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.
