The Film Junkie

And just like that The Wood-man is back in the game.  ‘Match Point’ proved that he still had the chops to make a good thriller and ‘Scoop’ shows that he is able to make a modern comedy like it was the mid-70’s all over again…okay, so maybe it’s not that good, but it’s a start.

Scarlett Johansson plays a student journalist who is vacationing in London when she meets the ghost of a famous British journalist (Ian McShane) who has discovered the scoop of a lifetime while crossing over.  She then sets about trying to prove that a wealthy aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) is secretly a killer with the help of a neurotic magician (Woody Allen himself).

Johansson is a great actress, all those who think she is all looks should look at this film where she plays a dorky brainy nerd (albeit hot as hell) obsessed with proving herself to be a real journalist.  She is as believable here as she was as the sultry mistress in ‘Match Point’, she is the new Allen Muse for a new generation.

Allen himself has not been this funny in years.  He is still a hilarious writer and so many of his jokes here are classic to his sense of humour.  Also, he is not trying to be the playboy as he does in so many of his films, instead here he is appropriately the father figure and it suits him.

This film is a totally enjoyable ride that is not so much trying to be a mystery as it is just a good time Woody Allen comedy.

Grade: B+

This is a story told as a story by a group of comics trading tales about Danny Rose (Woody Allen), a nutty talent agent, over dinner at a deli in New York.  We start out with a few tidbits about Rose, the kind of deluded clients he represented, how he used to be a comic himself, and then he are prepared for “the greatest of all Danny Rose stories”.

Most of the film is the telling of this story of how Rose gets involved with Tina Vitale (Mia Farrow playing utterly against type), a mob princess who is sleeping with his biggest client.  Tina and Danny must escape various mobsters who are convinced that she left their brother for Danny, though he is only a ‘beard’.

Something I have always felt strange about when watching Allen with women on screen is the creepy way he hits on them, thankfully we are saved that here.  Instead he brings smarmy to a whole new level and constantly calls everyone “darling”.

The film is all right, however considering it is being narrated by comics, it isn’t all that funny.  It is a delight to watch Farrow play the sort of character that would be one of Carmela’s friends on ‘The Sopranos’, but Allen gets aggravating very early on.

The resolution is fine, if predictable, but I was left with the feeling that this would have been a nice short film as it lacks the staying power of a feature.

Grade: B

This brilliant romantic comedy tells the story of Allan (Woody Allen), a movie geek and film review writer, who is left by his wife and forced to re-enter the world of dating.  However Allan has a terribly skewed perception of what love should be due to his obsession with old movies.  He is counseled by Humphrey Bogart who follows him around and tells him just what to say.

Allen and Diane Keaton, as his best friend’s wife, are a great team once again.  They instinctively understand one another and play off each other perfectly.

The references are completely fitting and for some reason I totally identify with this man for whom cinema is the only reality…don’t know why…

This movie is funny, sweet, romantic, harsh and really well made.  See it.

Grade: A

I was beginning to question whether or not I really do love Woody Allen movies as much as I think I do, and then this little treat came along and assured me that Allen is a genius.

This film deals with the modern existential dilemma of life, love and death set in Czarist Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.  Allen plays Boris, a man forced into the war and many other strange situations when all he really wants to do is marry his cousin (“twice removed”) Sonia (the angelic Diane Keaton).  It is equal parts absurdity and Fellini homage, a feat that could only really be attempted by Allen.

Allen struts through this comedy like Buster Keaton with Groucho Marx’s humour and the sensibility of a writer raised on Sid Caesar (as Allen was).  He is the pathetic little man, like Keaton, who is able to acheive greatness with a sparkling wit and scandalous double entendre, like Marx, and make a scathing cultural commentary, like Caesar, at the same time.

Diane Keaton matches Allen with her own brand of absurdity.  Where Mia Farrow is Allen’s neurotic muse and Scarlett Johansson seems now to be his sexual muse, Keaton is, undoubtedly, his comedic and intellectual muse.  There is one scene (pictured below) in which the two of them are caught in the same frame bouncing back and forth through their subconscious melodrama that it pure ridiculous hilarity.

It seems like it wouldn’t work, but it is one of my favorite Allen comedies.

Grade: A-

Woody Allen stars in (but does not direct) this film about McCarthyism and the blacklisting of many Hollywood writers in the television industry.  Allen plays Howard Prince, a cashier and sometime bookie who is “barely literate”, who agrees to act as the front for his blacklisted friend and two other writers.

Allen pulls back his strong personality and plays a funny, but somewhat understated role.  The laughs come from Zero Mostel (1968’s ‘The Producers’) in his final film role; Mostel plays a blacklisted comedian who is forced to the bottom of the barrel despite being a “personality”.  He was a great actor, and this was a great role to go out on.

This film was obviously close to the hearts of those involved.  During the end credits we see that many of the main production team had been blacklisted.  Walter Bernstein was nominated for a writing Oscar for this film.

Overall the film is a bit uneven.  Allen tries to play up his usual schtick when it comes to the silly romantic plot, but his final scene in front of the UnAmerican Activities Subcommitee makes the whole film worthwhile.

A fascinating topic and a pretty good film.

Grade: B+

This film sets out to be a look into the interiors of everything surrounding a wealthy Northeastern family.  The film practically displays the obvious art direction and bland characters on a table for the audience to pick at.  Once again, Woody Allen misses the mark.

The idea of the interior as a female place is never really dealt with in this film; instead the interior is a repressed and beige place, representing the matriarch (Geraldine Page) of the family.  A woman so overspent in hiding her emotions that she seems to have a complete breakdown when anything even slightly changes in her world.

The daughters of the family fit neatly into their constructed categories: the poet (Diane Keaton), the actress (Kristin Griffith), and the muddled genius (Mary Beth Hurt).  These women have their men and their issues, but all their storylines are dull and redundant. We never get to know these women, despite trying, because (despite the title) though they talk a lot, they never let us into their interiors.

It sometimes amazes me how little Woody Allen understands women.

Grade: C

A delightful Woody Allen mystical comedy about Alice (Mia Farrow) an upper crust New York wife who is searching for meaning in her life.  She comes across Dr. Yang (Keye Luke, Master Po from 1986’s ’Kung Fu: The Movie’, in his final film role) an herbalist who provides her with the herbs to find the answers to all the questions she has always had about her life. 

She discovers that her marriage is failing, and her husband (William Hurt) is not the man she thought he was.  She falls for a sax player, Joe (Joe Mantegna), and begins an affair that shocks her so-called friends.  She makes up with her liberal sister (Blythe Danner) and finds that there was a friendship there all along, but she hadn’t been listening.  She sees the ghost of her pre-marriage boyfriend (Alec Baldwin) and spends time getting to relive the moments she had hidden deep within her.  She tries to write and finds her muse (Bernadette Peters) who plainly speaks and causes her to come to terms with who her mother really was.

Allen achieves these effects with dramatic stage lighting, and a constantly moving camera that allows us to seem the voyeur just as Alice is when she takes the herb that makes her invisible.  This is a well made, interesting and somewhat feminist film about finding out what’s really important.

Grade: B+/A-

It is nice to see Woody Allen experiment with form and content, but unfortunatly this film misses the mark.

It begins as a sort of ‘Dinner With Andre’ (1981), as a group of friends (including ‘Andre’s Wallace Shawn, best known as Vizzini in 1997’s ‘The Princess Bride’) discuss the difference in viewing the world either as tragedy or comedy.  Thus two differing perspective storytellers embark on telling a similar story in their respective genres.  The film is cross-cut (like 1998’s ‘Sliding Doors’) between the tragic and comic stories, with the only constant being Melinda.

Radha Mitchell (1998’s ‘High Art’) takes the inenviable task of portraying both suicidal damned Melinda and lighthearted lovable Melinda.  The former comes to visit her friend, Laurel (the great Chloe Sevigny can play anything and be unforgettable) and her husband (Jonny Lee Miller, Sick Boy from 1996’s ‘Trainspotting’) and falls in love with a talented musician (my beloved Chiwetel Ejiofor, check out my ‘Kinky Boots’ review) before it all turns to shit.  The latter is a stranger who stumbles into the home of an out of work actor, Hobie (Will Ferrell doing an odd Woody Allen impression), and his wife, a domineering filmmaker (an out of place Amanda Peet); Melinda becomes quick friends with the couple and after falling for a talented musician (’Rescue Me’s Daniel Sunjata) realizes that she loves another.

I wish Allen had stuck with the comedy, Ferrell shows some promise under his direction, but we never get enough time with him to grow attached, and Steve Carrell as his friend could be one of the great Allen buddy roles, but is only allowed two scenes. 

The tragedy is too sad and pompous to like, if the comedy had more time it may have been something.  Mashed together, this is half of two films; a great idea that is simply not well executed.

Grade: C+