nelsoneddy Reviews

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Perhaps Woody Allen's most mature, self-assured, and appealing work.

[10/10 · 5 February 2008]

Hannah, Lee, and Holly are three sisters from a theatrical family, struggling to find themselves artistically and romantically. Hannah (Mia Farrow) is in her second marriage, to a financial adviser (Eliot, played by Michael Caine), raising her brood and acting part-time. She lends Holly money and sets her up with blind dates, mediates blow-ups between her temperamental parents when her mother falls off the wagon, hosts Thanksgiving dinner and generally functions as mother hen to the entire clan. Holly (Dianne Wiest) is a struggling would-be actress and ex-cocaine user who abortively starts a catering business with her friend April (Carrie Fisher) and then drops that idea to become a playwright. Aimless Lee (Barbara Hershey) lives with brooding painter Frederick (Max Von Sydow), who is her Svengali.

Hannah's first husband Mickey, played by Woody Allen, is a TV writer having a crisis of life and faith precipitated by a cancer scare. His comic struggles as he deals with his medical odyssey and subsequent religious quest interweave throughout the three sisters' romantic and creative adventures.

The other driving force in the film is Eliot's conviction that he is in love with Lee and cannot live without her. His bumbling attempts to seduce Lee while wrestling with his inability to leave Hannah provide the dramatic fulcrum for most of the film and won Michael Caine an Oscar. Dianne Wiest also won a Supporting Actress Oscar, and the screenplay won Woody his third Oscar.

Hannah And Her Sisters marks Woody Allen's return to the contemporary ensemble comedy-drama eight years after the stunning one-two punch of Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1978) announced to the film world that here was not just a wonderful gagster and clown but a film auteur of formidable genius. He creates wonderfully drawn characters inhabited by top-notch performances and uses them to riff on his beloved themes of life, death, love, sex, and spirituality. Like the best Woody Allen movies, it's a joy just to listen to, for its rich dialogue, its literate observations, Allen's unmatched wit--sometimes sly, sometimes uproarious, and its thoughtful musings on the meanings of life and love, death and God, passion and loyalty.

Only Woody Allen can mix the sublime and ridiculous with such adroit skill: "Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and in the end none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. Jesus, I read Socrates. This guy used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we live, we're gonna live over and over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years. Nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar."

Allen's use of mise-en-scene is frequently masterful and occasionally daring. In one scene in their artist's loft apartment, Lee talks to the emotionally distant Frederick through a curtain of semi-transparent Visqueen draped over some scaffolding. In another, we see Hannah framed in the doorway of her kitchen as she argues with Eliot over his withdrawal from her; with Eliot hidden from the camera inside the kitchen, Hannah is visually and figuratively talking to the wall.

The rewards of Hannah And Her Sisters are so numerous, it's hard to list them all: we get treated with a soundtrack full of great old standards and some Bach chamber music thrown in for good measure, an architectural tour of New York City, great cameos by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Lewis Black, J.T. Walsh, and John Turturro, e.e.cummings poetry, and Bobby Short at the Carlyle belting out Cole Porter.

Allen's unique approach in this film, with title cards in white type on black before each scene, and the liberal use of interior monologues, lets him enrich and move the story along efficiently but powerfully. Superstar screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (City Slickers, A League Of Their Own) cite Hannah And Her Sisters as inspiration for the interweaving narrative structure they employed in their movie Parenthood. What's more, when Hannah And Her Sisters came out, it created such a stir among theater critics that there was talk of lobbying the Pulitzer committee to make Woody Allen's screenplays eligible for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

My quarrels with Hannah And Her Sisters are trivial indeed. Allen uses the song "Bewitched" too much. One time hearing Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Hara croak out the song is plenty. Inexplicably, when it comes back several times in the background as an instrumental, it sounds like it's being played on an out-of-tune spinet piano by an amateur playing an easy piano arrangement, as though it was source music when it is clearly not. And yet, in one tantalizing uncredited instance, we get 12 bars of a very beautiful solo piano rendition.

The DVD, like all Woody Allen movies, has no extras to speak of except the theatrical trailer, and the soundtrack is in mono. Of minor interest is the fact that one of the scenes in the trailer is not in the final cut of the movie.

If you are new to Woody Allen, I recommend starting with Annie Hall and Manhattan, and then watching Hannah and Her Sisters. The first two will give you a taste of what's characteristically Woody at its best. In Hannah, he puts himself and his characteristic style a little more in the background, achieving a perfect balance between drama and comic relief.

Cassandra's Dream (2007)

The more humor I miss, de meaner I get

[7/10 · 27 January 2008]

I read a rumor months ago that Woody Allen was so phobic about going out in the water that he relied on a closed circuit feed to shoot the boat scenes in his latest movie. For a sailboat to be the pivotal element in—indeed, to bear the title of—his latest film seems an odd choice for the Woodster. Less odd is the choice to write and direct a very downbeat crime drama. While Woody is well aware that his gift for comedy was his entrée into film directing and the reason he is famous, he has always considered drama to be the higher achievement. Buoyed, then, by the success of Match Point, Woody delivers Cassandra's Dream, an unremittingly morose suspense thriller with, unfortunately, not all that much suspense and fewer thrills.

In fact, Cassandra's Dream has more in common with his morose, claustrophobic melodrama September than it does with Match Point. Ian and Terry are two brothers in lower-middle-class London who are promised by their uncle Howard a way out of a dangerous financial hole, in Terry's case, and for Ian, entry into the investor class, if they will commit a crime for him. For most of the film, we watch Ian and Terry wrestling with their consciences and wrangling with each other while we wait for a twist that never comes. In Match Point, we are treated to the skillfully executed metaphor of the tennis net and the brilliant symbolism of the pivotal wedding ring. The sailboat of the present film's title could, nay, should carry the metaphor for the story's central problems, but it barely appears through the bulk of the movie between the opening scenes when the brothers go in on its purchase and the final climactic scene.

I'm not one of those dilettantes who maintains that Woody should stick to making funny movies. I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. I own virtually every movie he's directed or appeared in, as well as a dozen books by or about him. That was part of my problem. As hard as I tried, I could not forget that this was a Woody Allen film. Throughout the movie, I kept hearing Woody's voice leak in. Coming from self-absorbed Manhattan intellectuals, Woody's musings on the nature of existence sound perfectly natural. Coming from the mouths of upper-class Brits with posh accents, the observations don't seem out of place. But coming from working class Londoners with thick Cockney accents, those Sartrean philosophical observations sound as out of place as a nun riding a camel through Central Park.

Anyway, what I would point out to Mr. Allen had I the access and the temerity is that great drama doesn't have to be humorless, Tennessee Williams notwithstanding. On the contrary, what makes Woody's great dramatic masterpieces so great—thinking particularly of Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors--is their sense of humor. There are rich opportunities for humor here: the play within the play, for example, is crashingly banal, in contrast to most of the embedded stories and plays in Woody's films which are richer than most people's writing, period. Another terrific opportunity missed: the brothers' hapless chasing after their intended victim as they try desperately to find the ideal spot to do the deed. The brothers' parents could have provided some welcome comic relief. An even more whimsical suggestion: Woody could have made a cameo appearance as an underworld character who teaches Terry how to make one of those ingenious weapons that Terry a little too conveniently knows how to make.

On the positive side, I did find myself carried along for long stretches, and while there's little suspense that the crime will be committed, there is some suspense as to how it will be accomplished, and whether one of the brothers will ultimately back out or betray the other. A really cute touch came when Terry, sitting at the bar at a huge party, finds himself talking to—and identifying himself to—the one person in the world he doesn't want to know who he is. Tom Wilkinson's performance is masterful (and I did buy the premise that Howard couldn't just hire a hit man because as a Los Angeles plastic surgeon he didn't have those sorts of connections). Colin Farrell, while constantly flirting with going over the top, ultimately turns in a very satisfying performance. Ewan MacGregor gives a mostly fine performance as well, although I have always had trouble with the level of commitment in his acting—Big Fish is a prime example. Woody uses a lot more close-ups than he is normally inclined to, and his camera movements are unusually fluid. The scene with Howard, Ian, and Terry underneath the tree is a terrific shot.

Frustratingly, the first major twist occurs in the last two minutes of the film, which then ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. Let's just say that one of the brothers is hoisted by his own petard. Now, the point of having a twist is to, well, twist the course of the story. If there's no more story after the twist, the twist loses most of its power. (If it doesn't, it's because the twist shows us something different about what preceded it.) I walked away saying to myself "so that happened," followed immediately by "so what?" Roger Ebert observes, brilliantly, that the story could plausibly have ended the way it did, but the point of fiction is that you can introduce some implausibility and explore the consequences, and that's what makes it interesting.

We can look forward to Vicky Christina Barcelona, which Woody says is a mixed comedy/drama, and to his 2008 project, which he says will be an out-and-out comedy to be filmed in New York City! In the meantime, Cassandra's Dream was not a pointless exercise. I count Interiors and Match Point among Woody's great masterpieces, and over his career, Woody has given us more truly great movies than Robert Altman, Peter Bogdanovich, and Lawrence Kasdan put together.

State and Main (2000)

A madcap comedy from a certified genius

[10/10 · 30 November 2006]

State and Main never fails to reward repeated viewings no matter how many times I watch it, and I've watched it at least a dozen times. I could watch it a dozen more times. It's not typical Mamet, although I wish it was. The only other Mamet comedies that come to mind are "We're No Angels" and "Wag The Dog" and maybe "About Last Night." He seems to greatly prefer darker characters and darker themes ("Glengarry Glen Ross," "American Buffalo," "The Verdict," "Oleanna," "Edmond," etc. etc.) and, most notably, crackling, labyrinthine mysteries ("The Spanish Prisoner," "Heist," "House of Games," "Homicide," "Spartan").

If you listen to the delightful cast commentary on the DVD, you will learn that Mamet is trying his hand at madcap comedy in the style of Preston Sturges ("Unfaithfully Yours (1948)"). There is never a dull moment. The movie is laced with running gags and brimming with razor-sharp wit. Mamet frequently delights us with complex, busy tracking shots choreographed to a fare-thee-well, moving from character to character and room to room with supporting characters moving in and out. Mamet is in top form as director and writer, which given his prodigious gifts-he won the Pulitzer Prize for "Glengarry Glen Ross"-means he is working at a level even Woody Allen at the height of his powers would be hard pressed to match.

Read the lengthy quotes section if you need proof of this. Every exchange tickles the funnybone. Among the running gags are references to the World Court ("Of course he's on the coast, where's he gonna be, The Hague?"), the "spate of suspicious fires" that became the inspiration for the Waterford Huskies (huh?), and the burning question, "Does it have to be an Old Mill?" The pothole in the center of town is another subtle but brilliant comic leitmotiv. Every time you turn around, somebody's running through the darn thing. Then one night Alec Baldwin hits the pothole-and the consequences send State and Main to a whole new level of hysteria.

Some of the best gags are pure through-the-looking-glass nonsense. Joe White tells director Walt Price, "I can only write on manual," to which the director replies, "I know the feeling." Marty Rossen asks Walt, "How are you getting on with these fine people?" and Walt answers cheerfully, "Like dykes and dogs." Walt tells Claire Wellesey a rambling yarn about Eleanor Duse, trying to inspire Claire to stay with the movie, but when he gets to the moral of the story… "And did she do the seven shows?" Claire asks. "No, Claire," Walt replies, "but I think you should do this movie."

The cast of State and Main is a dream cast, and everyone delivers winning, spot-on performances. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a standout as the first-time screenwriter sheepishly trying to hang on to his moral compass, and William H. Macy is absolutely superb as the ringmaster who has an attitude to match every situation. But the centerpiece is Rebecca Pidgeon, whose placid warmth and wise charm provide the emotional eye-of-the-storm, the moral center, and the Greek chorus for the movie, anchoring the whirlwind of personal agendas and flawed characters swirling around her. (I will say that I find Mamet's casting of non-actors as bit players more than a bit distracting. He likes to cast his poker buddies, the commentary informs us.)

That Pidgeon's Annie dumps her local politician boyfriend and ends up winning the heart of the idealistic Hollywood screenwriter should confound any attempt to simplistically reduce the film to "cynical Hollywood venality invades innocent small-town America". The movie is much more ambiguous and complex than that. Despite giving in to their worst impulses and coming within a hair's breadth of disaster for the second time, the film crew finally does get to make their movie. In the end, the moral of the story is, "The only second chance in life is the chance to make the same mistake twice."

Barton Fink (1991)

Masterpiece of Allegory and Atmosphere

[10/10 · 23 July 2006]

In the opening scene of Barton Fink, Barton is standing nervously in the wings watching his play being performed. Watching the film for at least the 4th or 5th time the other day, I realized that the off-camera voices of two of the stage actors were--I would bet money on it--John Turturro and (Mrs. Joel Coen) Frances McDormand (uncredited, of course)! The solipsism of John Turturro as Barton Fink listening to his own voice as one of the stage actors in his play blew my mind. But that's just a bit of trivia--I doubt very much there was any intentional irony there.

Trivia aside, Barton Fink is a masterpiece of satire, rich in atmosphere and symbolism, boasting razor-sharp writing and career performances by John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner, and John Mahoney, as well as fine contributions from Jon Polito and Judy Davis. As an allegorical story, the surrealism is introduced slowly but sure-handedly, until all hell breaks loose, literally and figuratively--well, literarily and figuratively--in the third act.

Barton Fink, as you surely know, is a New York playwright who wants to forge a new theater about and for the working class. His noble aspiration is tempered by his obvious dilettantism bordering on condescension. His first meeting with Everyman Charlie Meadows, he spouts off about the theater ignoring the "common man," but every time Charlie says "I could tell you stories," Barton cuts him off and continues pontificating.

Barton is lured to Hollywood for one reason: money. Despite the fact that Barton's New York success is hardly solidified, he buys his agent's thesis that a successful screenplay could finance any number of plays, and immediately heads for what Bill Mayhew (John Mahoney) archly refers to as the "Great Salt Lick." He has barely set foot in Hollywood when the surrealism is introduced by the bell at the front desk of the Hotel Earle, which continues to sound for a good minute like one of those (what do they call them?) "infinity chimes".

The Hotel is so palpable, it's almost a separate character in the unfolding tragedy that befalls our poor protagonist. It's so oppressively hot, the wallpaper is peeling off the walls. The hallways stretch eerily to the vanishing point. As Barton settles into the mother of all writer's blocks, inspiration hovers tantalizingly over his typewriter in the form of a tacky painting of a mysterious woman sunbathing on the beach. The words of the opening paragraph upon which he has found himself stuck taunt him from the very page of the hotel Bible.

I could go on and on. This is the Coen brothers at the peak of their powers. It's Raising Arizona meets Fargo. Small wonder it swept Cannes in unprecedented fashion.

Random Hearts (1999)

absorbing, ultimately unsatisfying

[7/10 · 26 February 2006]

Random Hearts snuck up on me. Criticized for the implausibility of a) the premise and b) the pairing of an IA cop and a Congresswoman, as well as for its slowness, the film felt just fine to me , and even ended up being surprisingly absorbing. I found my interest engaged as the film cut back and forth between Ford's and Thomas's lives as they first found out about, and dealt in very different ways in very different environments with, their spouses' deaths and the subsequent revelation that they were involved with other people. It could happen; two people's philandering spouses could be on the same plane, the plane could go down, the survivors could be brought together by the aftermath. So what if it's improbable? Improbable is not the same as far-fetched. So..what if it did happen? Why not speculate?

Ford's and Thomas's performances are believable and nuanced. Instead of finding their coupling implausible (opposite sides of the tracks--give me a break) I felt it driven by a grief and betrayal neither party knew how to deal with. The script does not bring them together too soon or too easily, and the end of the film does not resolve their relationship conventionally, either. Where I find it unsatisfying is when the dialogue brings up interesting wrinkles in or insights into the ramifications of the situation, personal and professional, but never seems to pursue any of them very far. And if you make the mistake of thinking about it too hard, Harrison Ford does seem about 10 years too old for the part.

For five and a half bucks at Wal-Mart, with full length director commentary and behind-the-scenes featurette, the DVD is well worth owning. I don't think I would pay $20 for it on a bet, but my wife might. OK, ten...

Casanova (2005)

I had a ball

[10/10 · 8 January 2006]

To begin this discussion way out in left field, I have, as my wife knows first-hand, cried at a grand total of five movies. They are, for the record, Ice Storm; Truly, Madly, Deeply; Love, Actually; Chocolat; and The Shipping News.

I'm really embarrassed to admit Love, Actually made me cry, given that it was one of the most calculated pieces of entertainment I've ever seen, but the scene where Collin Firth proposes to his housekeeper in fractured Portugese and discovers that during their separation she has been learning English just slayed me.

The point, however, is that two of those movies were directed by Lasse Hallström, namely, Chocolat and The Shipping News. Lasse Hallström has directed some of the most delightful, humane, winning romantic comedy-dramas committed to film since the heyday of Cary Grant. The other Hallström film that for me ranks among the most wonderful romantic comedies in the modern era, right up there with Annie Hall, is What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Casanova was a revelation, a fabulous, delightful romp from start to finish. Unlike anything I've seen him do, this is a grand, lavish, complex, fast-moving period piece with more twists than a rotini salad. I spent the first hour barely keeping up with all the deceptions, alliances, and assumed identities, and the second hour enrapt and completely won over. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much since I saw What's Up, Doc in the theater 40 years ago.

Wet blankets who complain that Heath Ledger's Casanova isn't as creepy as Donald Sutherland/Fellini's miss the point altogether. Hallström's film is to Casanova what Milos Forman's Amadeus is to Mozart. He is the rake with a heart of gold. His legendary womanizing is driven, disingenuously but charmingly, by philosophical curiosity. Once he witnesses Francesca's courage, independence, and intelligence, he is smitten, and from that moment on, has eyes (and, shall we say, stirrings) only for her. His relationship to Fellini's or history's Casanova is purely incidental.

The cast does a marvelous job of carrying the pace and humor of the film. Memorable characters swirl around Jacomo and Francesca with verve and panache, recalling Shakespeare In Love or the aforementioned What's Up, Doc. One possible complaint, and it seems almost petty, is the casting of Heath Ledger. He does a fine job, carries the film ably, with just the right amount of drollness and good humor. If I ruled the world, though, I might have wished for a bit sharper, stronger actor in the male lead, acknowledging the fact that there is a great dearth of strong male lead actors these days. Else, how do you explain Matt Damon as Jason Bourne? However, I could see Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, or even Clive Owen being a stronger choice here.

Jeremy Irons, in a change of pace role, delivers a brilliant comic turn as the Inquisitor, Bishop Pucci. Oliver Platt is hysterical as Paprizzio, the "Lard King" of Italy. Omid Djalili as Casanova's manservant and Lena Olin as Francesca's mother are great fun as well. The scenery, production design, and costumes are sumptuous, unremitting eye candy. The plot, with its almost dizzying twists, deceptions, and changes of fortune, kept me at the edge of my seat without ever quite losing me. Hallström's Casanova is a sprawling, beautiful, comedic tour de force. I enjoyed every minute.

Code 46 (2003)

low-key polemic

[7/10 · 5 January 2006]

Code 46 is a beautiful movie, thoughtfully written, with fine performances from Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown) and Tim Robbins. That said, for me, it suffered from several fatal shortcomings.

First of all, while Samantha Morton's performance was wonderful, Tim Robbins' obsession with her in the end felt unmotivated to me. He has a beautiful wife at home and a young son, and Morton is a crewcut Plain Jane with big hips. His performance was so understated, it felt like it belonged in another movie.

I felt no tension, no sense of peril for Robbins and Morton. Case in point: they're in the airport, trying to get out of Singapore. Will Robbins get a one-day exit visa? Even though she has been removed from her job and is under suspicion, Morton effortlessly conspires with her former co-workers to get Robbins fake cover. But then...Morton's new finger graft won't pass the ID screening! But...it doesn't matter, they're on their way anyway!

The script is obviously calculated to make a point about the ultimate ramifications of a society based on genetic screening and cloning. The central example here: a couple can fall in love, but are forbidden to, um, consort because...they're genetically half-siblings! Writer Frank Boyle makes his case very thoughtfully, but ultimately, it's familiar territory, well-covered by Brave New World, 1984, Gattaca, et al. ad nauseum. It reminds me very much of another British, low-key, albeit amiable, thinly veiled polemic: The Girl In The Cafe, written by Richard Curtis (Notting Hill; Love, Actually).

The ending is very interesting--I won't give it away, such as it is. But from a dramatic standpoint, it is about as anti-climatic as could be imagined.

I gave it a 7 because, as I said, it is a beautiful movie with a thoughtful script and fine performances. But...rent it, don't buy it.

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

A Tour De Force

[10/10 · 11 December 2005]

Deconstructing Harry is Woody Allen's masterpiece. The editing is unlike anything else Allen has done, full of little cuts which give the movie a level of abstraction that raises you above the narrative thread. It was instantly my favorite Allen film and has remained so ever since. Praised when it came out for its unflinching honesty, it eschews the self-glorifying cuteness of his other quasi-autobiographical movies such as Stardust Memories and Annie Hall and even Manhattan.

The main conceit of this movie is that Allen's character, writer Harry Block (get it?), meets his alter egos and other characters from his writing as though in real life. Block's characters have been modeled with almost no attempt to disguise them on his relatives and ex-relationships, which infuriates and sometimes devastates them. You have to follow very carefully to distinguish the "real life" relatives from the alter egos who spring to life from the pages of his books.

Block has many very seamy weaknesses and peccadilloes which he readily admits and indulges without remorse. His "real life" relatives and exes submit him to scathing criticism and resentment, while their "fictional" counterparts contribute a more dispassionate and omniscient commentary on Block's misdeeds and poor judgment. The cast is among Allen's most star-studded and uniformly brilliant. It's always fun to watch actors appearing in their only Allen film, and there are many here. My favorite is Billy Crystal, who plays a friend of Block's who stole his lover--and also appears as the devil giving Block the cook's tour of the tenth circle of Hell.

To maintain this complexity of voices requires brilliant writing, and Allen does not disappoint. My favorite quote is:

Doris: Your whole life, it's nihilism, it's cynicism, it's sarcasm and orgasm.

Block: You know, in France, I could run on that slogan and win.

If I were one for condescendingly dogmatic assertions, and I'm not, but if I were, I would tell you that if you do not love this movie, you are watching Woody Allen movies for the wrong reasons.

For the record, rounding out my top five Allen movies are: Mighty Aphrodite, Bullets Over Broadway, Small Time Crooks, and Stardust Memories, with honorable mention to Shadows and Fog.