil Shepherd, the actor. He’s everything Baxter is, only more, because he’s real. He’s the unattainable. Sure, we can have Cary Grant or Tom Cruise whenever we want by popping in a DVD. But you’re only getting a small part of them – the characters they create. With Gil, Cecilia can have it all. She falls for his charms as he promises to whisk her away to Hollywood luxury. And she wants it, as most of us would deep down.

But alas, it’s not to be. Gil used her to get Baxter back on the screen before skipping town, leaving Cecilia stuck with her crummy life and the vicarious pleasures of the movie house. It may seem a sad ending, but at the end of the day we all have to realize that the movies aren’t real. Real life is here in front of us, no matter how much time we spend in the dark, looking at flickering images on the silver screen.