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Crimes & Misdemeanors (1989)
This is where everything came together for Woody Allen in one satisfying film that bears all the hallmarks of his best stuff. It's both a comedy and a drama that has an intelligent script featuring fleshed out characters, played to perfection by a wonderful cast. Half of the film features some of his best comedy and the other half features his best drama, and the two halves mesh together seamlessly into one extremely satisfying whole. It has an interesting narrative that juxtaposes the main characters to open up themes of guilt and betrayal, faith and self-determination, and the whole film is infused with a pathos about love and regret, and the ultimate pointlessness of life that will be familiar to any fans of his more serious films like Interiors, or Another Woman. This is also one of Woody's most accomplished films from a technical and aesthetic standpoint: It's well paced and edited, with nice cinematography and a consistent production design, and flows beautifully from one scene to the next. The acting, as is usual for most Allen films, is universally excellent, and special mention must go to Martin Landau, who really should have won an Oscar for his role as Judah Rosenthal - an ophthalmologist who has his mistress killed by his gangster brother to stop her from telling his wife about their affair. Alan Alda shines as Lester - a pompous film director, and Woody himself is hilarious as Clifford, a documentary filmmaker hired to make a film about Lester even though he despises the man and loathes his films. The drama of Judah's story is expertly handled and contrasts nicely with the light comedy of Clifford's tale, which incidentally features more one-liners than a dozen regular comedies. A perfect film. |
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson and Scarlett Johansson, this is Woody once again dealing with his usual concerns of infidelity, the vagaries of love and lust, and the thorniness of relationships in general. Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are both very good here - Cruz has always been excellent in Spanish speaking roles and Bardem is every bit as good as he always is - he's all sleepy-eyed charm and latent sexual energy here. Scarlett Johansson as Cristina really isn't that bad this time round; she doesn't have an awful lot to do but what she does have she does well. Rebecca Hall as Vicky was a bit of a find for me in a very natural and authentic performance. There's not much in the way of a storyline with this film - it's a holiday romance with some complications, but it does poke an inquiring stick at the issue of monogamy and whether open marriages can be successful given the propensity for most people to jealousy and possessiveness. It's really more of a mood piece, and a rumination on the perils and pleasures of relationships and the complications that can ensue. As an added bonus you also get to see some nice scenery and sights around Barcelona. With the usual high quality script and acting on show it's hard to feel short-changed here, regardless of the lack of incident. |
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Whatever Works (2009)
With Whatever Works Allen is picking away at the same old scabs - the futility of life, the mysteries of love, the vagaries of human relationships. It's a variation on the classic Pygmalian with Larry David as Boris - atheist, misanthrope, and general malcontent who ends up in a relationship with Melody - a much younger, much simpler and very religious girl from Mississippi. Boris takes the struggling girl under his wing against his better judgment, and begins to mold her way of thinking to match his. They eventually marry, and settle down to a life of quiet contentment - until the girl's mother shows up. If you're a Woody Allen fan then this film is treading familiar ground and you'll probably enjoy it just fine, as long as you don't mind Larry David because whereas Allen usually plays these discontented characters with an exasperated resignation, David has a much more caustic approach that can be quite jarring in its viciousness. If you can get on board with that though the first half of this film will provide you with some choice one-liners and some quite cutting but amusing put-downs by the irrascible Boris. The second half of the film, when Melody's mother appears is more of a traditional sit-com setup with no real surprises, but it's nicely done and provides a few more chuckles. Evan Rachel Wood plays southern dumb pretty well and Patricia Clarkson as her mother is as good as she always is when she pops up in anything. |
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You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)
This stars Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas and Naomi Watts in addition to some other familiar faces. Set in London it harks back to the relationship comedy dramas from his early career with a new generation of players but the same themes and concerns. Hopkins plays a newly divorced man trying to relive his glory years by marrying a (totally unsuitable) call girl which you just know is not going to make him happy. Banderas is a sleazy art dealer, Brolin missed his chance as a doctor and is now struggling to make it as an author, and his marriage to Watts is on shaky ground because she's thinking of having an affair with her boss (Banderas) and he's desperate to have an affair with the young girl who's moved in across the street (Pinto). So business as usual for Woody; the trouble with relationships, the melancholy of getting older and the desire to find a useful role in life all feature heavily here. I would say this is as satisfying as any film Allen's done in the last fifteen years or so. Some complain of his films as being too middle class and old fashioned and there is something to that; there's no onscreen sex or violence, and certainly no stunts or explosions, but I'm certainly not complaining - if you're sick of silly blockbusters and are looking for something a bit more down to earth which focusses on slightly larger than life people and their affairs then you could do a lot worse than this film. There's a delicious little sting in the tail at the end too. |
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Midnight In Paris (2011)
This, Woody's fortieth film in as many years is a delightful fantasy set in modern day Paris where a couple of American families and some friends are holidaying. Owen Wilson stars as Gil - a part that twenty years ago would have been played by Woody Allen. Gil's a successful but slightly dissatisfied screenwriter and would-be author who's looking to write the Great American Novel but lacks the drive and inspiration. He's about to be married to a young woman who's a friend of the family, and who's clearly a completely unsuitable match for him. He can see a future laid out before him that's forever uninspiring, until one night while out for a stroll he's beckoned into an old fashioned taxi cab at the stroke of midnight by none other than F.Scott Fitzgerald. And off they go to a club where they rub shoulders with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso and a host of other luminaries from a bygone era. Each night thereafter the same thing happens at midnight - a cab pulls up and he's whisked off to the Paris of the 1920s. This film is reminiscent of Woody Allen's more fanciful short fiction, and while it's no heavyweight in terms of examining relationships it does have an interesting observation to make about art and literature, and the way we feel about them: Most people come to believe the era in which they live to be vastly inferior artistically to previous ones they've read or heard about. Gil has no sense of this truism until he meets a woman while in old Paris that believes her time - the era he is in awe of - is a pale imitation of the 1890s, which she feels was the 'golden age'. It's a nicely realised observation on Allen's part. It's also a rather lovely film to behold and it has a nice air of whimsy about it. Allen is obviously enjoying his old age and at 77, when most directors are either dead or out to pasture, he's produced one of the most enjoyable and accomplished films of his career.
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