Wonder Wheel

A miserable waitress (Kate Winslet) married to a drunken though loving lout (Jim Belushi) in the Coney Island home begins an affair with an aspiring writer and current lifeguard (Justin Timberlake) which is complicated when her estranged stepdaughter (Juno Temple) returns home and repairs her relationship with her father. Stiff, overly familiar and coming off like a bad play, Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel takes form somewhat in the end but is still too routine, plus it features unnatural performances from Winslet and Timberlake. I initially thought this was just another victim of the Me Too inquisition but sadly and truly is one of Allen's worst outings.

** out of ****

Scoop

A somewhat dippy, aspiring journalist (Scarlett Johansson) is picked out of the crowd of a hokey magician's (Woody Allen) London act to enter his mysterious vanishing chamber. Inside, a recently deceased newsman (Ian McShane) relays a tip he picked up in the afterlife: a respected socialite (Hugh Jackman) may in fact be the Tarot Card Killer preying upon the city's prostitutes. Allen has been down very similar terrain before (see Manhattan Murder Mystery and Shadows and Fog) and other over familiar elements are present as well but its still amiable fun with great cinematography showing off the city.

Melinda and Melinda

While out to dinner with friends, two playwrights (one the author of comedies, the other tragedies) are presented with the scenario of a woman with a troubled past who shows up unexpectedly at her friend’s doorstep and each begins to weave their own version of the story, comically or tragically respectively. Great concept by Woody Allen doesn't exactly come off and perhaps would have worked better told as two separate stories standing alone. Allen has done the tragiocomic thing before at.a masterful level but this is still amiable enough. Radha Mitchell succeeds with a tough charge in playing the lead in both tellings and Will Ferrell, tasked with taking on the Woody persona, gets a mixed bag of hilarious and throwaway one-liners.

*** out of ****

Anything Else

A young comedian (Jason Biggs) with a fledgling career and a guilt complex that prevents him from ditching his useless analyst and loser agent (Danny DeVito) takes up with a high maintenance wreck of a woman (Christina Ricci) while taking advice from a deranged teacher and fellow struggling comedian (Woody Allen). Allen's rambling and aimless Anything Else is moderately involving with Biggs making a fair Woody stand-in, Ricci is extremely grating, and Allen himself stealing the show and making the movie.

*** out of ****

Hollywood Ending

A Hollywood executive (Tea Leoni) fights for her once lauded ex-husband (Woody Allen), whose career has hit a wall due to various neuroticisms, to direct a new mid-level project only to find him going inexplicably sightless, a fact that must be kept from cast, crew, and her powerful producer husband (Treat Williams). Allen's Hollywood Ending is inconsistent though sometimes very funny, but still a one-joke movie that wears thin and plays for too long. Allen writes himself a strong lead role with a lot of good zingers and Leoni brings empathy to her character. Once more for Allen's pictures, the cinematography excellent, showing great depth.

*** out of ****

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

A successful, nebbish insurance investigator (Woody Allen) can't stand the new secretary (Helen Hunt) hired to rearrange the office, and the feeling is mutual. When the two are hypnotized at a nightclub as part of a work outing, they fall hopelessly in love when under the spell, and are soon being called upon by the hypnotist to clean out their clients. Dismissed, Double Indemnity inspired Allen film has great, evocative period flavor, sumptuous cinematography,  many funny one-liners and great back and forth, even if the premise starts to wear a little thin and the film goes on a little too long. Woody is in fine form, Hunt is a good foil, and David Ogden Stiers is an effective presence as The Great Zoltan.

*** out of ****

Small Time Crooks

A bunch of bungling crooks led by a career criminal (Woody Allen) devise the perfect crime by leasing a storefront and tunneling into the bank vault next door. However, when their cookie business front becomes a massive success and the bank job falls through, they become rich beyond their wildest dreams and Allen's uncultured wife (Tracey Ullman) hires a suave but disingenuous cad (Hugh Grant) as a Henry Higgins-like instructor. Made at a time when Woody was beginning to go out of fashion and entering a so called slump, Small Time Crooks is as funny and diverting as any of his light comedies and contains a hysterical Ullman performance who is given some of the movie's funniest lines.

*** out of ****

Sweet and Lowdown

The story of Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), the best jazz guitarist in the world, second only to Django Reinhardt (whose name's very mention throws him into fits), who was completely inept in every other facet of his life, including his relationship with his life's love, an adoring mute girl (Samantha Morton) who worshiped the ground he walked on. Woody Allen again enters nostalgic 1930s territory with this fictionalized and somewhat slight account while once more employing a mockumentary format and saluting his love of jazz. Penn creates a great, almost tragic comic performance and Morton's lovely show is as emotive and tender as any silent screen performance.

*** out of ****

Celebrity

A bored travel journalist (Kenneth Branagh) leaves his wife (Judy Davis) and his line of work to pursue celebrity interviews and a life of hedonism while stepping all over the beautiful new women in his life. Meanwhile, she meets a too good to be ture TV executive (Joe Mantegna), producer of daytime schlock, and finds herself reborn, also as an assessor of the rich and famous. With sleek black and white cinematography by Sven Nykvist and a pretentious story on the vapidness of stardom, Woody Allen again enters Fellini territory which doesn't really mesh with his standard fare, though there are many fine moments and the movie is perfectly watchable. Branagh does his best Woody impersonation and Davis, an Allen regular, finds her best role in one of his pictures. Many stars appear with Leonardo DiCaprio, Charlize Theron, and Donald Trump being the most memorable.

** 1/2 out of ****

Deconstructing Harry

A writer (Woody Allen) is being honored by his college (which incidentally expelled him) but can’t find anyone to attend with due to his alienation of friends and family through his work, which is brought to life in heightened, mirrored vignettes. Allen’s reworking of Wild Strawberries is a self-revealing and at times jarring and atypically profane black comedy that employs an irritating jump-cut technique but is still mostly very funny.
*** out of ****

Everyone Says I Love You

A depressed neurotic expatriate (Woody Allen) romances a beautiful fellow American (Julia Roberts) in Venice with inside information through his daughter from her psychoanalyst while his ex-wife (Goldie Hawn) and current husband (Alan Alda) and the rest of their sprawling family frolic in New York City while falling in and out of love. The usual Allen fare musicalized to old standards, Everyone Says I Love You is too unfocused, light, and scattered but often very funny. Highlights include specters singing during a wake, Goldie and Woody’s elegant number along the Seine, and the closing Marx Brothers masquerade.

*** out of ****

Mighty Aphrodite

A Greek chorus warns of danger and tragedy lying ahead when a sportswriter (Woody Allen), unhappily married to a prospective art curator (Helena Bonham Carter), goes looking for the mother (Mira Sorvino) of their gifted adopted son and receives a genuine shock when he discovers her chosen line of work. Allen's most vulgar (though very sincere) film incorporates the usual elements of his work, and features a genuine, shrill, coarse and ultimately poignant, Oscar winning performance from Sorvino. The chorus, as led by F. Murray Abraham, is hysterically funny.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Don't Drink the Water (1969 and 1994)

While on a European vacation during the height of the Cold War, a grouchy New Jersey caterer (originally starring Jackie Gleason, then Woody Allen), his overbearing wife (Estelle Parsons, Julie Kavner), and daughter are trapped behind the Iron Curtain, accused of espionage, and forced to hideout in a U.S. embassy run by a feckless ambassador (Ted Bessell, Michael J. Fox) while targeted by an overzealous party member. Allen's play, first filmed in 1969, is hilarious fun with Gleason's mugging, Parson's ditziness, and one of the funniest collections of Woody's one-liners until it peters out towards the end. Unsatisfied with the results, Allen directed and starred in a made for TV remake which contained unnecessary rewrites and a lackluster cast which doesn't match up to the original.

1969 version: *** out of ****
1994 version: ** out of ****

Manhattan Murder Mystery

A sweet older couple bump into their unacquainted neighbors (Woody Allen and Diane Keaton) on the elevator one evening and invite them up to their apartment for tea and desert. When the wife is carted out the following morning after conceding to a coronary and the husband seems to offer no outward emotions regarding his recent loss, their recent guest becomes excessively suspicious and proactive, much to the annoyance of her husband. Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery goes on longer than it should but works in his oeuvre and, as the prolific artist reveals another talent, as a detective story. The film also contains some very funny one liners.

*** out of ****

Husbands and Wives

A happily married couple (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) happily announces their mutually arrived at amicable separation to close friends (Woody Allen and Mia Farrow) which shatters their perceptions and causes them to entertain never before thought possible infidelities. Husbands and Wives has a great cast (Pollack and Davis are excellent) committing some intense scenes and drawing from an intelligent, more vulgar than usual Allen screenplay though there are a few lulls and film's trajectory quickly becomes apparent. It is also a strange decision (and I'm not sure its the correct one either) to film in a cinema verite style.

*** out of ****

Shadows and Fog

In an unnamed Eastern European village at the turn of the century, a meek accountant (Woody Allen) is roused from his bed by a dubious committee he has just been named to in order to patrol the streets in search of a serial killer. Meanwhile, a circus performer (Mia Farrow) leaves her unfaithful husband (John Malkovich) and has an eye opening experience in a whorehouse before joining the neurotic hero on his search efforts which quickly turn into persecutions. Allen's underappreciated Shadows and Fog, though unfocused and murky, is still funny with fine performances from Woody and Mia, brilliant black and white photography, and murky Kafkaesque 19th Century settings blended with Allen's millieu come off surprisingly well.

*** out of ****

Alice

A bored Manhattan socialite (Mia Farrow), married to a disinterested philanderer (William Hurt), finds herself considering an affair with the attract parent (Joe Mantegna) of one of child's schoolmates, and does so with the assistance of an Eastern healer who also acts as a life guide of sorts. Woody Allen's Alice is imaginative, funny, scrutinizing and brought to life by a sound cast with farrow leading the way while demonstrating her versatility.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Another Woman

An happily married and tenured professor (Gena Rowlands) eventually elects to eavesdrop on the psychiatric sessions which can be heard through the vents of her new office and which serve as a reflection of her own impending mid-life crisis. With Another Woman, Woody Allen ventures into Bergman territory once more and even borrows his longtime cinematographer Sven Nykvist for an intellectual ride that opens and closes brilliantly (who could ask for anything more from a film really?) but is just too dry and stagy in the middle passages.

** 1/2 out of ****

September

At a weekend home in Vermont, a love square develops between a despondent woman (Mia Farrow), her older, lonesome neighbor (Denholm Elliot), her lover (Sam Waterston), and her married best friend (Dianne Wiest) while the presence of her over-the-top mother (Elaine Strich) drums up those old familiar familiar feelings. Woody Allen's September tends towards soapy melodrama, some of which really doesn't come off but is very funny in bits (Strich in particular) and, at its center, it is a pleasure to watch a talented casts convey Woody's usual ideas and themes.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Match Point

A tennis pro (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is welcomed into the wealthy family of one of his tutees (Matthew Goode) and is soon given a prominent position within their company and engaged to their needy daughter (Emily Mortimer), all of which is threatened to come crashing down in the aftermath of a heated love affair with his brother-in-law's sultry ex-girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson). Match Point is unlike anything Woody Allen has ever done before (even Crimes and Misdemeanors which explored similar themes and some of his straight dramas which draw a homologous tone) and was probably imbued with new life due to his decision to film abroad and leave NYC for I believe the first time in his career. The result is a haunting, brilliantly thought out, pristinely filmed, philosophically Dostoevskian treatise with Rhys-Meyers excellent, even amusing at points as a sociopath with an answer to every question and Johannson at her most alluring though grating during heightened dramatic scenes.

**** out of ****