Broadway Danny Rose

1984 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: The titular struggling agent attempts to resurrect the career of a lounge singer. A big break might be on the horizon, but it involves Danny sneaking the singer's mistress into the big show, a seemingly easy chore that doesn't end up that way.

Easy-going breezy comedy with a shot of nostalgia, and that's just not because it's in black and white. Woody Allen, by the way, might be as good an actor as Quentin Tarantino. I really like Mia Farrow here, acting most of time behind giant sunglasses. This is very funny for a movie from the 1930s. It's also got a sweet, 1930's ending that doesn't make much sense.

Midnight in Paris

2011 romantic comedy

Rating: 15/20 (Jen: 13/20)

Plot: A screenwriter-turned-struggling-novelist and his fiance travel to the titular capital with her parents. Gil falls in love with and is inspired by the city, but isn't as thrilled with all the time they're spending with Inez's pretentious friends. He stays at the hotel one night while she goes out partying, and during a late-night stroll, he magically stumbles into the 1920s and meets up with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stein, and other literary heroes and artistic luminaries who, along with a mysterious little hottie, inspire him creatively.

It's Woody Allen making a romantic comedy with elements of fantasy, so what's not to like? This one's got the time travel which is cool, and it's fun watching out for all these people I'm going to pretend I've actually heard of. The comedy's more cute than it is funny, and although I almost like Owen Wilson has a goofy Everyman, I was really questioning whether or not he was working here. Ultimately, I decided that I liked the dopiness and naivete that Wilson brought to the character. It helps the viewer experience his story with the same big eyes he's got throughout the movie, and the performance takes any cynical edge this could have had. Like he did with New York City previously, Woody captures Paris on the screen beautifully and in a way that makes it just the type of place where a modern fairy tale like this can happen. I think he's having a lot of fun with all the literature, art, and music allusions, too. I'm not sure Dali had Adrien Brody's nose, however, and I'd like my dad to see this to tell me how good Corey Stoll's Hemingway is or isn't. In other news, I might have a thing for Marion Cotillard. Don't tell my wife!

Manhattan

1979 romantic comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: For aspiring writer Isaac, love doesn't come easy. His former wife and current lesbian has written a book containing every damning detail of their relationship. His newest fling likes him bunches, but the problem is that she's only seventeen and still in high school. And to make matters more complicated, he's fallen for pretentious Mary, the woman who his married friend Yale is sleeping with on the side.

It's not my favorite Woody Allen movie, and apparently it's not Woody's either. But I really like the last close-up of Woody, a guy who could really only be a leading man in a romantic comedy in his own movies, and that expression that he makes. As a comedy, this is pretty uneven and not really all that funny. The characters aren't easy to like except for maybe Mariel Hemingway's character and Woody himself. I do like the performers who play those characters even if I don't like the characters themselves though. Still, there's a certain charm and artfulness to the proceedings, and the black and white cinematography creates a sort of intimacy with the story's inhabitants. It also shows off the titular setting, almost working like a visual ode to the city at times. So this one kind of grows on you as it goes along, but it's ultimately such a downer, a comedy too cynical to be all that funny . It's a mixed bag of a movie, one that I've always wanted to like or maybe felt like I should like a lot better.

The Purple Rose of Cairo

1985 romantic comedy

Rating: 17/20

Plot: It's the happy 1930s, but Cecilia the waitress doesn't have much to be happy about. She has job troubles, a loaf of an abusive husband, and not much hope. Her only escape is the theater, especially in the movie-within-the-movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and one of its characters, Tom Baxter. After her fifth or so trip to see the movie, Tom Baxter notices her and decides to leave the film. This bothers the other characters in the movie, the titular film's producers, and Gil Shepherd who plays Tom Baxter.

It starts slowly and realistically, but once the moment arrives, a great magically-realistic Woody Allen moment, this is relentlessly fun for anybody wanting to sit down and watch an entertaining rom-com and delicately layered for anybody who likes to think when they watch movies. I couldn't help thinking of Buster's Sherlock Jr. during the fantastical meta-moments, and like that classic silent comedy, this one has this creative fervor, taking a tired genre (romantic comedy) and injecting an infectious liveliness into it. I really liked Mia Farrow and I really really liked Jeff Daniels in dual-roles. Baxter and Shepherd are similar, but it's the subtle differences in the two that make his performance so impressive. Rose is very well written with Allen managing to create a fantasy with characters believable enough to make me completely buy the premise, kind of an anti-The Invention of Lying. It's also really funny. But I like to pretend that I'm a thinking man, and it's the questions this movie raises (not necessarily answers) about fantasy and reality, the role of cinema, and Hollywood ideals that makes this special. Woodyheads, of course, would love it, maybe more than anything else he directed in the 80s, but there's enough here for any cinemaphile to love. It's delightful!

Take the Money and Run

1969 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Virgil Starkwell is a career criminal. Unfortunately for him, he's terrible at it. The inept bungling burglar finds love but can't find a way out of his life of crime which humorously makes things difficult for him. He also looks a lot like Woody Allen.

There are some very funny moments in this faux-documentary--"gub," a scene with a ventriloquist dummy, a bad spit shine, a cellist in a marching band, glass theft. I'm bugged that Woody can't keep documentary consistency and loses cohesion because of it. There are scenes with multiple cameras, and more than likely, the events being captured wouldn't even have one camera. The typically absurdist slant is mostly fun, and even though this isn't exactly a Woody Allen classic, it's still worth the time.

Whatever Works

2009 comedy

Rating: 7/20 (Jen: 3/20)

Plot: Boris is a curmudgeon, a misanthropic former near-Nobel winning physicist who lives alone in a messy apartment following his divorce. A cute runaway from the South winds up on his doorstep. She needs food and shelter, and he decides to help. They sort of fall in love. Then a bunch of other things happen, none of them the least bit funny.

I like Larry David. I really do. So I was pretty excited when I read that he was making a film with Woody Allen. I thought it would be a perfect hilarious storm of neuroses. But oh, Woody. This is a stinker. I'm not going to blame Larry David, although he should have probably read the script and decided on his own, "I better turn this down. I don't think I can convince anybody that I'm a genius. Heck, I don't even think I can convince anybody that I'm an actor." Ninety minutes of movie and my wife and I didn't laugh a single time. That would have been fine if it was clever or sly or witty or something instead, but it wasn't any of those things. It almost seemed like Woody Allen completely lost interest in this movie and decided to rush to an ending, completely ignoring reasonable character development or logic. There's also an annoying breaking-of-the-fourth-wall thing where Larry David's character talks to the audience. It doesn't work. In fact, nothing in Whatever Works works. I should have watched a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm instead.

Language arts teacher gripe: At one point in the movie, the genius corrects another character's grammar, saying that she used an objective pronoun (us) when she should have used the subjective pronoun (we). Unfortunately for the genius (and for Woody Allen), he was wrong! It was a hypercorrection and dropped this thing another point for me.

What's Up, Tiger Lily?

1966 action comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Spies race to get their hands on a top secret egg salad sandwich recipe.

Despite this being the third time I've seen this movie now, the best thing I can say about it is that it, at times, is mildly amusing. Allen took a Japanese action spy flick and redubs it into this nonsensical egg salad plot. This starts out as a novel and fun little movie, but it quickly wears out its welcome and loses steam as it goes. There are some funny moments scattered throughout, but the execution definitely isn't as good as the original idea. A lot of the humor actually comes from admiring how terrifically awful the original movie would be on its own. Some of Allen's jokes are pretty funny in the same way his early stand-up and written work, always edging toward the absurd, is pretty funny. A lot of the humor probably worked a lot better in 1966 while a lot of it probably never worked at all. The bizarrely incongruous soundtrack and occasional live performances by The Lovin' Spoonful are kind of fun though. More fun than the meta-appearances that Woody makes anyway.

Night of the Ghouls

1959 Ed Wood movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: There's strange goings-on out in the middle of nowhere. Two old travellers become either scared or amused depending on how you read their acting and report those strange goings-on to the po-po. Detectives are sent out to uncover the mysteries of a strange house and a phony spiritualist.

I've just gotta say that the scene in this movie with the fake seance is likely the best thing I've seen all year. Mute, motionless skeletons, a dancing trumpet, a disembodied head in blackface, stunned (maybe; the acting isn't very good) onlookers, a dancing ghost, terrible dialogue. It has been a while since I've seen Plan 9 from Outer Space, but this is possibly an even worse and therefore even more entertaining chunk of B-movie. So wrong that it's. . .well, it's still completely wrong. It's the very best kind of wrong though!

What's New, Pussycat?

1965 comedy

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Michael, a hedonist, wants to settle down and live faithfully ever after with Carole. He finds it nearly impossible since every woman seems to fall for him. Oh, snap! His psychiatrist, a womanizer himself, isn't much help either.

Whoa-a-whoa-a-whoa. This movie sucks.