Woody Allen Picks

On a challenge to name Woody Allen's top ten after watching his newest, I've arranged all his movies that I've seen in the order from most loved to most hated, from absolute brilliance to difficult to watch.

1. What's Up, Tiger Lily? 1966   

2. Hannah and Her Sisters 1986 

3. Midnight in Paris  2010 

4. Manhattan  1978

5. Annie Hall  1975

6. Play It Again, Sam  1971 

7. Manhattan Murder Mystery  1992

8. The Purple Rose of Cairo  1984 

9. Alice  1989 

10. Vicky Cristina Barcelona  2007

and to continue...
Crimes and Misdemeanors  1989 

Love and Death  1973 

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy  1981

Sleeper  1972

Casino Royale  1967
What's New Pussycat  1965

Cassandra's Dream  2006 

Husbands and Wives  1991

Bananas  1971 

Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask  1972

Deconstructing Harry  1997
Mighty Aphrodite  1995
To Rome with Love  2011

Interiors  1977
Melinda and Melinda  2003
Match Point  2004

Whatever Works  2008
 
There are still many I have not yet seen - or not recently enough to remember clearly.  Some I'm sure I've seen, but I can't remember how well I liked them:
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger  2009
Scoop 2005
Anything Else  2002
Hollywood Ending  2001
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion  2000
Small Time Crooks  1999
Sweet and Lowdown  1998
Celebrity  1997
Everyone Says I Love You  1995
Bullets Over Broadway  1993
Shadows and Fog  1990
New York Stories  1989
Another Woman  1987
September  1987
Radio Days  1986
Broadway Danny Rose  1983
Zelig  1982
Stardust Memories 1979
Take the Money and Run  1967

(I didn't laboriously type out all the titles and dates; I just cut and paste them from IMDB.)

Midnight in Paris

Loved Midnight in Paris.

I loved Owen Wilson in this surprisingly non-moronic role. I loved all the supporting actors. I especially loved Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, and Marion Cotillard.

But I hated Rachel McAdams. I hated her in Sherlock Holmes too. She was good in Mean Girls, but anything else seems like too much of a stretch. Her lines are flat and dead. She reminds me of Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral, or Zooey Deschanel in, well, anything. All beautiful women, but their lines just sit there. Melanie Griffith was great in Something Wild where she seemed to play her real self, but anywhere else she was empty. But many people would disagree with me...



Anyway, when I left the theatre, I couldn't help but look at my city differently. Not to compare it with Paris, but to really look at the bits of crumbling bricks, and the odd collection of chairs on someone's porch, and the tiny initials in a heart at the corner of a building. The film is all about art and literature, and it name-drops all over the place. I have a background in fine art, so I was in my element.  But beyond the trivia, the film reminds you to SEE the world around you.


SPOILER ALERT


The film is reminiscent of Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo in its time travelling elements. It plays to the message that life is unsatisfying so we long for somewhere else to go that might be more perfect - might be a better fit because we just don't feel quite right where we are. And Gil, the main character, figures this out and decides to stay in the present time. But then he decides to move to Paris instead of returning home to California. At first I thought he just didn't get the message in full, that he still needed to change something. But no. I think he got it. We can never fit in perfectly, nor be completely satisfied in our lives. But they don't have to suck either. We can make changes within limits like moving to a city that suits us better.

HP6 and Whatever Works

Harry Potter 6 is well worth the 3 hours of film if you include excessive previews. It's a delight to watch! I particularly found it difficult to take my eyes off Malfoy. He went all out this time round. And whenever I see Maggie Smith (almost 75), I will always think of Miss Jean Brodie: "I'm past me prime gels," or, even better, "Six inches is perfectly adequate. More is vulgar!"

I don't, however, recommend this movie to a restless 5-year-old - not mine anyway. She loves all the movies, but only when she's watching them at home. For this, she was bored after about 20 minutes, and we had to make a few trips to the bathroom, and I was glad to have some toys on hand to entertain her because I wasn't bored in the least. She spent more time watching the audience than the film.

As for Whatever Works, I was sorrily disappointed. I hadn't thought much of Woody lately, but I loved Vicky Cristina Barcelona. So I was looking forward to something special, but it disappoints. The actors spoke like they were on stage, and the main character, Boris, spoke to the audience frequently, and that's typical for Allen, but I find it awkward to watch. It's impossible to get lost in the film when you're constantly aware these people are acting. I liked that Boris tells it like it is to everyone he meets. I tend to admire people like that. But his love interest, Melodie, was supposed to be his opposite particularly to his brilliance, but her stupidity was over the edge and grating. A few lines of hers were funny, but too many were just uncomfortable. He's the heartless brain, and she's the brainless heart, and they're both painfully two-dimensional.

At 92 minutes, it feels like it goes on forever, yet it really needs another half hour or so. Characters change paths abruptly and unbelievably. There's too many to get to know them very well in the time allotted, and most feel like they're just doing a first reading of the script. Instead of subtle dialogue and action leading the plot, everything's spelled out in efficient asides that are devoid of any creativity or poetry. By the end I felt beat over the head with the big message: Enjoy life in any way that works for you. There. I spoiled the ending for you, so you don't have to go. You're welcome.

Hannah and Her Sisters it's not. Too bad.

Escapes

I'm always amazed when I come across similar ideas over and over in various places. I was in a bookstore and just flipped through a book that caught my eye: Anti-Cancer. Because of my family history, I have an on-going interest in new cancer theories or discoveries. But that wasn't what caught me. It was this:  Three groups of mice had tumours grafted on to them.

"One month after the graft, 63% of the rats that had received shocks but had learned to avoid some of them by pressing a lever had rejected the tumor. The rejection rate in this group was higher than in the control group (which had not undergone shocks), in which only 54% of the animals had rejected the cancerous cells. On the other hand, only 23% of those animals subjected to electric shock with no means of escape managed to over come their cancer. The helplessness of their situation had, it seems, hastened the tumor's spread....It isn't stress itself that promotes cancer development; it is the persistent perception of helplessness the individual has that affects the body's reaction to the disease."

So we're actually better off to be stressed out, but sometimes see an avenue out, than to never be stressed at all. So the fact that we're in a doomsday scenario these days what with the environment, the economy, and the proximity to 2012 and all, isn't a problem if we can see a direction to move in that will benefit our situation.

My question is, with situations much more complex than a shock that can be avoided, do we actually have to be able to help ourselves, or is it enough to have the illusion that we can help ourselves? Is believing that we're doing something the same as escaping the problem? And what if we just stop caring about the problem? Do mice ever acclimatize to the shocks? What if the shocks were minor at first then gradually increased?

And if I escape the problem by watching movies regularly, is that triggering the same cellular activity as if I actually escape the problem by avoiding the pain in the first place perhaps by no longer reading or watching the news?

I thought of these questions as I watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It's a gorgeous film. Several of the characters are trapped. An older woman is in a dead relationship but decides it's too late to move on, so when she meets a younger woman just starting a sparkless marriage, she tries to convince her to end it now. The older woman is being shocked and trying to escape by focusing on the other woman, projecting her pain elsewhere. The younger woman is being shocked but tries to get used to the pain. The others are in a triad that works well, a new member is a buffer muting the shocks betwen them. But when she leaves, they have to escape one another. And she is naturally restless so escapes all experiences before they get too painful, but thus endures a different kind of pain. Do all methods of escape count??

Until I just IMDB'd the film, I forgot it was written by Woody Allen. The dialogue made me think it was written by someone whose first language wasn't English. Everyone speaks in a very formal, grammatically correct way - how we might write to one another, but not how anyone I know ever speaks. That felt awkward, and I'm not sure what effect he was trying to achieve there. It's not something I've noticed in any of his other films. Beyond that, I could watch it over and over. But I'm a sucker for Woody.