Movie Review Vicky Christina Barcelona

Vicky Christina Barcelona 

Directed by Woody Allen 

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Scarlett Johannson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Patricia Clarkson, Penelope Cruz 

Release Date August 15th, 2008 

Published November 23rd, 2022

Let's address the Woody Allen in the room. Vicki Christina Barcelona was written and directed by a man who has credibly been accused of abuse. It's inescapable that Allen's abuses and his poor response to very public allegations, colors his work. As a critic reviewing a Woody Allen movie in 2022 I have to make a determination. I must decide if I am viewing the art or the artist and how much the artist is reflected in the work. Woody Allen is particularly complicated in this way as his films have all tended to be very personal, reflective of his life experiences and relationships with women. 

Does his status as an accused, very likely real, abuser mean that his art must be shunned? Can we still view the work of Woody Allen and admire it even as we condemn him as a human being? I'd like to believe so but I am not of the authority to make that decision for everyone. I have to accept that if I choose to write about the work of Woody Allen and I find elements that I appreciate, I must accept that someone will take that as some kind of tacit endorsement of Allen. I don't endorse anything about Woody Allen the man but I understand where you are coming from dear reader. 

Why have I decided to engage with the work of Woody Allen now? Because I think Rebecca Hall is incredible in Vicki Cristina Barcelona and it was her breakthrough performance. She became a mainstay among those who love great acting after this performance. And since my podcast is going to be talking about Rebecca Hall's most recent, incredible performance, Vicki Cristina Barcelona was, for me, an unavoidable corollary. 

Rebecca Hall stars in Vicky Cristina Barcelona as Vicky, a grad student who accompanies her best friend, Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) on a trip to Spain. It's a getaway for the summer but it is also a working getaway for Vicky. Vicky is working on a masters in Catalan Culture and Spain is home to a portion of that culture which has a worldwide spread. Vicky hopes to explore the art and history while Cristina, an actress, is searching for an identity and looking to have fun. 

Vicky can be fun but she's also engaged to be married to Doug (Chris Messina), a steady, stable, investment banker back in New York. The engagement and her academic pursuits limits Vicky's idea of fun. Restless Cristina, on the other hand, has nothing holding her back. Thus, when a sexy Spanish artist named Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) approaches them out of the blue and invites them on an overnight plane trip to a small Spanish tourist town, Cristina says yes immediately and Vicky begrudgingly tags along. 

To his credit, I guess, Juan Antonio is remarkably straight forward about his intentions. He is asking both Cristina and Vicky on this trip to show them a good time, enjoy great food, and to have sex. The sex can be one on one or all together, he's not picky. Cristina is charmed by Juan Antonio's bluntness while Vicky at least feigns being put off by the artists come on. Where the movie goes from here is a rather unique journey as each of these three people is forced to confront their conception of themselves, their identity, and their desire. 

As a writer, Woody Allen has a knack for painting his characters into corners and forcing them to confront their situation and determine a way out. Allen lets not one of these characters off the hook easily. All three will be forced to confront themselves in ways that feel true to each. The internal conflicts find physical expression in art, sex, and the everyday decisions these characters make regarding one day to the next, to the future. 

The construction of the plot is nearly flawless as Allen deploys his supporting character brilliantly to highlight the conflicts of our trio of leads. National treasure Patricia Clarkson may have a limited role but she works to provide a complication to Vicky's story that is perfectly timed. Chris Messina's character, Doug, may be merely functional in the plot but Messina infuses the character with life and he's used brilliantly as an example of Vicky's fork in the road. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Whatever Works

Whatever Works (2009) 

Directed Woody Allen 

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Larry David, Ed Begley Jr, Patricia Clarkson, Michael McKean, Evan Rachel Wood, Henry Cavill

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Published October 30th, 2009 

It seems Woody Allen has grown sensitive to the attacks on his ego over the years. As Allen has progressed in years he has taken himself off the screen moving to only direct his features. It comes from the criticism of the late nineties and early in this decade that Allen had outgrown his persona.

Despite removing himself from the screen Allan continues to write for himself and hire other actors to play different versions of himself. The latest example is Larry David in Whatever Works. Never once do you not hear Woody kvetching through David's performance as a cantankerous genius.

As Boris Yelnikoff a genius in decline Larry David stars in Whatever Works. He's a real piece of work Boris. With his hatred of all human beings and inability to contain his disdain, Boris finds himself alone and happy in his Brooklyn solitude. That changes one night when a homeless girl named Melodie begs him for some food and a place to stay for a night. He insults her incessantly but enjoys how she takes it all in stride.

Eventually, Boris and Melodie have lived together for over a month and he can't help but admit to having taken a shine to her and she is in love with him. The relationship is clearly doomed from the start but for a year they find a little happy routine. The natural complication arrives when Melodie's mother (Patricia Clarkson) tracks her down.

Mortified that her daughter has taken up with Boris, of all people, she sets about finding a more suitable man for her daughter. Along the way, mom gives up her southern, right wing bible thumping for some lower Manhattan bohemianism with one of Boris's few friends.

Whether mom finds a man for Melodie and what complications Melodie's dad (Ed Begley Jr.) brings to the story I will leave you to discover. These plot maneuvers are not mysterious really, they just are as indeed the movie just is. The title "Whatever Works" is the working thesis of the whole picture.

David as Boris states it directly to the camera in one of Allen's odder choices. Boris, being a genius, see's more than everyone else and thus can see us, the audience, watching the story unfold. Thus, he takes occasion to speak directly to us and explain that life is meaningless aside from the little pleasures you can find to give you momentary pleasure.

As Jason Biggs was a younger Woody in Anything Else and Kenneth Branagh was Woody in Celebrity and even Will Ferrell was a version of Woody in Melinda and Melinda, Larry David plays not Boris Yelnikoff in Whatever Works but Woody Allen. It's not merely the talking to the audience, ala Woody in Annie Hall, it is in his every mannerism and line of dialogue.

Sensitive to claims of vanity Woody cast Larry David as Boris instead of himself. This is merely an observation and not a criticism as David is quite effective as a Woody surrogate. It is easy to buy David as a nihilistic, world hating intellectual. His own Curb Your Enthusiasm is little more than Woody unscripted with a little more West Coast than East Coast sensibility.

The truly interesting thing about David's performance is how it is the only really effective thing in the movie. When David isn't onscreen Whatever Works becomes rather boring. Evan Rachel Wood is a nice young actress but her role in Whatever Works only really works when bouncing off of David's cantankerous insults.

In scenes where she is courted by younger men or dealing with her mother, we can't help wonder what Boris is up to and what interesting, offensive, observation he could offer to give the scene some life. It's to Larry David's credit that he isn't completely swallowed by being Woody 2.0 and offers a very effective surrogate performance.

Whatever Works doesn't quite work because the world away from Boris is so ludicrous. When Boris is offscreen Allen gets busy with lame potshots at red state America that are beneath him. He's smarter than the obvious jabs he loads onto the caricatured southerners played by Clarkson and Begley.

The jabs work when they come from the caustic voice of Boris but when Allen gets these characters alone nothing works and the movie collapses waiting for David to get back on screen. Surprisingly, Boris is gone for much of the late second and early third act. The movie flounders without him and Whatever Works doesn't work.

Movie Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Lucy Punch

Release date September 22nd, 2010

Published September 22nd, 2010

Woody Allen has long been a cynic and often a downer, especially in recent years. However, that cynicism as in the underappreciated comedy “Anything Else” or last year's weaker but not bad “Whatever Works” was at least leavened with biting humor. For his latest effort "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" Allen has given in to an arrogant cynicism that desperately could use some better jokes.

Gemma Jones is ostensibly the star of "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger," if only for the fact that she plays the character who is most subject of Allen's contempt, as Helena a woman whose husband of 45 years, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins), has left her. Having become a severe burden to her daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin), they have fobbed Helena off on a fortune teller named Cristal (Pauline Collins) who has become a friend and guru.

Sally meanwhile, has a budding flirtation with her boss played by Antonio Banderas and Roy, struggling as a novelist who can't finish his second book, begins an affair with a neighbor played by Frieda Pinto. And then there is poor, pathetic Alfie who after leaving Helena has taken up with a prostitute named Charmaine (Lucy Punch) who is spending him into the poorhouse and cheating on him even as he professes love for her and wears out his Viagra prescriptions to keep up with her.

In the universe of Woody Allen, Sally, Roy and Alfie are burdened with the knowledge of their longings and sorrows while Helena takes idiot comfort in plans for her afterlife, living again as she has lived in the past, possibly as Cleopatra or some sort of English royalty; what point would there be to a dull past life?

In this universe there is no comfort for the intellectual while the dullard finds peace in her foolishness and is the only character to emerge unscathed. Now, as a fellow non-believer who finds such things as past lives, after-life, fortune tellers and mediums to be mere hokum, I can identify with Mr. Allen's loathing of such things. However, Mr. Allen becomes boorish when he protests the fools without humor as he does in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger."

As Mr. Allen wields his bitterness by mocking Helena he seems to lose track or simply pay no mind to the travails of Sally and Roy. Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin play at having had romantic chemistry, a good trait for a couple portraying marital decay, but as the marriage ends and once it is over we are merely taught a lesson in chance that has little humor or interest.

Roy brings about his own moral undoing but it has little to do with his cheating on his wife or falling in love with Ms. Pinto. As for Sally, she has no real moral undoing; she's merely unlucky in love. Neither plot is delivered with much humor or insight; it's likely the mundane nature of Sally's plight is the point of her story but I think if we want mundane we can find plenty of it in our own lives.

Alfie's plot is the only one to generate much of any comic steam and all of that comes from the wonderful performance of Lucy Punch as Charmaine. Ms. Punch is a walking punch line of snapping gum and streetwalker cliché. Her overwrought idiot line reads are almost all jokes and Ms. Punch delivers them with effortless humor. Mr. Hopkins is good as the dazed old timer pretending he's still young and yet realizing that all he really wants is a comfortable chair but his realizations are nothing new.

If you enjoy Woody Allen's brand of cynicism, minus his usual wit then "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" is the movie for you. While I am as much a cynic when it comes to religion, the afterlife, mediums, fortune tellers and the like, I try not to bore people with my rationality. Mr. Allen bores away in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger" and like meeting the know-it-all at a party you cannot run away to the other side of the room fast enough.

Movie Review: Cassandra's Dream

Cassandra's Dream (2007) 

Directed by Woody Allen

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson 

Release Date January 18th, 2008 

Published May 22nd, 2008 

Someday this will be referred to as Woody Allen's London era. Whether this period of Allen's career will be remembered well is still in question. His Scoop was a cute, quick witted comedy that never caught on with audiences. His follow up, Match Point is a devastatingly smart thriller likely to be remembered by Allen fans as a masterpiece.

Now comes Cassandra's Dream another London set thriller that ups the ante on Match Point by going for big stars but comes up short on the smart thrills that made Match Point so brilliant.

Two brothers turn to crime to solve their financial problems only to find themselves not exactly adept. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell are Ian and Terry Blaine. Ian is a dreamer who aspires to high finance. For now he lives the life of a playboy without the actual means. Terry is more honest of his working class roots. He lives modestly with a longtime, loving girlfriend. His one indulgence is gambling and when we meet Terry he is on quite a hot streak. He eventually strikes it big at the card table to the tune of 30 grand.

Hot streaks however, never last. As Terry risks the 30 grand to get the money he needs to buy his girl a house he winds up 90 grand in the hole. Naturally, Terry turns to Ian for help. Ian for his part has fallen head over heels for a young actress named Angela (Hayley Atwell). What little money he has he hopes to use to keep Angela in the comfort she aspires to. Now however, he must help Terry. With their options limited the brothers turn to their uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) a highly successful businessman. Howard has one condition for a lone, the boys must murder a man who threatens to tear down Howard's multi-million dollar empire.

To say Howard is asking alot is an understatement and that is at the heart of the issues with Woody Allen's latest tale of chance, chaos and morality. Allen has always been fascinated with cause and effect and the idea that while one action may lead directly to another there is no such thing as fate. In the end, Allen's world view is that we are the arbiters of our fate and our consequences. That view certainly plays out in Cassandra's Dream where Terry and Ian are not forced to do anything but decide to do something and then decide their own punishment until the random nature of the world intervenes in all it's unintentional irony and strange ordinariness.

The last shot of the film with the world in order but an emotional shitstorm in the offing is a strong, almost devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, the central crime is so outlandish that you are unable to truly invest in it emotionally. Yes, Terry and Ian are both desperate but are they really so desperate to do what they do? I didn't buy it. I especially didn't buy Ferrell's Terry who turns ashamedly from an average guy into the worst type of Ferrell character, the weepy, whiny mess well displayed in Phone Booth, far less interesting in Alexander, The Recruit and now in Cassandra's Dream.

Ewan McGregor on the other hand is right at home as Ian. With charm that intimates a certain moral flexibility, McGregor's Ian is more suited to the central story than is the caricature that is Ferrell's Terry. It is Ian and his relationship with Amanda that brings home the central themes of the film, the randomness of life, the luck, the chance and the lack of any real grand design. Also, in Hayley Atwell's Amanda we get Allen at his self deprocating best. In the film's best scene, Allen goes meta and breaks down the very existence of her character in the film.

The failure of Cassandra's Dream is unfortunately Allen's inabilty to craft a solid thriller plot to tentpole his favored themes. The Allen intellect, his philosophy on life, death and movies is on well display but fail for not having a structure on which to hang them. Thus Cassandra's Dream is a film of ideas with no driving narrative force that could have, with a little more care, been a devastating dramatic piece ala his previous London set masterpiece Match Point. That film delivers the same themes with a thriller plot that is involving, shocking and purely Allen-esque in how it underlines its ideals.

Rent Match Point and Cassandra's Dream off your Netflix cue.

Movie Review Hollywood Ending

Hollywood Ending (2002)

Directed by Woody Allen 

Written by Woody Allen

Starring Woody Allen, Tea Leoni, Treat Williams, Mark Rydell, Debra Messing

Release Date May 3rd, 2002 

Published May 2nd, 2002

Being from the Midwest, Woody Allen's humor is somewhat lost on me. Allen's humor is at times very specific to New Yorkers, which can be a turn off to Midwesterners like myself. In his latest film, Hollywood Ending, Allen isn't too New York. Oddly enough, the lifetime New Yorker is too Hollywood. 

In Hollywood Ending, Allen is Val Waxman, a washed-up former Oscar winning director now working on TV commercials in Canada. Val's luck is about to change with a little help from his sympathetic ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni). Ellie is now a Hollywood producer and is pushing her studio head fiancee (Treat Williams) to hire Val for a movie called "The City That Never Sleeps." Val is not an easy sell for the studio as he has a history of being difficult including outrageous demands of time, money and even daylight. After some prodding and a meeting with Val, the studio reluctantly agrees to hire him with the caveat that he can be fired at any moment.

So excited is Val at landing the job that he loses his sight. Val suffers from psychosomatic blindness. So, Val should probably drop out of the picture until he gets his sight back, but on the advice of his agent Al (Mark Rydell) he stays in the picture even though he thinks he should quit.

Val: "Don't you think people will notice a blind director?"

Al: "What? Are you kidding me? Have you seen these movies today?"

Allen has some terrific moments of physical comedy, built around his being blind and attempting to negotiate the movie's set. With the help of an on-set translator (Barney Cheng), hired to help Val communicate with his Chinese cameraman, Al and Val try to make it seem like everything is fine so that Val doesn't get fired. Eventually Ellie discovers Val's secret and then she too tries to help him pull it off.

The cast is rounded out by Debra Messing as Val's ditzy girlfriend and George Hamilton as a vapid movie producer. The cast is good as is most of Allen's script, but Hollywood Ending is troubled by a tendency to be too Hollywood. A lot of the film's humor is aimed at the film industry, which is a ripe place for satire. However, it is at times a little too inside the industry. Jokes about agents and references to the director's guild will be lost on casual film fans.

Allen still has a great ear for dialogue and his classic self-deprecating humor is well in place, but Hollywood Ending is just not funny enough. While Hollywood is a wonderful source for satire (see David Mamet's hysterical State & Main), Hollywood Ending just doesn't have enough good jokes. The humor is scattered throughout and in fact the film is funnier in scenes between Allen and Tea Leoni as they rehash their failed marriage. Allen is indeed a funny guy, maybe someday all of us will get the joke.

Movie Review Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris (2011) 

Directed by Woody Allen 

Written by Woody Allen 

Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Allison Pill, Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen

Release Date May 20th, 2011 

Published May 19th, 2011 

Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" is even more magical and romantic than the title implies. The romance however, is not between Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams or Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard but between Woody Allen and Paris. "Midnight in Paris" is a sappy love letter to the City of Lights and its glorious history as a home to hipsters, bohemians and intellectuals.

Owen Wilson is the stand in for Woody in "Midnight in Paris" essaying the role of miserable hack screenwriter Gil Pender. Gil is in Paris ahead of his wedding to Inez (Rachel McAdams) as a sort of pre-wedding gift from her obnoxious parents, John (Kurt Fuller) and Helen (Mimi Kennedy). Joining them, by chance, are a pair of Inez's friends, Paul (Michael Sheen) and Carol (Nina Arianda).

Gil is despised equally by Inez's parents and friends but this only enhances his character. While his days are spent being dictated to and insulted in equal comic measure, Gil's nights turn unexpectedly magical when a turn down just the right street leads to a chance encounter with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Allison Pill and Tom Hiddleston).

When the clock strikes midnight in Paris Gil finds that he is transported back to the period that he has long glorified as the finest period of time and place anywhere in the world, Paris in the 1920's. Not only does Gil spend time with the Fitzgerald's and their pal Cole Porter (Yves Heck), he gets writing tips for his attempt at a novel from none other than Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll).

Hemingway introduces Gil to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates) who in turn introduces him to a dreamer much like himself, Adriana (Marion Cotillard.) While Gil glorifies her time period in the 20's she longs for the Paris of La Belle Epoque and the Moulin Rouge. The two have chemistry but is it romantic chemistry or merely a shared affinity for the safe confines of nostalgia? FYI, if you need to be told what La Belle Epoque means or how to identify the Moulin Rouge on screen, this is not the movie for you.

"Midnight in Paris" is a love letter to Paris but it is also Woody Allen at his absolute Woody-est. Owen Wilson is not the most likely of Woody Allen stand ins but he finds the perfect rhythm in "Midnight in Paris," a mixture of nervousness, excitement and an ebullient curiosity that is infectious and lively.

Woody Allen's canvas has always been the recesses of the psyche and "Midnight in Paris" is yet another trip deep into the caverns of the subconscious. Each of the legendary people that Gil encounters in "Midnight in Paris" is an extension of his sub-conscious from the Fitzgerald's who provide his ideal romance to Hemingway who is Gil's dashing alter-ego and finally Adriana who is essentially a mirror of his fears. I won't go any further than that as there is so much life and depth to be discovered in "Midnight in Paris."

"Midnight in Paris" stands in Woody Allen's canon among his greatest films; lively, funny, thoughtful and romantic with an acid wit for the philistine American blowhards and a romantic, unblemished memory of all things Paris in the 20's. It certainly won't appeal to everyone but to those who don't need a scorecard to tick off Allen's many references, it's just wonderful.