A movie by, but not with, Woody Allen. (Mia Farrow? Here. Sam Waterston? Here. Dianne Wiest? Here.) The next most essential thing to say about it is that this is his turn again to be Bergman-esque instead of Fellini-esque. An evenly coeducational sextet of friends, relatives, lovers, and would-be lovers passes the dog days of August in a Vermont country house. (The title bears roughly the same relationship to the action as does that of Brazil.) Every now and then one of the characters goes outdoors; the camera never follows. All of the dialogue, even the smallest of small talk, resonates with the tap-tap and ping-pang of well-chiselled "craftsmanship," but in content it never quite graduates from that special collegiate purgatory of Allen's, where the pretentious and the naive mingle eternally. What puts the final glaze of self-consciousness on the enterprise is the Instant Antiquing of the lighting -- a very different thing from the subtle monochromatic harmonies in, say, Bergman's Autumn Sonata, but rather just a uniform smear across the entire image, like the legendary Waxy Yellow Buildup of floor-polish ads. With Elaine Stritch, who steals the show, and Jack Warden and Denholm Elliott. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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