Match Point – “Still in the Game”

Match Point, 2005, Woody Allen, director

John: Two things stand out for me: 1) early in the movie the central character’s reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment;and, 2, the look in his eyes in the final shot. Luck has given him freedom, but he is doomed to a life of remembering. The movie doesn’t tell us this, it shows it in ways that are subtle and profound and real—Crime and Punishment. This is masterfully done from the title, to the complex plot, to the final resolution. And it is better (or at least less distracting) not having Allen, himself, in the film. Scarlet Johansen is appealing, demanding and insistent in a way that drives this story forward.

GO, GO, GO, GO (4 GOs out of 4)

Spanky: Watching the DVD I thought what a pleasure it is to be walked through London by Woody Allen at the same unhurried pace that he’s taken through Manhattan all these years. Instead of Gershwin, we have opera to accompany us, the soundtrack packed with plaintive arias. There are a few characteristic scenes: people talking while walking down the street together and encounters in an art gallery (The Tate). But, like the main character, we in the audience are hooked into little decisions that end up big ones (reminds me of Patricia Strangers on the Train Highsmith). This is one of Woody’s classics, but, unless you have severe short time memory problems, I wouldn’t watch it too close to Crimes and Misdemeanors.

BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK (4 BARKs out of 4)

MANHATTAN – “Rhapsody in Black & White”

Manhattan, Woody Allen, 1979

SPANKY: You probably remember the stark panarama shots of the New York skyline against a lush George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”  But wait. Looking at this movie with John all these years later, things aren’t quite what is remembered. The movie voice-over is of the central character writing a novel and several times reworking the first chapter–each version expressing a different emotion.

When the movie first came out

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS—“I Have Measured My Life in Woody Allen Films”

Midnight  In Paris – Woody Allen, writer/director, 2011

JOHN: The movie begins with a ten minute picture montage (with vintage jazz) of city scenes—morning, noon, rain, by the river, streets, intersections lit by streetlights at night. This is not Manhattan, but Paris. Paris today and the Paris of Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Dali, Gertrude Stein and Hemingway. And not only we, but Woody Allen has arrived. Oh, there were some unpleasant detours on the long journey—Stardust Memories, Interiors, Hollywood Ending. Self-conscious efforts to be serious, to be profound. But in the last few years there were also Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point.

ANNIE HALL – “Breakthrough Movies”

ANNIE HALL, 1977

Director Woody Allen

JOHN: Given the state of modern films Spanky and I thought it might be interesting to look back over the last fifty years of movies and find some that were breakthroughs for directors, actors and/or audiences.

Before Annie Hall, Allen seemed to be caught between being a nerd among Playboy bunnies and a stand-up comedian popular with college intellectuals. But here there is more.

A SERIOUS MAN

A Serious Man, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, 2009

shrink-wrap for the soul

HOOK: Is the cat in the house, dead or alive?

 LINE:  “Even though you can’t ever figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the midterm.”

 SINKER: How can someone ‘who hasn’t done anything’ be blamed for everything? A Book of Job treat with a razor hidden in it. 

JOHN: As our friend Bob (at Coffeespew) points out the new suburbs of the fifties and sixties are old territory for authors like John Updike. So why do the Coen brothers revisit them (other than the fact that this is where they grew up in one around Minneapolis)? I think there’s a broader question concerned with the difference between comedy and drama—a line they’ve crossed with mixed results in the past. In drama we in the audience want to identify with the protagonist, feel that what is happening to him is happening to us. We are curious and relieved (even if things turn out badly, “It is only a movie.”). Comedy requires more distance. We recognize the situations but want to laugh at the characters, not ourselves. Whether or not the Coens relate to the Larry Gopnik character (superbly played by newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg in a career launching performance), we don’t, even if the fact that this involves his Jewishness makes it a bit of an uncomfortable laugh. The genius of this film is that it doesn’t stay in the mid sixties. The last moments, like impending doom, roll out at us today. I found the movie funny, at times stereotyped and slow, but ultimately a masterpiece that leaves you gasping.

GO GO GO GO (4 GOs out of four) 

SPANKY: The fact that you have to do all this rationalizing, John, seems to me to indicate that the film isn’t making it on its own terms (like Fargo). We can debate great films, like those of Bergman and Fellini, all night, but whether or not we do they stand as great films. This one has some magical moments: the sequence with the young rabbi, the tale of the message on the teeth of the Jewish dentist’s client, Sly Abelman—beautifully played by Fred Melamed—even the dark, sub-titled prologue. And I agree, the shift of vantage point from the father to his son toward the end gives the conclusion knock-out power. But it also seems to me the movie has to work a little harder than it should have to. And we in the audience do too. Plus the two-dimensional, hair-washing daughter, the Jewish lawyers, the Nazi-like neighbors and the desperate housewife next door…com’on. This may be much better than their other recent movies, but the Coen boys are still a long way from home.

BARK, BARK (2 BARKs out of four)

 

Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, Aaron Wolf, Sari Wagner, Jessica McManus, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen,  Sari Lennick , A Serious Man, Fargo, Comedy, Drama, Coen Brothers, No Country For Old Men, Man Who Wasn’t There, Woody Allen

HOLLYWOOD ENDING – What Went Wrong?

Hollywood Ending, 2008, Woody Allen, writer/director—What Went Wrong? 

 

"My one regret is that I wasn't born somenone else."

HOOK: Can Allen make a movie we get excited about or give us clues why he can’t?

 

LINE:  “Anyone with an herbalist doesn’t see my dailies.”

 

SINKER: Blindness as metaphor.

 

JOHN: You come to this with misplaced hope. That he can do it. That we can return to a simpler world. That life is quirky and sentimental and, yes, has a happy ending. But the bits aren’t funny, the offhanded comments seem dated and contrived and the promise of actual revelation seems more lost than ever. Val, the director of City that Never Sleeps, his big chance-at-a-comeback film,  being produced by the man (Treat Williams) his wife (Tea Leoni) left him for goes blind, just as shooting is about to begin. She becomes his eyes and through that he sees her anew. There’s potential here. Allen is poking fun at his own reputation and even some off screen marital stuff. But it just doesn’t work. Maybe he is old news (he certainly is old) we want to sweep under the rug, but more probably it’s because he seems unwilling to take any risks. He’s playing this as the same old shtick when it’s time for more. The fact that he dashes our expectations, makes this even worse than tired. The movie’s own Hollywood Ending is about the only thing this film has going for it.

 

GO (1 GO out of four)

 

SPANKY: I agree. And the scene between he and his supposedly estranged son, while functioning as some kind of foreshadowing, is totally unconvincing. I have a theory that we quickly come to hate comedians. Maybe it’s because we don’t identify with them like we do movie heart throbs and their antics are thinly veiled attacks, but Chaplin, Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, the Smothers Brothers all seem to fall into a pit we gladly shovel dirt over. There is also an East Coast versus West Coast theme no one cares about anymore. And I am reminded of the last scene in that masterpiece Annie Hall when Allen puts words into theater actors mouths he wishes their real life counterparts would have said to him. When someone asks her: “Did you fall in love with your ex-husband?” Tea Leoni answers: “I never stopped loving him.” Wishful thinking, Woody. I’m afraid neither Mia Farrell nor your fans are going to say that.

 

“TWO PAWS DOWN” (1 BARK out of four)

 

EXTRA: (Here are two very early Woody Allen bits)

 

“Honeymooning, I was fabulous, you would have adored me. I was on waterskis, stripped to the waist, skiing fast across the top of the surf, my hair back, I oiled my muscle. It was really… holding on with one hand, waterskiing, very great, my wife was in the boat ahead of me, rowing frantically.”

 

“A very provocative woman comes up to me, and she begins to…size me up…and I take her upstairs to my hotel room. Shut the door. Remove my glasses. Show her no mercy. I unbutton my shirt, and she unbuttons her shirt. And I smile. She smiles. I remove my shirt and she removes her shirt. And I wink and she winks. And I remove my pants. She removes her pants. And I realize I’m looking into a mirror.”

 

 

NEW FEATURE

Woody Allen

John: We are kicking off a new feature, in-depth articles on directors, actors, movies and screenwriters, starting with Roebert Mitchum and James Stewart followed by another on Woody Allen. Just click on “Articles” (above). 

Spanky: Pul…eeze. Our readers want smart-aleck comments not though-provoking bullshit. Don’t click on “Articles.” What is this? Film school for dropouts?