Movie Reviews
Cassandra’s Dream
(OLD REVIEW) You never know what you’re going to get with Woody Allen. I don’t expect any more flat-out joke-filled comedies like Bananas or Sleeper from him anymore (sadly), but other than that, pretty much anything goes, right across the dramatic spectrum from tragedy to comedy or a mix of both. And when he is good he is very, very ... Read more »
Scoop
(NEW REVIEW) Woody has to stop starring in his own movies. It’s as simple as that. Maybe he thinks we now view his comedic persona as affectionately as we do Chaplin’s little tramp, or big, bumbling Oliver Hardy. I got news for you, Woody. We don’t. We are sick of your every twitch, shtick, and mug. I hate the way you always have your hands out in front of you, gesturing. I ... Read more »
Match Point
(NEW REVIEW) I’d say Woody Allen was trying for the mainstream with a thriller … except he refuses to indulge in the thriller formula. He takes his time, and the result has been compared to Hitchcock. I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pretty good. The theme is luck. The tennis ball hits the net and bounces. If it comes down on one side of the net you win. On the ... Read more »
Melinda and Melinda
(NEW REVIEW) The set-up: Four people at dinner in a trendy New York eatery. (Haven’t we been here before? Yes, we have, and with one of the same guys, Wallace Shawn, in My Dinner With Andre. Lee pointed out that the other guy even looked like Andre.) Two are dramatists, one a money-making comic writer, sort of a tubby Neil Simon, the other a respected but not nearly so successful ... Read more »
Anything Else
Woody Allen and Jason Biggs are joke writers who form a friendship. Jason is twenty-one and Woody is sixty. (Woody shaved a few points here. Like, eight!) Woody has a lot of what he calls “seminal jokes,” like he did in Annie Hall. One of them concerns a man telling his woes to a taxi driver, wailing about how life is meaningless, unfair, without purpose, and ... Read more »
Hollywood Ending
Beethoven was stone deaf when he wrote some of his most powerful music, including the Ninth Symphony. Akira Kurosawa, one of the best film directors who ever lived, was almost blind when he directed some of his best, most epic work. And has-been director Val Waxman (Woody Allen) is stricken with hysterical blindness just before starting filming of his comeback ... Read more »
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
It’s screwball comedy time at our Woody Allen Film Festival. Once again Woody nicely recreates an era, this time the Thirties. He’s an ace reporter who works alone. But his boss, Dan Aykroyd, has hired Helen Hunt as an efficiency expert to modernize the operation. They hate each other instantly and deeply … and thus, by the conventions of the genre, you know that by the last reel they will ... Read more »
Small Time Crooks
Woody Allen and Tracy Ullman are married, and have small fights frequently. He’s an inept crook, but he has this big scheme to tunnel under a bank and make millions. He needs a place to tunnel from. They rent a small storefront a few doors away, but they need a cover, so Tracy opens a shop and bakes and sells cookies. Meanwhile, Woody and his similarly inept cronies are in the basement, ... Read more »
Sweet and Lowdown
I was soon reminded of Zelig, in that this is about a fictional character, a jazz guitar player whose music sounds like Django Reinhardt—and in fact, some of the music is by him—and is interrupted from time to time by commentary by the likes of real people like Nat Hentoff and Woody Allen himself. But it can’t be a bio of Django, because Emmett Ray (Sean ... Read more »
Celebrity
Here is that rare Woody Allen movie that just didn’t work for me, on any level. It’s hard to say why, except that it didn’t seem to come together to amount to anything other than a series of incidents.
Kenneth Branagh is the main character, the one that Woody usually plays, a man who is a fast talker and who is eagerly seeking celebrity. He is an unsuccessful novelist, who now turns ... Read more »