someone who has sat through Spawn

Film My old friend Louise read my recent Match Point review and let me know what she thought via email. Spoilers ahead ...

Tell me you were kidding with your review about Match Point??? I saw it on Saturday at FACT and was in an almost full cinema the majority of whom were opening laughing at it because it was THAT BAD. I do not exaggerate when I say it is the single worst film I have ever paid to see and I speak as someone who has sat through Spawn. My feet still hurt from the toes curling round to meet the soles of my feet.

Not only does Woody Allen clearly understand nothing about the English upper classes (the upper classes of Brian Cox's age don't own business especially tagged 'inc'. The four-eyed pensioner needs to read some Nancy Mitford) but he seems to have a fairly low opinion of the Met's CID. Do you really think that is they way crimes are solved in Britain. "Oh, I forgot to tell you, there was another drugs-related murder last night." "That means he didn't do it! I was sure my dream was right too! After all, that's the way I usually solve savage murders." "Never mind eh?! Let's go for breakfast!" Roll credits.

There would have been a post mortem examination. They would have found that Nola was knocked up. They would have DNA-tested the foetus.

Don't even get me started on the dialogue and acting.

Woody Allen should do the decent thing and stop churning this tripe out year in, year out. And as for mentioning Brief Encounter in the same review?! You can't compare them. In any way. It makes me very angry, as you can see, that there is still this belief all his films should be treated with the same reverence as sodding Annie Hall or Manhattan. They shouldn't.

And The Times called it a tense Hitchcock-style thriller. Ha ha ha!

Sorrry about this, but it needed to be said

Louise

She was nice enough to let me post her emails. I replied with...

Louise,

Oh you've made my day.

But -- erm -- Woody doesn't make realistic films. Never has. This is a *fantasy* surely? I mean it's a film. He's stretching reality -- to breaking point admittedly. I mean why else would the two people he's murdered show up at the end for a chat about the crime.

Either that or I was in an *extremely* forgiving mood...

It's probably the latter.

Stu.

To which she replied ...

I take your point, but even if you are embroidering something with fantasy you need to have a solid base on which to build and Match Point doesn't have that at all. It simply isn't good enough to fold like a house of cards at the end because Mr Allen has filled his requisite 90/100 minutes. I don't think he does stretch reality. The plot isn't that inplausible. I'm sure we'd be shocked to find out the number of people who have shot a pregnant lover to save their own skin and shot someone else to make it look like the lover was a unlucky bystander. You should see some of the court copy we get here, truth really is stranger than fiction.

It's like in The Bourne Identity where it is made very clear he has no papers at all but travels quite happily into Switzerland on a train. Stupid. I know he is a spy and no doubt had some clever way of getting around it, so let's see it, rather than sitting there saying "That's shit! I've travelled into Switzerland and know they stop the train for an hour, lock the outside doors, make sure no-one is in the toilets and check everyone's passport."

I think there is a fine line between fantasy and careless nonsense. You need to get the logical, basic facts of a story right in order to show you respect the common sense and knowledge of your audience before you can take them beyond the relams of reality and what would happen in "real life", whatever that may be...

Louise

To which I said ...

Oh sure -- but its the presentation of reality within a fantastic realm. I'm looking at it from the POV that he's made an evil version of a Richard Curtis romcom. One of the flaws is that its basically a rerun of Crimes and Midemeanors and in that film he used a sequence in which Landau visited his past to rationalise what he's doing -- the figments fulfill the same function here.

I suppose I don't need to have a logic in film so long as a good story is being told -- I don't need to know how Jason Bourne gets there -- I just assume he does through wits and stealth -- it makes him a more impressive action character because the impossible is made possible through means we don't know.

Stu.

She hasn't got back yet. I'll let you know what happens.