Category Archives: Death

Day 189: Cassandra’s Dream

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51ODobl2lfLCassandra’s Dream, the 38th movie Woody Allen directed, boasts a truly stellar cast that includes Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, Tom Wilkinson, and Sally Hawkins.

Mom to her sons at the dinner table: And let that be a lesson to you. In the end, all you have in this life that you can count on is family. And don’t you forget it.

And that’s what the movie is about: family.

Oh, and murder.

According to the copy on the back of the DVD case,

Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as working class brothers whose dreams of better lives lead to desperation, greed and deadly betrayal. When gambling debt and an expensive courtship place them in a financial bind, a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson) offers them an out, in exchange for committing murder.

Yeah. That’s not your typical Woody Allen movie.

By the way, “Cassandra’s Dream” was the name of a horse that pays off that allows one brother (Farrell) to help the other brother (McGregor) buy a used sailboat he has his eye on.

Sally Hawkins, who sometimes plays dowdy mom-type characters in other movies, is a blonde hottie in this one.

Unfortunately, Cassandra’s Dream is a so-so movie that never really becomes a great movie.

Day 187: Match Point

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4102J5QS38LMatch Point is a brilliant, brilliant movie. And my eighth favorite Woody Allen film.

It is not a comedy.

And it was not filmed in New York.

It’s a drama, or perhaps a “thriller” (as it’s billed), and it was filmed in London, England.

The story is about relationships, infidelity, death – all the traditional Woody Allen themes.

Only this time they’re told differently, with more skill.

And with greater impact.

And with the uber-sexy actress Scarlett Johannson as the femme fatale.

The opening voice-over narration sets the tone for the movie:

The man who said “I’d rather be lucky than good” saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It’s scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t, and you lose.

And it only gets better from there.

Match Point is story is a former tennis pro (Rhys Meyers) who becomes a tennis instructor at an exclusive club. He gets serious with the sister (Mortimer) of his Continue reading →

Day 179: Deconstructing Harry

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5190Q1J1FJLAs if the cast of Everyone Says I Love You wasn’t big enough, Deconstructing Harry raises the bar even higher – at least in body count.

The cast for Deconstructing Harry reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood:

Caroline Aaron
Kirstie Alley
Bob Balaban
Billy Crystal
Judy Davis
Richard Benjamin
Eric Bogosian
Amy Irving
Julie Kavner
Eric Lloyd
Hazelle Goodman
Mariel Hemingway
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Tobey Maguire
Demi Moore
Elisabeth Shue
Stanley Tucci
Robin Wiliams

Unless all those people opted to work for peanuts, the cost for the cast, alone, must have been the entire budget of the movie.

Deconstructing Harry is about an oversexed novelist (Woody Allen) who writes – when he doesn’t have writer’s block – without conscience or guilty about the people in his life, spinning thinly veiled yarns that ruin lives.

“I still love whores,” Harry tells his shrink as they “deconstruct” his life, which is told in flashbacks and covers various relationships and/or sexual conquests he’s had over the years.

Deconstructing Harry is another caustic, foul-mouthed Continue reading →

Day 160: Stardust Memories

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51E2F6Z0KDLIn Stardust Memories, Woody Allen gives us his version of Federico Fellini‘s 8-1/2, which it parodies.

A black-and-white film about – surprise! – death and the (mostly futile) meaning of life, Stardust Memories is the story of a director named Sandy Bates (Woody Allen) who decides he’s tired of being funny and – at the urging of his handlers/studio execs – attends a retrospective of his work that pushes him to confront far more serious aspects of life.

“I look around the world and all I see is human suffering,” Sandy tells his handlers.

Full of odd camera angles, shadows, surrealistic imagery, grotesque faces, sometimes in extreme close-up, and uproarious laughter in inappropriate places, Stardust Memories was directed by a middle-aged (45-year-old) Woody – and it shows. This is his most introspective, self-conscious, and anhedonic film to date. And forty-five is about the right age to think such thoughts. So why not?

Frankly, this movie is the cinematic equivalent of rock stars (like Robert Plant) who leave a wildly popular band and then seem to show nothing but disdain for what he accomplished, which is a massive slap in the face to the band’s fans.

In this movie, Woody seems to say to everyone – especially critics – that comedic filmmaking is bullshit and his fans are asshats for thinking they’re otherwise.

Somewhere along the way during Continue reading →

Day 157: Annie Hall

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51vM7IV5W5LI love this movie.

In fact, I’ll go far as to say that Annie Hall is my #1 favorite Woody Allen film.

This romantic comedy is easy to explain on a thematic level. It’s the story of a couple (an insecure, neurotic comedian named Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen, and an actress named Annie Hall, played by Diane Keaton) from first meeting to break up, told with incredible pathos, such sublime insight into the human condition, that it still resonates deeply with audiences nearly 40 years after it was released in 1977.

What’s harder to explain is the leap in quality between Annie Hall and Love and Death, which was released just two years previously. And it’s incomprehensible to me that Annie Hall comes a mere 10 years from Woody’s first turn behind the camera in What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (albeit not as bad as Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex*).

Annie Hall marks a turning point in Woody’s career, an Oscar-winning turning point.

According to its entry on Wikipedia,

Annie Hall won four Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards on April 3, 1978. Producer Charles H. Joffe received the statue for Best Picture, Allen for Best Director and, with [Marshall] Brickman, for Best Original Screenplay, and Keaton for Best Actress.

Keaton is amazing in his movie. Not only is her wardrobe noteworthy (it touched off a fashion trend in the mid-1970s) but so are her mannerisms, including the way she delivers her lines.

For example, when Annie and Alvy first talk after a tennis match, she utters the phrase “La-di-da, la-di-da, la la” in such a cute way that it’s one of my favorite lines from the movie, and the scene one of the best.

Ever since the recent story about one of Woody’s adopted kids accusing him of Continue reading →