Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Midnight in Paris (2011)

Then  After waiting and waiting and waiting for a British blu-ray release of Midnight In Paris, I eventually bought a dvd from ebay, accidentally because I thought I was using a discount code but the code failed to work. I’ve then sat on it for a couple of months, well, it’s sat on a shelf waiting until the end of the Olympics then the innumerable other some would say “projects” others might say “displacement strategies” were completed. But after receiving a copy of Woody Allen: The Documentary from Lovefilm by accident and knowing that was released after this, and since the copy of Tinker Tailer Solidier Spy then sent me is covered in scratches and unwatchable I decided that life’s too short, whatever works, and watched it tonight.  As usual, the following assumes you've seen the film already.

Now  This is probably entirely the wrong time to be writing about Midnight in Paris. For a start, the clocks are going back tonight so we’ll be having two midnights, but I’m in such a good mood, so pleased that one of my favourite directors is still capable of producing such a clever, thematically interesting, beautifully shot and properly funny (something which wasn’t the case for his last film) that’s still making me smile even as I type. When Midnight in Paris was being garlanded with awards and nominations, I did consider if there’s was a certain amount of condescending sympathy about it, that perhaps they’re simply recognising that Woody’s managed to produce something at least slightly above his usual latter average.

Well, yes, no, yes. I was wrong. From the introductory shots of Paris designed to educate the audience with his protagonist Owen Wilson’s Gil’s view that the city is at its most beautiful when its raining, we’re in the hands of the man who so deftly communicated the scene changes in Everyone Says I Love You and the then contemporary nostalgia of Manhattan. All of the elements of Woody’s style which seemed so studded and calcified in You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, long scenes taking place in masters, the overlapping improvised dialogue, the massive cast of relative famous actors providing tiny cameos in non-New York locations become strengths again. This is the Woody Allen of old. Just like his character, the Paris air’s brought inspiration.

But interestingly, he manages all this by repeating the fish out of water storyline which he’s returned to throughout his career, of a character flirting or becoming addicted to some cultural aspect not their own. Going backwards, it’s what fuels Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point, Celebrity, Bullets Over Broadway, Alice, The Purple Rose of Cairo and arguably Bananas. But unlike most of those films, there isn’t a tragic underpinning; while Gil loses both of his loves in the end, it’s about him gaining an education, he doesn’t really have to or even fight to keep his 1920s sojourns and there’s no suggestion at the end that he can’t go back there or won’t, even if he greets midnight on the other side of town from the portal position.

The key, I think, is that he keeps the story focus on Gil. Some of his more recent films have bloated because he’s cut away to the supporting characters. The Midnight In Paris version of that would have been to see the affair between Rachel McAdams’s Inez and Michael Sheen’s Paul (ironically since the actors are partners in real life) but with the exception of Inez’s father’s hiring of the private detective, Gil remains the audience’s viewpoint character, so we’re kept on the journey with him, never quite sure until some way into the film, if his time travel experience is some mental collapse or boozy dream. Like him, we just deliriously go along with it, typified by the moment when Woody cuts to a close-up of Gil letting the experience take hold.

Unlike Gil, we’re enjoying the double pleasure of not just meeting the 1920s Parisian icons, but the actors playing them and then marvelling at how perfectly cast they are. Of course Tom Hiddleston’s playing Scott with Alison Pill as Zelda. It’s amazing Adrien Brody hasn’t already starred in a Dali biopic (and really should on the strength of this). Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein? Of course she is. Bates incidentally previously appeared in an Allen film as a prostitute in Shadows and Fog, a film which though stylistically and thematically different, shares Midnight In Paris’s idea of a protagonist becoming lost in the streets after dark.

Like some of Woody’s other genre pieces there’s also little discussion of the mechanics of time travel. The car pulls up, Gil gets in, meets TS Elliot or whoever and is taken back in time. Sometimes he’s able to shift about unaccompanied in that time period, sometimes it disappears from him. But the diary indicates he is time travelling as does one of the director’s masterful jump cut jokes towards the end (up there with the cut to Rebecca Hall in the back of the plane in VCB). Does Gil change history? It doesn’t matter. How is he able to just bump into famous people? Not important. Plus, like Groundhog Day, it’s a strictly agnostic divine interventionist film, no Clarence the Angel pulling the strings.

The PI subplot is about the only moment which suggests changes made in editing.  It's introduced as though its going to be an element of tension, that perhaps the revelation will cause Inez's father to come between Gil and his time travelling antics.  But it does end in a joke.  Similarly the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway rather fall out of the story too, but there is a feature of Gil shifting between these "personalities" as he goes on his journey, each providing him with some new insight.  As ever, Woody's not provided a commentary and his interviews don't really tackle such technical aspects so we'll have to speculate as to what was intended.

I’ve not mentioned Marion Cotillard yet. She’s luminous, just as she always is. But what’s interesting is how her character Adriana has functionally a very similar role to the one which appeared in Inception. In that film, she was the catalyst for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb to break free from his dream world (aurally aided by La Vie En Rose sung by Edith Piaf who she played in the biopic of the same name). In Midnight in Paris, Adriana’s shift backwards to the Belle Epoque is what drives Gil to realise that the 1920s nostalgia trip he’s on might seem more exciting than 2010, but that actually what he should be doing is trying to make his modern life as satisfying by doing the things which make him happy. Whatever works, if you will.

Plus the layers of time travel suggest the layers of dreams in Inception. Obviously I’ve considered which period I’d like to travel back to and for a long while I wondered if I shouldn’t have been born in the 60s. But I also realised that I’m living at just the right moment. Having been born in the 70s, I’ve been able to watch the information age from its earliest moments in the 80s, through the development of the web, to that connection becoming hand held to everyone having access and being just old enough to keep in touch and be interested. If I’d been nearly forty-eight right now, that might not necessarily be the case. Plus I’d have to be fifty-eight now born in the 50s I’d properly enjoyed the 60s. Ack.

Time travel for me would be a tool. I wouldn’t want to live in the Elizabethen/Jacobian period, especially since I wouldn’t be a nobleman, but it would be useful to visit and grab copies of some of Shakespeare’s lost plays and fill in some of the gaps in his biography once and for all. And that’s what’s also interesting about Midnight in Paris. Gil’s no academic. He’s more interested in these figures as people rather than the ends of academic research. He’s not wanting to publish papers about these people and only really uses what he’s learned to embarrass Paul in the art gallery. Plus he’s never tempted to take advantage of his abilities to make himself rich, “only” to use his knowledge of Adriana’s feelings to seduce her.

Another thematic point of interest is how Gil’s companions treat Paris. Essentially their attitude is that it’s nice but you wouldn’t want to live there. Paul does treat it as an academic challenge. Inez prefers to live in Malibu yet is apparently interested in bettering herself by following Paul’s every word (though that’s possibly simply because she’s attracted to him). Inez’s parents enjoy everything the city has to offer and yet don’t like the French in general, the father portrayed as a right wing tea partier in one of Woody’s most political moments in some time. They’re almost analogue of how some US critics and audiences have been treating this European sojourn.

There's also much said about literature and the process of writing.  This is the film at its densest and perhaps one of the film's pleasures is the inbuilt need to rewatch and concentrate on these details.  Much of what's said, we must presume is taken from the relative writings of the various icons, the implication early on being that they're spouting what Gil's read through the idealised versions of themselves.  But what I draw from it is that if you're going to be a writer, you shouldn't be scared of what you write.  I've always worked from James Blish's question, "Who does it hurt?" Perhaps I shouldn't be to afraid to hurt people if I'm seeking a clearer truth, mostly myself.

What would be interesting to know is how the French reacted to Woody’s treatment of their language. One of the problems with his London films was that he could never quite get the local version of the language to flow quite right, the British actors often making a meal of the text. In Midnight in Paris, the text flows both ways, and there are some scenes played in florid French. Were these translated? There is a pattern in Woody’s European films that the best are about the US experience abroad, with Scoop especially being the best of the London films because of that. Perhaps Woody himself has noticed this. To Rome With Love also has some stories that follow this model.

Let’s cover some of the usual bases. Once again if you close your eyes, you can imagine some of his old repertory acting these lines. Wilson is Woody’s most obvious avatar in years. Rachel McAdams is in the Mia role. Michael Sheen’s essaying the role of Tony Roberts, even to the extent of growing a beard which mimics the one Roberts has in Play It Again, Sam. The music, rather than relying heavily on Parisian sounds, returns to his standards, with Cole Porter even becoming an important character point for Gil. Supporting artist Maurice Sonnenberg returns as “Man at Wine Tasting”, his seventh appearance in a Woody Allen film, though other than Bates he seems to be the only returning cast member.

Much like his London films, Woody’s cast some very well known local actors in tiny roles. Well, ok not Carla Bruni, who’s pretty good as the Museum Assistant (her only acting credit) and worked well in building some publicity during filming. But there’s Audrey Fleurot from Spiral as a 1920s partygoer, Gad Elmaleh as the PI, Olivier Rabourdin as Gaughan and if you glance through most of the casting on the IMDb you’ll find actors with massive long lists of screen credits in tiny roles. Like Mark Gattis in Match Point, they’re clearly just happy to have a Woody Allen film on their list of credits and a French person watching this will probably have same reaction we do to seeing Alexander Armstrong in the back of shot.

Crew wise, Darius Khondji returns as cinematographer from Anything Else and in the gap has amassed a pretty eclectic CV which includes Chéri, Funny Games U.S., My Blueberry Nights, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, The Interpreter and Wimbledon. Alisa Lepselter’s back as his editor which she’s done since Sweet and Lowdown, though interestingly she’s not credited on To Rome With Love. Financing continues the trend of independence, with some money interestingly dropping in from what looks like Catalan government’s cultural department. It’s distributed by Warner Bros in the UK too which is a forming trend, as is their under releasing of a lot of films in high definition format.

Interestingly, for most territories, Woody’s involvement is front and centre. In the UK, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger’s silhouette poster with the Windsor font was replaced with something far more generic and the director’s name didn’t appear anywhere but in the credits at the bottom. This time, Windsor’s back, we’re told, at that it’s written and directed by Woody Allen pretty prominently and the mood, Owen Wilson walking against Paris with weirdly a Van Gogh sky feels very “high brow” and particular even if a bit pecular since he’s one of the few painters who isn’t even mentioned in the film.

Midnight In Paris is now, I think, the highest grossing of his films in the US.  The film was famously released with his usual minimum distribution, but word of mouth grew and the film was effectively rereleased on nearly a thousand cinemas.  For whatever reason, the film managed to break through the usual prejudices and barriers, perhaps partially on the strength of Owen Wilson's performances, his best outside of a Wes Anderson piece, but mostly because it's so damn good.  It's done well enough that Woody's Untitled Project for this year was shot in California.  It’s once again possible for a distributor to make Woody’s participation a benefit. Good.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Then You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger was released in UK cinemas eventually, but left them fast enough that I didn’t have a chance to go. Inevitably, Warner Bros decided to release it just to dvd, but after the Vicky Cristina Barcelona debarkle when I rushed to buy it in the lesser format before a cheaper BD came out six months later and the Whatever Works mess I decided to wait. And wait. And wait. But with Midnight In Paris garlanding a few nominations and awards here and there and for the purposes of this project having to watch Stranger first, I buckled and bought the dvd from ebay last week. I watched it late last night after spending the evening waiting for The 10 O’clock Show only to realise it was the wrong night.  As ever the following is more of a spoilery analysis than a review.

Now The film opens paraphrasing Shakespeare. Badly. The narrator (Zak Orth who was Adam in Vicky Cristina Barcelona says: "Shakespeare said life was full of sound and fury and in the end signified nothing." It’s an odd way to begin, especially since if it was Woody’s thematic mission statement, it’s one of the few things he succeeded in. For all the good performances and excellent photography (by Vilmos Zsigmond returning from Cassandra’s Dream and Melinda and Melinda), the only time I laughed was after spotting one of the numerous odd cameos and although it’s not by any measure his worst film, it’s disappointing that my low expectations were so conclusively met.

Marinating overnight on why that is, the only conclusion I can draw is that it’s a drama script that’s generally been shot and performed like a comedy. While there’s a Chaucerian tone to Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) swapping his long standing wife for a prostitute, that ultimately spins out into darker territory. The bitter dissolution of Sally (Naomi Watts) and Roy's (Josh Brolin) marriage isn’t leavened by the former’s indecision over a suitor or the latter’s existential angst and taking advantage of his friend’s misfortune. Helena's (Gemma Jones) search for love and being taking advantage of by a clairvoyant who everyone knows is a fraud is simply upsetting.  Until it become irritatingly repetitive.

But as I’m writing this, I'm considering if my initial reaction to the film has been skewed by the marketing and publicity. Certainly the trailer suggests this is one of his light comedies, replete as it is with jokoids and the design of the uk poster and quote on the dvd box “… very funny, my favourite Woody Allen in years” (albeit from that august organ the Sunday Express). Yet, the more I turn these ninety minutes over in my memory, the more I realise that the most effective scenes are of straight out drama and I conjecture if I’d watched the film with that attitude, the one which takes a deep breath before revisiting Interiors, my reaction might have been different.

There’s some great dramatic weight to Sally’s story, helped by Watt's fearless performance, with its subtext of fading beauty. The scene in the car after Sally’s date with Greg, her boss  (Antonio Banderas) in which he drunkenly complements her before a romantic moment agonisingly recedes. Her sullen reaction on hearing that artist Iris (Anna Friel with a bizarre "oirish" accent) is enjoying an affair with the same man. When her mother convinces her to try to rekindle those feelings with Greg as she leaves her job as his assistant to set up her own gallery, only to discover that she’s making a fool of herself in the face of his lack of interest. Finally, her painful, pleading desperation when the loan her mother promised won’t be forthcoming.

Perhaps if, like Another Woman, Woody had made this the definitive dramatic nucleus of the film, it might not have become quite as directionless as it is otherwise. That could also be said of author Roy’s decision to steal his friend’s manuscript, a big enough idea for a whole hour and a half but barely given enough room to develop amid his romancing of musician Dia (Frida Pinto) in which he generally comes across as sadly rather creepy in what’s presumably meant to be Allen’s avatar. Similarly, it’s impossible to watch Roy’s stupid old man routine without wondering what that business might have been like stretched to film length – then remembering we’ve already somewhat seen that in Mighty Aphrodite.

Both of these stories are an iteration of a familiar theme – the older man and the beautiful younger woman and though Woody grants Dia some intelligence in an attempt to make that coupling more equal, Lucy Punch’s Charmaine is a cartoon character and unlike Mira Sorvino’s Linda Ash not granted much shade or back story to underpin her utter dislocation from the reality of this film's world. Like Tim Roth in Everyone Says I Love You, or all of the characters in Small Time Crooks, it’s Woody once again trying to spin comedy from the working classes with none of the affection or sympathy of his Take The Money and Run days. The moment when we’re supposed to laugh at Sally and Roy’s reaction to Punch at the concert is deeply problematic for that reason.

Just an aside, it's almost impossible to imagine what Nicole Kidman would have done with the role, assuming it was as is before she walked to make Rabbit Hole.  You could infer she decided to look elsewhere because Woody went in a direction she wasn't expecting, but given some of the comedies she has fulfilled her contractual obligation to like The Stepford Wives, The Invasion and Just Go With It (for goodness sake) that's not entirely certain.  It has been rumoured (not that I can find a citation) that the film was actually substantially rewritten after Kidman left, which would explain a lot.  We can only wonder what the character was like before.

The conclusion of that story is awful. Alfie’s discovery of his wife In flagrante delicto is haphazardly shot, his roughing up horrible rather than funny. The following scene in which Charmaine reveals her pregnancy even dips over into light misogyny when the script has her suggest rape as the reason for her behaviour and Alfie won’t take her word for it that he’s the father, throwing phrases like DNA test around like a researcher on The Jeremy Kyle Show and after all but threatening her, regarding her with the expression Hopkins used to employ when his Lector was sizing up a good meal. Then the storyline is parked, along with Sally and Roy individual stories left totally unresolved (another of the film’s failures).

Helena's story too is a wild contrast to Woody's previous utilisations of the occult.  Pauline Collins's clairvoyant reminds us of Julie Kavner's similar role in Oedipus Wrecks, but this is very much a secular approach in which the strongly held beliefs which Sally has essentially helped to foster in her mother as a coping mechanism after her divorce from Roy are treated as bunk and more than that are the cause of the daughter ultimate financial downfall.  They do bring Helena happiness, but at the expense of her daughters, unlike in a piece like Alice in which mysticism eventually lead the titular character to some kind of peaceful ending.

With all of that said, let’s do some project related housekeeping. This is Woody’s first multi-protagonist mass ensemble film since Everyone Says I Love You. After his sojourns to Spain and New York, he’s back to the fantasy London of Cassandra’s Dream, Match Point and especially Scoop with which it shares an interest in the lesser known parts of the city. Like those previous films, none of the speech patterns are quite right, an outsider’s idea of how British people might speak in this case interpreted by amongst others Watts doing a pretty good cut glass English accent, now and then with an Australian lilt. Only Brolin ever sounds comfortable, just as he should having been allowed to play Roy with his own voice.

The big casting twist is Antonio Banderas who last glanced at this fiolmic universe when he appeared in the Allenesque Miami Rhapsody. As well as Collins, there also the usual collection of local talent. Beyond the aforementioned leads, Meera Syal as Dia’s mother, Philip “Hunt” Glennister and Christian “Welles” McKay and (a returning from Match Point) Ewan “Spud” Bremnar as Roy’s poker buddies, Alex MacQueen as his publisher, Fenella Woolgar as Sally’s new business partner and Lynda Baron as a prospective date for Alfie. Also in it from Doctor Who are Natalie Walter who was Alice in Turn Left and The Shakespeare Code’s Doomfinger, Amanda Lawrence.

Having spent the best part of three hours writing these thousand words and thinking about the film again, I am tempted to give it another look and see if with fresh eyes I might agree with the other box quote, from Woman’s Own, that it’s “Woody’s best film in years”.  As with the other films in this series, revisiting them after a period often illuminates elements like how Woody employs his music.  Perhaps I'll update this entry when I have.   But not yet, not until I’ve seen Midnight In Paris with its biggest box office ever and Best Picture nominations and marketing campaign which from I hear captures the mood of the film perfectly.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: So Far.

Film Woody Allen recently gave an interview to The Paywall in which he gave his list of favourite films. Cinematical (and dozens of other blogs) have been good enough to pirate the content and repeat the hallowed six.

A few surprises -- Match Point not Annie Hall? I bet he still wants to burn the print of Manhattan. It's good to see Purple Rose is still there -- he's always said that was the one occasion when the film in his head was replicated in celluloid and it's good that he still has that conviction.

What few of the people commenting on the list have failed to mention - assuming they know - is that Woody hasn't rewatched any of his own films since they were released, so he doesn't have the same benefit of hindsight we have. These could simply be the films which he enjoyed making the most.

The list has been a cue for writers across the web to offer their own lists, usually their ten favourites. This Awards Daily selection is typical; all the films you'd expect plus the quirky oddball selection -- Another Woman in their case.

Inevitably I offer my own list in no particular order. I didn't think about this much, simply typing in the ten I wouldn't mind watching again right now (if it wasn't so late).

Annie Hall
Manhattan
Melinda and Melinda
Everyone Says I Love You
Hannah and Her Sisters
Radio Days
Take The Money and Run
Stardust Memories
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

The only stumble was Radio Days, which was almost Purple Rose about three times. I'm not sure which is my quirky oddball selection -- there are probably at least five candidates.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Whatever Works (2009)

Then Well, this was a surprise. Released nearly eighteen months ago in the US and having drifted around the world before reaching these shores, I’d given up on Whatever Works receiving a theatrical release, to the extent that for the purposes of this project I bought a copy of the blu-ray from the US on the assumption that it was region free (the “fact” of which had been heavily reported online). And it does play. Just long enough to put up a banner that says it won’t show the actual film on blu-ray players outside of the US. Which means that today, I saw a film for which I have a copy on my shelf already.

By co-incidence, Manchester’s Cornerhouse is showing Whatever Works alongside two films by directors clearly influenced by Woody Allen. Greenburg from Noah Baumbach who seems to be building a career out of remaking Interiors and the film I watched as the first part of a double bill Nicole Holofcener’s Please Give in which Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play caustic Diane Keaton and Woody type characters and has Vicky Cristina’s Rebecca Hall and Melinda’s Amanda Peet. Like all of Holofcener’s film, it’s witty, tragic, thoughtful and about the guilt of privilege. Not unlike most of Woody's then too.

As ever this won't be a typical review, more of a poorly thought out first reaction which includes loads of spoilers. I know that won't be a problem for anyone outside of the UK.  But I'm still being cautious because this is a new release, so please do only read the following if you don't care either way.

Hello again.  Where was I?  Oh yes ...

Now Whatever Works is a treat, indeed the kind of rare treat which American film rarely offers these days. Yes, it’s raggedy in places, notably in its pacing, and there’s initially an eerie sense of Larry David trying to enforce his own style on words undoubtedly written for Woody himself, even if the director says he originally envisaged Zero Mostel from The Front, when he wrote it in the 1970s.

It's also often hilariously funny, though I’ll admit that it’s one of those later films which will only be of interest to his fans rather than passing trade, which seems to have been accepted by the studio who have replicated the US campaign and put Larry David front and centre on the poster rather than a shot of Evan Rachel Wood with barely anything on (which is her general repose in most of the film). For once, the poster indicates content, for better or worse.

The film certainly doesn’t deserve some of criticism that has been levelled at it, which I’m convinced would not have been had this been the first film by a promising director. The content of some of those reviews has been appalling, falling back on the old clichés of Woody telling a story about a May to December romance as though there’s something dirty about it (mentioning Soon-Yi in passing), or that it looks unfinished and under rehearsed (as though some of his earlier so-called classic films didn’t have those properties). Visiting Rotten Tomatoes with its 49% rating is like looking into the deep dark soul of the film reviewer.

Jason Solomans isn’t my favourite critic (I tend to think of him as the anti-Kermode), but he at least gave Whatever Works a glowing but balanced review in The Observer this past weekend making the point I have across much of this project that when critics talk about Woody’s “return to form” they miss the fact that he never lost it and that audiences may have been saying the same thing about Shakespeare because he didn’t ever quite better Hamlet.

Personally, the central thematic thread, that you should make the most of life and get love wherever you can, even if someone finds your choices socially unacceptable and that includes religion, hit me in the stomach. Allen’s trick is that however irascible and unpleasant David’s character Boris Yelnikoff is, forever calling himself a genius without much being able to demonstrate it, much of what he says is completely true.

We shouldn’t spend half our lives looking back on missed chances and poor choice and mistakes, we should just look to the now. Someone (bless them) has transcribed the longest and most perceptive speech for the IMDb’s memorable quotes page but much of it boils down to this later quote:

“That's why I can't say enough times, whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works.”

If Woody did indeed resurrect an old 70s script, that also means that such criticism is being directed at work which originated in the very epoch they’re comparing it negatively to, the Interiors/Manhattan/Annie Hall axis. It’s not unknown for him to go back to work first created decades before – Manhattan Murder Mystery had its origins in Annie Hall and there was his Don’t Drink The Water remake. Certainly some elements, such as Patricia Clarkson’s enlightenment and drift into free love have a 70s ting to them, and the cd player in David’s apartment would be easily replaced by a vinyl turntable of the kind seen in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Knowing that the script has sat in a draw for a few decades, we can see how it’s subsequently influenced or been recycled in his later work. What is the central relationship between Boris and Melody but a more light hearted version of that between the misanthropic Frederick (Max Von Sydow) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) in Hannah and Her Sisters with the improvisational quality of the similar romance in Manhattan?

Characters have broken the fourth wall throughout his career, though admittedly not to the astoundingly metafictional excess seen here, with David commenting on the behaviour of the people in the auditorium, his eyes looking right through us. The unexpected arrival of the lingering matriarch crops up in Anything Else. Nothing is exactly the same, no repeated scenes, so I might simply be noticing familiar tropes, but it could demonstrate that no ideas are ever really lost.

To increase the sense that we’re in a mixed up crazy kinda wurld, Mark Kermode gave the film a poor review last Friday. He says he didn’t laugh once (and neither did the two other people in the screening) and suggested that Woody has lost his sense of place in relation to New York, giving the city a “tourists” view. Well, as Kermode might say, two things on this.

Firstly, the reason we get the tourist version of the city is that it's being seen through the eyes of newcomers – Melody first then later her mother. When the more domestic parts of the city are shown, it’s the city blocks that the reclusive Boris inhabits and refreshingly they’re not Katz’s or the familiar locations, but places which ordinary New Yorkers might go.

Secondly, back in my review of Melinda and Melinda I suggested that then Woody was completing his New York project, tying up loose thematic and auteur related ends ready for his European adventures by commemorating everything which had gone before. Oddly, even though this is a return to New York, nothing in Whatever Works dissuades me from that view, and not just because of its earlier provenance.

Not only is the use of locations jumbled, his previous musical rule of jazz for comedy and classical for drama is up the wall and in some places reversed (you can see what I mean from the soundtrack which is available on Spotify should you have the capacity). But in general because of all the southern visitors it is an outsider’s view of the city but unlike Kermode, I believe that it’s deliberate and was perhaps even heightened in the contemporary update of the script.

Structurally the film also very clearly changes tack half way through. The opening half is generally from Boris’s point of view, we’re granted flashbacks and given a blow-by-blow account of his life story and philosophical perspective. What we discover about in these early scenes about Evan Rachel Wood’s Melody is from their two-handers and his conversations with friends (apart from the one scene in which makes the date with the dog walker and goes on the failed date).

Then, about half way through, just after Boris replaces Melody's musical choice with Beethoven’s 5th, the story opens out not to just encompass her, but her mother’s story and later her father and with the few narrative important exceptions such as when he still talks to the viewer, we’re given the external view of Boris and what Melody thinks of their relationship, but because we’ve already had time to empathise with him, we're disappointed when she drifts away with Charles Brandon from The Tudors.

Actually, Henry Cavill has splashes of light humour as the dashing Englisher even if his character name, Randy, seems a bit misplaced. Indeed there isn't a terrible performance here, and though David threatens to overpower everyone if only in through sheer volume, Evan Rachel Wood (like Mira Sorvino before her) brings a genuine depth to a character who elsewhere might have simply been the blonde intellectual punching bag. Special mention too for Clarkson, who brings nuance to a figure who despite changing her entirely life's philosophy remains the same person at the core.

As this rush of late night words should indicate, Whatever Works was well worth the wait (cliché!). Aided by those wonderful performances and a shooting style very much geared towards the cinema (which is why I’m quite glad the blu-ray wouldn’t play in the end) it might not be one of Woody’s best films, but it’s certainly a piece I’d want to see again, if only to take in the nuances of some of Boris’s longer soliloquies which have a textual density rare seen in contemporary cinema.

Hopefully we won’t have to wait as long to see You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. Unless I take a Spanish holiday. It’s out there in August …

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Then I first saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona in screen nine of the Odeon at Liverpool One on the 13th February 2009 at 3:10pm, sitting in Row C, Seat 10. That’s right. I still have the ticket. Or receipt as they have there. Or more precisely a scan of the receipt:

My attendance was in a rare professional capacity to produce this formidable review for Liverpool Confidential, formidable because it’s about as comprehensive a survey of a Woody Allen film I think I’ve produced:

”Barden and Johansson are eye-catching enough, but the emotional heart of the film is Hall, whose face ripples constantly with expression. Vicky is between temptation and outside expectations, the heart and the head at war. […] Hers is the character most of us identify with and by the time Vicky falls under Juan Antonio's spell, the film has us in its clutches too. We’re constantly aware that this is the hardly-feminist account of an artist wrapping the hearts of three women around his paint brush, but all the while we’re beguiled.”

The description of the kids walking out is true of course, and that was after they’d played with their mobile phones for a bit and chatted to each other. Sometimes I wish that when the BBFC awards certificates, it would take into account the audience a film is clearly aimed at as well as the literal content. Though quite how a film with these sex scenes attracted a 12A anyway I’m not too sure.

Now Since my Liverpool Confidential review is so wide-ranging even to the point of emphasising Rebecca Hall’s contribution to the film (which we'll talk some more about in the next paragraph), there doesn’t seem to be much point in restating any more of that text or repeating any of the poetry. If anything, I’m more impressed with the film, and watching it within context, it’s clearly his most confident piece since Melinda and Melinda in terms of editing and construction without any of the uneasiness that greeted his London films and with due respect the achievements of Melinda and Anything Else, clearly his best film in the noughties (a position that will no doubt keep changing).

The reason that Hall’s character stands out is because she visibly has the most screen time, which simply increases the disingenuous of the poster where he photo doesn't appear and she's relegated to a secondary layer in the billing. Though the story moves away for Scarlett’s dalliances with Penelope and Javier, it’s Rebecca who has the objective view of their three way relationship and her performance that guides our opinion of it. She’s also the character with the funniest lines; early on when Javier propositions the two girls, she seems to physically imitate Woody and that continues into the next scene where she’s shown cowering at the back of the plane. It’s extraordinary.

Given the lack of a release yet for Whatever Works in the UK (I'd like to see it first at the cinema), this is effectively the end of this odyssey for now, much to your relief I’m sure. But unlike the Hitchcock retrospective, I don’t want to attempt a proper summation because Woody’s career continues. I still stick by my theory that with Melinda and Melinda, the director, just as he did between Love & Death and Annie Hall, was completing one section of his career ready for another and even taking some elements of Scoop into account, each of the films which has followed could not necessarily described as Woody Allen films were it not for the credits and that seems to be a deliberate decision, commercially or no.

But unlike Hitchcock, Woody doesn’t seem to have in his head a concept of a “Woody Allen” film and that’s what he’s deliberately disregarding. Hitch often said that such and such a film, The Wrong Man, for example, wasn’t really a Hitchcock film. Woody clearly has an idea of how movies should be made and of his own limitations, but I don’t think he has the same idea others may have of what a “Woody Allen” film is like, something to work towards or disregard, he's not aware of his own auteur status. He simply feels like he’s gone as far as he can in one direction and is trying something new, his workload and continuing ability to be bankrolled and attract a good cast allowing him to experiment.

None of his previous ensemble appear in these later films. Most of his standard elements of style are absent. Sight unseen you might consider the possibility that Vicky Cristina Barcelona was directed by a much younger man or woman, or at the very least a European director. It certainly has more in common with the Bertolucci of Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers than the Woody Allen of Curse of the Jade Scorpion or even Hannah and Her Sisters. The dialogue is less mannered, there’s an easy poetry visually and linguistically and it’s the first of his films to feature scenes in a “foreign” language as the academy would have it, and I don’t mean the Queen’s English.

Of course, on viewing Whatever Works, which is his brief return to New York, I could be proved wrong. But this year’s fall release, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was filmed in London again (with the brilliant detail of Lucy Punch replacing Nicole Kidman in a prominent role). His 2011 project temptingly has Marion Cotillard playing a Muse according to the imdb. But none of them sees the return of anyone from the old ensemble and the signature jazz tracks which were recognisably his mainstay are gone – even in Whatever Works judging by the soundtrack album which is available on Spotify.

What I will say, is that watching all his films so far in such close proximity has only increased my admiration for his work and its consistency. Even his worst film, Hollywood Ending, has some excellent relationship scenes and at his best he’s clever, intelligent, romantic and charming and probably the Shakespeare of American filmmakers in terms of variety, poetry and thematic depth within certain specific limits. If my favourite films are still the earlier pictures from the late seventies and earlier eighties, because I grew up with them, my fondness for the later work, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry and yes, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has increased. Now, what's next?

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Cassandra's Dream (2007)

Then Even though Scoop was overlooked for a cinema released, Cassandra’s Dream had a relatively smooth passage into cinemas, perhaps because crime thrillers are easier to advertise. Having waited six months to see it, I then waited another six months for the dvd which I saw in January 2009. I didn’t like it. And said so. A lot:

”But Cassandra’s Dream is rubbish. It might even be offensively bad.”

Now I don’t think I need to quote much more from that review. You can go and read it for yourself. I took umbrage with much of the film only singling out Hayley Atwell and Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography for praise. I hated the structure, the scripting, the dialogue and the performances. I speak of clockwatching and booing and whilst it doesn’t stoop to the level of my Company Men response in terms of cheap jokes I’m was very pissed off. Indeed.

On second viewing I’ve been trying to work out exactly why I my reaction against the film quite so fierce. It’s not rubbish. It’s not “offensively bad”. Cassandra’s Dream certainly better than some of the ITV Drama Premieres it sometimes resembles and whilst it’s true that it’s near impossible to be sympathetic towards these brothers, that’s also true of Macbeth. Morality plays and tragedies are supposed to illuminate the extremes of human weakness and it does that admirably.

Having watched Hitchcock’s Frenzy in the meantime and a couple of seventies exploitation thrillers, I can see the influence of those, consciously or not with big scenes played against small crusty rooms, in dirty garages and racetracks. As possibilities open up to the brothers, so the landscape changes, the room increase in size and the drinking establishments become more upmarket and such things seem to expand and contract depending upon which brother is ahead.

Philip Glass’s music is excellent too; there is touch of the Bernard Hermanns about the main theme as filtered through Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Basic Instinct. Woody rarely uses original scores on his films; here it pays dividends naturalising some of the scenes and allowing him to cut the action as he sees fit rather than around the score which was the case in Match Point. As he says in this rather good interview about the film, he wanted to simply compliment the action (rather than, I suppose, trying to add an extra thematic layer).

My initial problem with the film, as best I can gather, was this: if you were to strip the titles and hand it sight unseen to someone and ask them who directed it they would most likely guess at a British director, they could not say Woody Allen. Because it’s set in London, because it’s as close as he’ll get to a traditional thriller, because the dialogue though heightened sounds like it was written by someone else, possibly Pinter, because even though on close inspection you can identify some stylistic similarities, it has as much to do with the Allen’s auteur style as Topaz had for Hitchcock.

But it’s really not that ghastly. Not really.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Scoop (2006)

Then Scoop went unreleased theatrically in the UK as almost every subsequent review of Cassandra’s Dream and Vicky Christina Barcelona seemed to mention. There didn’t seem to be a particular reason for it other than a lack of imagination from distributors. They weren’t sure how to package a comedy thriller with supernatural overtones perhaps, despite the fact it stars Scarlett Johansson and the bloke who plays Wolverine and has a range of recognisable British actors in cameo roles, beautifully shot in our own country and it’s worth adding part financed by us through BBC Films.

The only reason I can think of is a certain nervousness still about putting out a film starring Woody himself, but even that doesn’t make sense since Anything Else at least graced the art houses. It certainly reviewed well throughout the rest of the world. The film belatedly turned up on BBC Two in 2009 at about the time Vicky Christina Barcelona was on release and a quick Twitter-check afterward suggested that people enjoyed it and a few even expressed a surprise that the film hadn’t graced the cinemas, wondering why they hadn’t heard of it before.

The upshot of all that was that after keeping an eye on the online shopping websites I managed to procure a Region Two copy through CD-WOW in 2007. On that occasion I said:

”Having obviously lived with the city for a while, Allen spends far less time here presenting a tourist view of London at least in terms of exteriors with only The Royal Albert Hall returning to create a thematic connection with the earlier film. It’s certainly an example of old fashioned film making with scenes and shots which run for far longer than contemporary audiences are used to in a comedy, with perfectly planned tracking shots and push ins -- I don’t think he uses a steady cam or hand held at all.”

That’s me. Always looking at the technical achievements.

Now One of the problems with writing again about these films for which I’ve already posted a review, is that all of the mental notes I’ve taken whilst watching again have already been addressed. My previous post on the subject has already articulated everything I might have wanted to say, other than noticing a visual callback to Manhattan Murder Mystery in Woody’s card shtick during the poker scene and how many of his character’s catchphrases are repeated from Broadway Danny Rose.

It’s a more assured piece of work than Match Point. He’s back in the familiar territory of two New Yorkers against the world. He’s not having to work with a different vernacular for much of the duration with cultural references that are within his comfort zone (“I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism”). The film is looser, more relaxed, more watchable. It lacks depth of some of his nineties work, but as a piece of feel good comedy it works admirably. Certainly cheered me up.

The big surprise this time was to notice Romola Garai as Scarlett’s best friend. Since 2006, she’s taken a few high profile roles, most recently as Emma in a BBC tv adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma and in Stephen Poliakoff’s underrated Glorious 39 and I think has the potential to be the next Kate Winslet or at least the British Johansson. She doesn’t have much to do here other than be Scarlett’s facilitator and sounding board (“I can get you into a club to meet Peter” / “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”) but even then she’s luminous.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Match Point (2005)

Then Of all Woody’s films Match Point is the one with which I have the most complex relationship. Essentially I can’t decide if it’s a work of genius or utter rubbish and genuinely oscillate between the two with each viewing. I’ll let you know what I think this time in a moment. On first viewing, I said:

“Admittedly as the film begins and for about the first ten or fifteen minutes things do seem a bit queer. The clipped accents; characters talking in full sentences; the sometimes odd pronunciations. But somewhere in there I realised that actually what was happening is that Allen was imprinting a pre-sixties filmmaking style into the contemporary setting. Compare the work which is going on here with David Lean's pictures (particular Brief Encounter) or Gaslight productions and it all makes perfect sense. It could be argued that this is because those of the British films the director has been exposed, so of course that's what he'll be doing. But I think he's just decided to go in that direction. I think he could have produced something more akin to the Working Title or much more contemporary, but because of the type of story he's trying to tell he's gone for something akin to the earlier days of British filmmaking. Watched under those conditions, it's an excellent and probably refreshing piece of work.”

That cinema trip was horrendous. As I noted in this review of a Q&A about film exhibition, because Allen's had been sold as a mainstream thriller (the above trailer is hilariously inappropriate), within about ten minutes of the white on black writing, the frozen tennis ball and the portentious/pretentious opening dialogue the audience began chatting and despite shushing a few people there wasn’t much I could do. It’s another example of the exhibitor not having the balls to sell a film as it is and leaving those people who know what they’re getting to suffer the disquiet of those who don’t.

Within days of posting a review, my old friend Louise took the film to task for its realism, to which I countered that Woody is in the fantasy market to which she replied that at the very least “(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.” We agreed to disagree. I still think that even if a film isn’t in the sci-fi genre can still create its own internal reality from human interaction to environment even if they don’t match the norm and take some poetic license.

Now Formally my original review says everything I’d want to say. This time around I laughed at some unintentionally funny moments (like the cooing over Andrew Lloyd-Webber) but understood what Woody was trying to achieve in trying to wrap a morality tale around a thriller. Emma Brockes in this interview with Woody says “Match Point is his return to form”. But I don’t think it’s a better or worse film than Melinda and Melinda, but the change in venue gave many people the chance to look at his work with a fresh perspective.

I’ve subsequently discovered that Woody originally wrote the script to be shot in New York but rearranged it for London because of the BBC related financing which cropped up. Listening to the dialogue you can hear and see once again a repetition of the figures which have populated many of his films; Scartlett in the Judy Davis role, Emily Mortimer as Mia. Even with the Anglophile revisions it’s not impossible to imagine those actresses speaking this dialogue quite naturally.

The film is of course the first of Scarlett’s trilogy (so far) with Woody. Despite what you might be thinking, she an interesting sort of actress; on the one hand she can play the film star roles but just as often her work is more clearly in the realm of character. Her two films for 2005 were this and Michael Bay’s underrated The Island and then in 2006 we find Scoop, The Black Dahlia and The Prestige and they’re all very different performances, different again to both The Girl With A Pearl Earing and the film which most increased her profile, Lost In Translation.

In Match Point she’s called upon to be immediately sexy but with a certain bo-ho lustre, a counterpoint to Emily Mortimer’s representation of the established English rose. To an extent Nola is a fairly one dimensional figure; like Anglica Houston she has to give the impression of being unhinged but of having been led into that emotion. But one of my favourite Johansson scene is her slightly unhinged drunk moment in the pub where she unfolds herself and you’re not entirely sure she hasn’t embraced the method and had a couple before turning up in front of the cameras.

But I do have problems. The film drags horribly in the middle which is always a problem when Woody nudges over ninety minutes and he’s telling much the same story as Crimes and Misdemeanors which managed to cover the material in a third of the time. Character beats are often stated and restated for no good reason; Woody seems to be trying to make us understand why Myers would take the actions he does by showing us the generosity of his father in law and the position he’s found himself in, yet the opening hour of the film should still be half as long.

But Woody’s disregard of the traditional thriller structure does at least offer us the pleasure of that beautifully weird scene in which James Nesbitt (in the Woody Allen role) shooting up right in his bed from a dream because he thinks he’s worked out the process only to have his theory blown away by subsequent, circumstantial events. It’s a pity Woody wasn’t in the mood to spin-off Nesbitt and Ewen Bremner into Scoop or any of the later films like a kind of investigative Caldicott and Charters or Jay and Silent Bob. It would certainly have livened up Cassandra’s Dream.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Melinda and Melinda (2004)

Then I first saw Melinda and Melinda at FACT Liverpool in May 2005. I’ve previously reviewed the film on this blog. Let’s read what I said: “I think what makes it a more watchable and probably accessible film is that it feels like a richer experience. The central conceit, of a story being told from a tragic or comic perspective from an initial stimulus is a discussion of the essence of drama. That discussion occurs throughout the film as the two stories echo each other, moments being mentioned or redescribed in differing configurations, with suicide played in the darkness and light in equal measure. It gives the piece a background bigger than the characters and their situations.”

Now When I was reviewing Hitchcock’s career, and reached his final film, Family Plot I registered disappointment that it wasn't a “summation” that it didn’t gather together his old motifs, underscore what he was trying to do with film. What I’d failed to notice was that he already had with North By Northwest with its wrong man plot, insignificant mcguffins and Cary Grant; everything after that was atypical. Rewatching Melinda and Melinda, his final New York film before visiting Europe, I have the same vibe; at the end of a five picture deal with Dreamworks, it’s almost as though he’d assumed he might not be making another film and so he’d decided to underline everything he’d done before, like a story arc reaching its emotional crescendo.

Which is why, as I noted in my contemporaneous review, everything seems so familiar – it’s deliberately so. I said I thought that tragic Melinda –- hereafter known as Melinda-T -- reminded me of Judy Davis (on reflection eerily so) – she’s being written that way. In that story, Chloe Sevigny is playing the Mia role with Johnny Lee Miller filling in for the likes of Gene Hackman or Sam Waterson. Comedy Melinda – hereafter known as Melinda-C -- is playing the Mia role in that story, with Will Ferrell as Woody, Amanda Peet as Diane Keaton and the role of the dentist would clearly have been picked up by Tony Roberts. Woody’s conjuring the ghosts of his past, but he’s a good enough scriptwriter to be able to evoke this without having to give too much direction.

But there are also structural and visual repetitions. As I noted the comedy/tragedy two-story aspect appears in countless of his films, some I realise now more subtly than others. It’s in both Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives, though the levels are far closer and more subtle than in Crimes and Misdemeanours. Melinda and Melinda is the first to name and make them specific. Melinda-T even talks about the kind of premeditated murder perpetrated in Crimes. Melinda-C is lured out to the Hampton’s as happens in Annie Hall. I notice now that Woody has also had specific geographic locations in mind when doing comedy and drama as though it depends on which side of his little speck of New York you live on as to how you’re life is likely to unfold.

He also makes plain his tendency to use jazz for comedy, classical for drama even to the point up including the switcheroo over the opening and closing titles. And almost all of the music either on track or at least composer level has appeared in one of his previous films, with Duke Ellington as his signature composer. He even seems to homage When Harry Met Sally by employing Ellington’s version of Don’t Get Around Much Anymore which featured so prominently in Reiner’s film (with an added note that when that scene on the side walk happened I had a lump in my throat). Now it’s easy to suggest that this is simply Woody running out of ideas, going over old ground. But they’re too pronounced for them to be simple recycling or coincidence; even after the fumbling Hollywood Ending he’s clearly too engaged with the process for all of these decision not to be deliberate signs.

Though I’m following the US release dates (or wherever the film was first shown) in the title brackets for these posts, Melinda and Melinda was released in the UK in 2005. At the close of that year, Lovefilm had a poll of the worst films of the preceding twelve months. Viewers ranked it fifth. Here is the list:

1. Revolver
2. Alexander
3. Fantastic Four
4. Be Cool
5. Melinda and Melinda
6. Valiant
7. House of Wax
8. Bewitched
9. Herbie: Fully Loaded
10. The Dukes of Hazzard

Less rubbish than Fantastic Four, more rubbish than Paris Hilton in House of Wax? It recieved a few mixed reviews, certainly, but really? The advertising didn’t help, probably with Woody’s participation, the more austerely dramatic elements downplayed and Will Ferrell made prominent on the poster suggesting something akin to straight romantic comedy. Steve Carrell also appears in the film too as advice guy in the Melinda-C story which I seem to recall being highlighted a lot too. That’s why I never to pay too much attention to advertising – it manipulates your expectations and usually in the wrong way.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Anything Else (2003)

Then We’ve now reached the films which I’ve already reviewed on this blog. I visited Anything Else at screen 3 of Picturehouse at FACT on Wood Street on Wednesday August 18th 2004 and wrote about it here: “Yet again I find myself rush headlong against general critical opinion. Does it do anything absolutely new? No. Does it at times feel like Woody Allen by numbers? Yes. But it doesn't matter. I would much rather go to the cinema and see something with a script which is half literate with a good 10-15 belly laughs and god forbid actually makes me think than the usual crud which passes itself off as a smart twentysomething comedy. The magic this time is that despite what poster might being telling you, these aren't perfect characters. For once the director lets their mess of neurosis come into conflict and see what happens.”

Now My critical opinion of the film hasn’t changed since I first saw it an I’d urge you to look at my comments from way back when since it saves me regurgitating them here, with the added observation of how similar those four paragraphs are to these reaction pieces. Since then I’ve watched Neil Simon’s Barefoot In The Park and noticed the similarities, the manic pixie dream girl and the romantic straight arguing in a tiny New York apartment, the matriarchal visitation. Of course, that’s slightly less psychoanalytical (slightly?) and Jane Fonda easier to love and understand than Christina Ricci, but the comparison stands and underscores what I was suggesting, when I was writing about the eighties, that Allen and Simon are working in roughly the same genre.

Similarly since first viewing, my film school sensibilities mean that I pay closer attention to the details of production, most specifically the mis-en-scene; we’re in an interesting period were Woody is changing photographers for each film – after decades collaborating with a particular crew member. Darius Khondji’s an interesting choice. He originated in Paris eventually working with Jean-Pierre Jeunet on the likes of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children before moving to Hollywood and working with Fincher on Seven and Panic Room, and Bertolluci on Stealing Beauty one of my guilty pleasures. But all of these films have a different flavour and unlike Gordon Willis he becomes invisible with each director. I didn’t realise his range until I read his IMDb page.

Anything Else has a particularly theatrical look. Most of the scenes play out in just a few shots, but unlike some of the nineties films were the camera shifted about manically trying to take in all the action, the characters tend sit within shot or the camera pans with them slowly. Steady cam’s are generally from the front, car shots from the side. The general impression is of putting the cinema audience in the position of a theatre audience watching the actors play within the scenery in front of them. That’s especially underscored by the moments in which Biggs breaks out of the scenes (in much the same way as John Cusack in High Fidelity or Ian McShane in Lovejoy) blinks through the forth wall and addresses us. It’s another narrative device to fill in gaps in the time-frame, but also draws us in.

I think it’s these unusual touches which, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, made Anything Else one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite films of the past roughly twenty years. Granted he’s also included Friday with Ice Cube but when you consider who he is and everything else he's selected, most of them fairly iconic, it's fairly incredible. Here is the list in video form as Quent auditions for the Film 2010 job:



He's right about Speed though I still think The Matrix holds up even with the bizarre mythology of the other two which improve immeasurably once you've heard the critics commentaries in the dvds. I’m digressing, but if any readers do happen to be interviewing Quentin at some point, I would be interested to know quite what it is that he loves about Anything Else ahead of the vast number of other films in the same genre which have been released in this time period.

I touched on the publicity in the first review, but looking again at the dvd box it is fairly disingenuous. Woody is listed in the cast and in the credits on the back and there is a photo of him on the inlay. But the main image of Ricci in a heart being carried by Biggs does suggest something rather more mainstream than what is there. As Roger Ebert says: “It's as if they have the treasure of a Woody Allen movie and they're trying to package it for the "American Pie" crowd.” It’s a much more complex than that. This playing down of the director’s participation would continue for the rest of the decade but it’s especially sad because in hindsight this is the last film (up until now) which would see Woody the actor philosophising on the streets of Manhattan and at his usual landmarks.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Hollywood Ending (2002)

Then Hollywood Ending has notoriously gone unreleased in the UK even on dvd. I eventually found a region one copy at Vinyl Exchange in Manchester. It still has their sales sticker on it. £12. I’m guessing the first time I watched it was in 2003 since I’ve been annoyed about it on my blog a few times since.

Now After the revision of my appreciation of Curse of the Jade Scorpion, my hopes were high for Hollywood Ending – could it be that after the same number of years my appreciation of this film could have changed as well? Was this a hidden classic? Leonard Maltin seemed to think so according to the box were he’s quoted as saying “I laughed out loud … Woody Allen at his best.” The omission denoted by the ellipsis is important. Because as far as I can see all Maltin could possibly have said is “I laughed out loud at the ineptitude. This is not Woody Allen at his best.”

The problems are numerous. Many of them signalled by the trailer.

The self-refentialism, for example, is as horrifying as it is breathtaking. Woody plays a New York film director who apparently made a previous picture called Manhattan Magic who’s seen as being past his prime and trying to find his come back project. He likes to be left to his own devices and won’t let anyone see his work until it’s finished. Effectively, having built up the mystique of his films displaying a kind of mythic version of his biography, he’s trying to turn it to his advantage which somehow makes him look like a tired filmmaker running out of ideas.

The blindness. The idea of a director becoming blind on the edge of making a film isn’t horrible – it sounds like the stuff of a Bergman film in fact. Except that the audience has a suspension of disbelief disconnect because no one on the crew other than a few select people who are “in on the secret” seem to notice even though the man is looking in the wrong direction all of the time and is often confused. Anyone tuning into the film half way through would be asking themselves why the director is blind and no one is mentioning it.

But the nature of the blindness is incoherent also; Woody’s character also doesn’t appear to have any audio acuity, he can’t also seem to tell from which direction someone is talking often conducting conversations with blank air even if the someone is sitting right next to him. Early on, during a pitch meeting, he mentions that he’s going deaf in his left ear but to no degree does that explain why he would need someone to turn him in the right direction to face someone speaking to him in a clear voice.

Even though much of the film takes place on what purports to be a film set, none of it looks like a proper film set and even if Woody’s character wasn’t afflicted there’s not much chance that the final film wouldn’t come out looking cheap and incoherent. In other words, this doesn’t look like the $60 million project this film within a film purports to be. This isn’t often a problem – and indeed in Bullets Over Broadway, the play hardly looked realistic. But even if Woody is trying to make a Hollywood satire, the fakeness is distracting.

When characters watch the dailies, they all comment on the fact that none of them make any sense that there are weird angles as though this was caused by the director’s blindness. Except that a decent cinematographer, albeit a Chinese cinematographer working through a translator, would surely, at the very least, be able to point the camera in such a way as to make the shots match up and make sure that was the case. Again, admittedly, this is supposed to be a farce, but if the viewer is stressing about this kind of detail, something major has happened at large.

But perhaps most damning, Woody seems have lost the capacity to see what his film is about, what’s working. Because outside of the strange blindness scenes and weird film satire ("I want to congratulate Haley Joel Osment on his life achievement award") the relationship scenes, the moments between the director and his ex-wife and later his son are as beautifully played as anything in his previous work. Téa Leoni is just wonderful in those moments when she’s recalling her marriage and at best her interaction with Woody recalls Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. But none of that can hide the unfortunate fact that this is Woody's first self-directed stinker.

The film is way too long and I’m wondering what might have happened if in trimming the twenty minutes that should have gone (back to his usual 90 minute running time), he couldn’t have lost the bulk of the blindness scenes in order to drag the film back to what it really wants to be which is a relationship drama with moments of slapstick along the lines of Manhattan Murder Mystery. Then, when the film opened the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, he wouldn’t have necessarily been relying on the final joke about his films being better appreciated in Europe to get the audience on side.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Sounds from a Town I Love (2001)

Then This short film was produced to be presented during The Concert for New York City, an event to benefit the victims of September 11th attacks. Predictably the wikipedia has a surprisingly detailed entry, including a set list though it fails to say where in the line-up the film appeared. At just three minutes long, it's well worth a look, especially since, even with this slender duration, it's still unmistakably a Woody Allen film:



Now Sounds from a Town I Love looks like the potential opening scenes of a feature, a way of introducing some of the characters. You could imagine that somewhere along the line we'd keep returning to the same actors until eventually we discover that Griffin Dunne, Michael Emerson and Tony Roberts are playing the ex-husbands of Bebe Neuwirth and that like Hal Salwen's prescient Denise Calls Up, the majority of the piece will be conducted on mobile phones to show how they have transformed relationships in the contemporary Big Apple.

Traversing what looks like most of Manhattan in just a couple of minutes, the look of the film flashes forward to Anything Else with its mix of steady tracking shots and steady-cam close-ups, though in a more guerilla style. This has to have been shot quickly. Woody has been lucky enough to enjoy fairly large budgets throughout his oscillating popularity, but perhaps what we see here is how he might approach film making if he was forced to do it much more cheaply, not that he'll be visiting Sundance any time soon.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

Then Having missed it's tiny release at British cinemas, the first opportunity I had to buy a copy of the film was at the Virgin Megastore in Paris whilst I was visiting at 11pm at night for the novelty of shopping that late. But I’d vowed to pick something French so left with a copy of Gilles Mimouni’s brain twister L'Appartement instead (later remade/ruined in the US as Wicker Park). Then a UK dvd release wasn’t forthcoming, so the first time I saw the film was on a US edition ordered through Amazon I think, which was eventually replaced with an ex-rental from the ill-fated Choice Video shop on Smithdown Road next to Tesco.

Now Well, colour me surprised. On first viewing The Curse of the Jade Scorpion on the 22nd July 2004 (see here), I was bored and annoyed and that was the impression which stayed with me right through to writing my film review of the noughties, where I said, along with Hollywood Ending that I thought it looked “cheap and rushed” and that Woody’s “own on screen comic timing was very clearly faltering”. The director himself apparently thinks it's his worst film, that he let the rest of the cast down by playing the central figure himself and that he wanted to reshoot whole sections of it but couldn’t afford to because of the price of the sets.

This time about, and I don’t know if this is because I’m watching it in context, I’m in an unusually good mood because Doctor Who is back or if I’ve simply caught up with what it’s trying to achieve now that I’m in my mid-thirties, but I found it really very engaging indeed. It’s not a classic by any means and I do think there are problems with those sets which make the film more claustrophobic than it should, but it’s genuinely funny and charming in places and I gave out an audible giggle at the end. Film critic Mark Kermode has a six laugh test to see if comedies have succeeded and it certainly attracted that from me.

All of which is quite a surprise – I’d expected to go into this with the same tone as I did for Company Man – cruel and unusual and unusually cruel. The key to the film’s success is the central relationship between Woody, who is really starting to look his age but in fact hasn’t lost much of his timing, and Helen Hunt who I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for and has the capacity to make even a dud like What Women Want (shivers) half-watchable. Their dialogue crackles with the screwball comedies of the 1930s (rightly given the setting) and though not all the jokes stick ("A lot of women have passed through this apartment. I can't say they were all winners, but...") there are certainly more hits than most comedies.

The story is the stuff of old Hollywood noir thrillers, Allen works in an insurance assessors office which investigates stolen property and are called in to look at the work of a jewel thief. Hunt is an efficiency guru who’s been called in to see if his activities could be farmed out to alternative agencies. The twist and the element of comedy is introduced by the world of magic and hypnotism, a subject which recurs throughout Woody’s career from Radio Days through Oedipus Wrecks, Shadows and Fog and much later Scoop and which leads to Allen becoming the prime suspect of his own case.

There seemed to be three main criticisms of the film on release.

(1) That it’s not as original as some of Woody’s earlier works – and that’s true though to an extent he’s working within a particular genre and genre work by its nature is never original.

(b) That it’s not as thematically complex, though it’s clear that he’s making a featherweight comedy, and is perhaps conscious of not trying to ladle in the morality that ruined Small Time Crooks.

(iii) That he’s simply too old to be seen chasing after all of these young actresses particularly Charlize Theron, who’s young enough to be his grand daughter, that there’s something creepy about him writing a script in which she throws herself at him. Well, apart from the fact he comes across as complete jerk for much the time, he’s clearly playing below his age.

Having enjoyed Jade Scorpion, I now have higher hopes for Hollywood Ending. Perhaps it isn't the dud that I remember.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Picking Up The Pieces (2000)

Then Picking Up The Pieces is a staple of the cheap dvd boxsets which appear in remainder shops the like The Works featuring Hollywood actors in tv roles from before they were famous, indie films that failed to receive proper distribution or grindhouse style horror. Usually its in a double bill with some early Jim Carrey or a quadruple bill next to the courtroom period drama Darrow with Kevin Spacey. I somehow managed to track down an earlier release ex-rental of the film on its own in Cash Converter on Allerton Road a few years ago.

Now Picking Up The Pieces is a bit of a curates egg and Woody’s participation is just plain weird. It’s not offensively bad, it’s not brilliant, it’s just not particularly inspiring (which probably explains why it received its first showing on cable tv in the US). He plays Tex, a butcher who takes exception to the infidelity of his wife (Sharon yes indeed Stone) and chops her up into pieces, one of which, her hand, goes astray on the road when he heads to New Mexico to bury her.

When said anatomical subsection is found on the road by a blind woman miraculously regains her sight, the local and somewhat morally ambiguous priest played by David err-aha-yeah Schwimmer takes advantage and soon his church is besieged by disabled tourists with lots of money seeking their miracle too. Meanwhile, Keifer Sutherlands Texas cop and former lover of Tex’s wife is on the butcher’s trail as he roles into town searching for the dismembered digits. Which hopefully untangles the mangle of the trailer which also has most of the good jokes.

Director Alfonso Arau’s previous film Like Water For Chocolate was one of my favourite films of the nineties and the first time (and I think only time) I was actively shushed in a cinema as I became very excited with that Romeo & Juliet style tale of star-crossed lovers. That was oddly edited and weirdly paced and tonally all over the place which explains why Pieces shares many of the same problems/opportunites – there are elements of Arau's style or varying styles.

If the Tex material has elements of Chaucer in its comic treatment of a cuckold and spousal homicide, as the village is engulfed with people and the locals making the most of their good fortune I was reminded of the Capraesque Magic Town or an Ealing comedy. It seems to be attempting to say something about faith and how God moves in mysterious ways and the treatment of the miracles firmly puts it into the divine intervention genre.

The essential problem with the film is that can't quite decide whether it's a black comedy, morality tale, religious allegory or western (I suppose). I tend to hate genre labels and like films which flout the rules but without a concrete tether story wise and actually a single point of view character (if we're being really technical) everything just meanders between some nice moments (Maria Grazia Cucinotta dancing in the rain and Sharon Stone's ghost spring to mind) without really engrossing properly.

Like Company Man, I can’t find anything online explaining what Woody Allen is doing in this but he’s certainly one of the highlights and though it’s difficult to tell, seems have been given some latitude to improvise, which means that his dialogue is often funnier than anything happening elsewhere. Plus there’s an unexpected delight to see him working with the likes of Sutherland who doesn’t seem like the kind of figure who’d ever turn up in one of Woody's own films, two acting worlds clashing.

The film was shot in the interesting experimental 2.00:1 or Univisium aspect ratio designed by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to bridge the gap between television and the cinema with their inherent framing problems (and which he’s controversially used to reframe his earlier films like Apocalypse Now) which explains the slightly odd look of the film – it has even less depth of field than typical 35mm. I wonder what he thinks of Avatar, which was released globally in a hundred different versions.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Small Time Crooks (2000)

Then The copy of Small Time Crooks I’ve watched then and now was bought at Music Zone in Williamson Square, Liverpool. For younger readers, Music Zone was to the early noughties what Fopp is now – good dvd and cds from alternative genres and distributors at unbelievable prices. Ironically Fopp attempted to rescue Music Zone before going to the wall themselves and were later bought out by HMV. Always a bigger fish. In terms of the music retail business, it was the canary in the cage for this recession (Tower Records UK and Andy’s Records being similar terminal birds for previous economic dips). Zavvi was quick to follow.

Now Not too long ago I was talking about this endeavour to a friend and said that I was soon to reach the noughties. “Ah – the wall.” He said grinning. I laughed it off but sadly we’ve reached the millennium and Woody makes his first proper stumble. The reasons are quite complex and I’ll talk about those in a minute, but it’s the first occasion when I’ve become bored and tetchy and frustrated. This must be what it feels like when London marathon runners hit the cobbles of Cutty Sark and realise they have nineteen miles to go, or in my case eight or so films.

The film opens very well, hilariously in fact. We’re introduced to Woody’s character Ray, one of those small time crooks who has a big scheme – he’s going to rob a bank by renting a shop just up the street and digging underneath the shops between. His wife, Frenchy (Tracy Ullman) is initially reticent but is eventually convinced, she loves him and trusts him. His pals Denny (Michael Rappaport) and Tommy (Tony Darrow) are in on the deal and eventually fellow jail bird Benny (John Lovitz in a low key performance for him) who they have to enlist because he’s rented the shop from under them.

There’s an Only Fools and Horses vibe to this opening section. Like Del Boy, Ray is apparently the clever one (he’s the one with the glasses anyway) and thinks the next scheme will be the one to make them rich. Frenchy, like Raquel, rolls her eyes and is clearly the cleverer of the two and like John Sullivan’s sitcom, it’s the incidentals of the plan which gain in importance to the point of overwhelming everything. Hollywood writer Elaine May turns in a sterling performance as Frenchy’s cousin May, the Trigger of the group whose random approach to logic threatens to derail everything (she continues to be one of the few reasons to continue watching).

This section is hilarious and up there in terms of quality with some of the anecdotes in Radio Days and has elements of The Marx Brothers in its approach to slapstick. The problem is that when one of these random variables leads the couple to become rich, the film makes the same mistake as late Only Fools And Horses in thinking that turning the piece into a class culture clash story equals comic gold. In order to accomplish that, Woody effectively has to become the intellectuals in Interiors and make fun of his underclass characters because they stock their home with vulgar acquirements, don’t know who Tintoretto is or don’t want to sit through an opera.

He does make some attempts at balance. When the English art dealer played by Hugh Grant (that’s Hugh Grant!) takes Frenchy under his wing there are some on the nose references to Pygmalian and a demonstration that his motives might not be entirely honourable. All the rest of the so-called culturally aware figures are interested in is seeing how they can exploit the couple’s new found wealth in arts projects, take advantage of their minimal understanding of the arts. But too often, and this is unlike Woody, he goes for the easy joke, the mobile phone ringing in a classical music concert, financial ignorance at inopportune moments and the farce of being chased through rooms.

There’s nothing wrong with the way the film is shot; Fei Zhao in his second and last work for the director offers some beautiful compositions, not least an early magic hour shot taking in the roof of an apartment and the city which is as good as anything Gordon Willis produced in the seventies. The performances are superb even as the script is falling apart with only Grant looking slightly incongruous and out of sorts at a moment when he was at the peak of his fame largely reacting to whatever Ullman and Allen are doing. It’s simply that, when the caption One Year Later appears, the film falls apart and Woody seems as unsure in his writing as he’d been in years.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Company Man (2000)

Then First time, this time, only time. See below.

Now About the longest eighty minutes of my life – and that includes the time I was stuck at Manchester Piccadilly at five in the morning waiting for the first train back to Liverpool with nothing to read and no one about – Company Man by any measure is a horrible comedy, unfunny, often offensive so. The story of Douglas McGrath’s Alan Quimp, a school English teacher with a grammar fetish who “lucks” himself into the Cuban wing of the CIA and causes the Bay of Pigs, everything you need to know about the sensibilities of the film makers can be found in a single sentence on its wikipedia page: “Bill Murray had a cameo appearance in the film, but his appearance was cut.”

Enjoying a 15% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the few positive reviews may have been written in the kind of LSD haze that McGrath presents us with in one of the film’s low points. Flatly shot on economical sets that barely explain the film’s $16 million price-tag and poorly edited, it seems to be attempting to resurrect early Woody Allen, specifically Bananas, but lacks Woody’s pacing and timing, largely falling back on reverse reveals in which a character says that something won’t be happening and in the next scene it is revealed that it has. A running gag of Alan incessantly correcting the grammar of his colleagues is so irritating at one point I was actively swearing at the screen in desperation for it to stop.

Most of the actors are trying their best with the meagre material but just sometimes you can see a flicker of fear in the eyes of the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Dennis Leary and John Turturro suggesting they’re wondering how they got into it and aren’t sure what they’re supposed to be doing. When Alan Cumming appeared, I shouted “Not you too Alan!” like I’d just heard he’d been shot down in a war zone. For much of the duration I was trying to work out (a) where I’d seen writer/director/actor Douglas McGrath before and (b) how he’d amassed this cast for this failure, even to the point of asking Anthony LaPaglia to don a beard and greens to play Fidel Castro (and must have used only Hitchcock’s Topaz for research so broad is his characterisation).

Quick glance at the imdb and McGrath’s revealed to be Woody’s co-writer on Bullets Over Broadway with small roles in Celebrity, Bullets, Small Time Crooks and Hollywood Ending. He’d already directed the Emma adaptation with Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘96 and would go from Company Man to Nicholas Nickelby before redeeming himself with Infamous, the Truman Capote film that wasn’t Capote. I’ve scrabbled about for an interview, some indication of what might have gone wrong here but all I can find is review after interview listing its failures; Roger Ebert attended twice, bless him, just to see if the audience reaction changed. It didn’t. Still silent. Salon says it’s like a life sentence. They’re right. I ended up tidying my tiny blu-ray collection halfway through.

McGrath might have thought himself Woody’s successor and though you could imagine him being an able performer given the right material and director – in a Wes Anderson film perhaps – he’s just not enough of a presence to carry his own film. Perhaps that’s why he’s surrounded himself with so much star power; but all too often he looks like a YouTube editing wizard who’s inserted themselves into someone else’s movie. How else can we explain why the rest of the cast are called upon to simply react as he does his schtick. It’s not until you see an actor/writer/director giving themselves what they think are the best jokes that you realise how generous Woody is in portioning out the humour even in the films were he’s supposed to be the main character.

The actor/writer/director’s previous credits explain Allen’s participation as the head of the Cuban branch of the CIA. Not that you could tell that from the box or the credits were his name is nowhere to be found. Did he see the finished product have his name taken off or did the film as a favour on the understanding that his appearance would be a surprise? Either way his sudden reveal is one of the few good moments as he lounges beneath a beret in the local drinking establishment explaining how he became stuck in what until that point is a backwater position within the organisation. Beyond that he’s largely wasted, uncomfortably handing out exposition and sending Alan out on missions to kill Castro, before the indignity of his final scene in which the virtuoso clarinettist has to mime using a saxophone.

In the absence of a trailer, here's Woody on Moby Dick, Cole Porter & Artistic Theft [via]: