It takes a bit for writer-director Nicole Beckwith to clue audiences in on the importance of the job interview that opens the picture. It’s also an audition of sorts, with Anna (Patti Harrison) trying out for the role of surrogate mother to successful app designer Matt’s (Ed Helms) single/surrogate dad …
At first blush, Woody Allen's latest entry into his grand European tour bears a close resemblance to Monica, the character played by Ellen Page in the film: very pretty to look at and just smart enough to suggest hidden depths, but ultimately a trifle shallow and self-centered. Unlike Monica, however, …
What begins as a passable Woody Allen knockoff, all the way to the old-time jazz accompaniment, gets increasingly silly and labored as it widens its social sphere to Mississippi and Idaho. Star-studded cast (Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Nastassja Kinski, Andie MacDowell, Jenna Elfman, Charlton Heston) and …
Disney's leap into the artistic future is also into an artistic void. Computer-generated movie images have plainly come a long way (one way or another, outwards if not forwards, breadthwise if not depthwise) from the 1960s avant-garde abstractions of the Whitney brothers, John and James, and on back to the …
Clint Eastwood is under his own direction in the role of a recently on-the-wagon and unrepentently womanizing newspaperman, busily trying to prove a condemned man's innocence on the day of execution. The detective work is pretty sketchy, pretty shaky. But the plotting of the movie takes a backseat to its …
Truth is, Oscar season is upon us and Robert Redford’s banking that his portrayal of journalist Dan Rather in Truth will set him free to take home a best supporting Oscar award. Cate Blanchett is always worth watching, even when her character as Rather’s producer never rises above that of …
You can’t claim that Woody Allen’s rapid rate of production doesn’t show. Even the title of this one sounds more like brainstorming for a title than like a final decision: three names off the chalkboard of keywords. Vicky and Cristina, two separate people, are dissimilar American friends, the first pragmatic …
Unmistakably minor effort from Woody Allen, despite throwing in our faces an older-man-younger-woman relationship. (Take that, make of it what you will.) The older man is diplomatically not Allen himself, but an Allen surrogate, Larry David, in the role of a neurotic misanthropic hypochondriacal self-acclaimed “genius,” once considered for the …
With Clive Donner as director, Woody Allen's hit-and-miss humor finds a richer texture and a wider range of mood than it finds, in the immediate future, with Allen himself as director. In a generally classy cast, Paula Prentiss as a suicide-prone stripper slightly outclasses the rest -- Peter O'Toole, Peter …
A whimsical excuse for a movie: Woody Allen has dubbed his own dialogue onto a silly Japanese spy movie. It is undisciplined, to put it gently. But the voices are really a very funny parody of standard, raspy movie dubbing, and a reasonable number of the gag lines receive gusty …
Can a man and a woman (a woman whom the man finds attractive) just be friends without sex intervening? The initial hypothesis is "No," and it takes twelve-years-plus of screen time to fail to disprove it. A lot of sophisticated ideas, observations, and sitcom one-liners are gotten off the collective …
The most essential addition to the Woody Allen filmography in the Nineties — a film not directed by Woody Allen. Taking its name from a Louis Armstrong tune, it chronicles the twenty-three-day, eighteen-city European tour of Allen as a member of a seven-piece jazz band — New Orleans traditional in …
A series of skits that argue against Emily Dickinson’s (Molly Shannon) having been a pompous old maid and in favor of her having carried on a tender love affair with her sister-in-law Susan (Susan Ziegler). Woody Allen goofs on writer and director Madeleine Olnek’s exposition-burdened narration and the manner in …
File under: animation complication. You see what happens when you start admiring the work of someone from another culture? You see? Suddenly, you're forced to confront his admiration for the beautiful work of his countrymen, which work produced machines that brought great suffering to your countrymen. If you're having trouble …
File under: animation complication. You see what happens when you start admiring the work of someone from another culture? You see? Suddenly, you're forced to confront his admiration for the beautiful work of his countrymen, which work produced machines that brought great suffering to your countrymen. If you're having trouble …