Recently in Woody Allen Category
No longer fighting over Christian Bale, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson get caught up in complications with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in the trailer for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, also starring Patricia Clarkson. The word from Cannes was that Allen may be back in form after the insubstantial Scoop and the atrocious Cassandra's Dream, so here's hoping for the best.
So, since the statute of limitations is running out on this one, and since I now have a backlog of films to write about (including two involving Colin Farrell wracked by conscience): Woody Allen's surprisingly pedestrian Cassandra's Dream, which I caught two weekends ago, is definitely a swing and a miss. It's true that I've been Netflixing Allen's better films - Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan -- of late, so I might be holding Allen to a higher standard than Scoop, say, should deem appropriate. But even Allen's most recent drama, Match Point, far outshines the tale of familial woe on display here. Ewan MacGregor is always an appealing actor, and Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson are no slouches either, but they can't spin gold from the overheated, overwritten script Allen has dealt them this time. If you see one recent movie about desperate brothers getting in over their heads on the wrong side of the law, see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. If that movie was a return to form for Sidney Lumet, Cassandra, unfortunately, goes down on the debit side of the ledger for the Woodster.
As Dream begins, two working-class English brothers, ambitious restauranteur Ian (MacGregor) and amiable mechanic Terry (Farrell), contemplate pooling their very limited resources to buy a small sailboat. The vessel, unfortunately for them, is named Cassandra's Dream (I guess Polyanna's Reverie had already sailed), and its dour apellation is the first of many harbingers of doom for these two Cockney lads. But buy the boat they do, thanks to an infusion of gambling winnings for Terry, who's enjoying a sterling lucky streak at the races of late. But, the problem with gambling, as everyone knows, is eventually you lose. And, after a particularly bad night of cards, Terry finds himself down 90,000 quid and in a good spot of trouble. (Perhaps he should've listened to the veritable Greek chorus of supporting cast, who continually remind us that Things Go Wrong.) Ian, meanwhile, is sick of the family business, and also needs money in the worst way, both to get in on a potentially lucrative investment deal involving California hotels and to woo a beautiful, wanton, and clearly high-maintenance actress (newcomer Hayley Atwell) he met-cute one day in the countryside. And so, since family is family and blood is blood and all that, the two brothers go hat-in-hand to their supremely wealthy uncle (Wilkinson), a world-traveling plastic surgeon/industrialist of some sort. Uncle Howard is happy to help, but he wants a pound of flesh for his contribution, namely the head of a business associate who threatens to rat out his financial indiscretions to the powers-that-be. Will Ian and Terry put their very souls at risk for the lure of some quick, blood-tainted cash? Wouldn't be much of a movie if they didn't, now, would it?
Given the title and the constant, over-the-top foreshadowing of grim events to come, it seems clear Allen was trying to tell a modern-day version of the ancient Greek family tragedy (a la Mystic River, which gave the sense its main characters' fates along the wine-dark Charles were decided for them decades before, as children.) But, while Fate in Cassandra may be inexorable, it's sadly not all that interesting. The brothers spend the middle third of the film agonizing over a choice we already know they're going to make, and the final third repeats this process all over again. (The ending, which I will not give away, is a particularly goofy contrivance.) Plus, the many wheezy monologues about doom foretold and family bonds seem even more stilted by the fact that Allen is clearly out of his element. These sorts of meditations seemed more natural when delivered by the anxious and overanalytic New York intellectuals of Crimes and Misdemeanors. After all, that's Woody's wheelhouse. But, simply put, working-class London is not Allen's forte. Perhaps the only actor who comes off convincingly here is Sally Hawkins, as Terry's kind, long-suffering girlfriend. While MacGregor and Farrell seem a mite confused by Cassandra's stiff formalism, she's the only actor here who manages to seem an honest-to-goodness human being, and thus the one character who manages to put the sting of tragedy in Allen's otherwise forgettable tale.
For his next film after Vicky Crista Barcelona, Woody Allen returns to New York City with the perfect Allen analogue, Larry David (and Evan Rachel Wood). Which reminds me, I saw the eminently missable Cassandra's Dream two weekends ago and will post a review sometime soon, although "eminently missable" gets most of the point across.
So the second half of the aforementioned weekend double-feature was Woody Allen's Scoop. (As far as choices go, we were somewhat limited -- other members of our party had already seen Little Miss Sunshine and Talladega Nights, and while I may still catch Snakes on a Plane at some point, I'd like to see it with a bigger, rowdier audience than would fill an afternoon matinee on the islands.) At any rate, cringeworthy at first, Scoop is a passable little flick, I suppose -- Once it settles into its rhythm, it's a decent ninety minutes of air-conditioning. When I say it feels like an old-fashioned throwback, I don't mean in the sense of vintage Allen comedies like Bananas, Love and Death, Take the Money and Run, or Sleeper. It's nowhere near as funny as those films, even if Allen is once again doing his usual nebbishy schtick here. (It is, however, better than recent Allen bombs like Manhattan Murder Mystery or Small Time Crooks, albeit not by much.) Rather, with its thin characters and gossamer plot line, Scoop is so breezy as to seem weightless -- there's barely a movie here at all, just an opportunity for Woody and new favorite sidekick Scarlett Johannson to play Woody for an hour and a half. This will likely seem either endearing and nostalgic or deeply painful to you, depending on your threshold for Allenisms.
The set-up is this: Sondra Pransky (Johansson) is a verbose, vaguely neurotic, and bespectacled (you do the math) college journalist staying with upper-class friends in London and aiming to break into the journalistic big-time. While serving as an audience volunteer for a third-rate Borscht Belt magic show one evening by the Great Splendini, a.k.a. Sid Waterman (Allen), Pransky is visited by a ghost in the machine: namely, that of former Fleet Street legend Joe Strombel (Ian McShane, carrying Al Swearingen with him whereever he goes right now). Apparently unable to file his story from the grave, Strombel's spectre offers Pransky the scoop of a lifetime: upper-crust son of privilege Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman) is in fact the Tarot Card Killer, a lowlife murderer currently haunting the streets of London. Armed with this unearthly knowledge, Pransky and Waterman set out to get enough dirt on the young Lord Lyman to make the story, a plan which is complicated, naturally, by Pransky falling in love with her target.
What this all amounts to is Johansson flirting with Jackman and/or playing Nancy Drew while Allen bumbles his way through various upper-class social gatherings. (Allen's portrayal of the British class system is as cartoonish here as it was in Match Point, but, hey, that's ok -- for all intent and purposes, Scoop is a cartoon.) When Allen delivers seemingly decade-old groaners or fumbles with a goofy mnemonic for entirely too long, Scoop can be hard to watch without gritting your teeth and just grimacing through it. But, occasionally, Allen falls into a comfort zone or delivers a choice line which suggests there's still some life in Alvy Singer yet. The former moments outweighs the latter, sure, and perhaps I'm being too lenient on Woody here. But, at the very least, Scoop isn't flat-out terrible like so many other recent Allen comedies, although I can't recommend anyone actually rush out and spend money on it. (Although, if you do, Buffy fans, keep a sharp eye out for Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) in a very brief supporting role, as well as -- more exciting for my purposes -- fanboy stalwarts Julian Glover (Empire, Indy 3) and Charles Dance (Alien 3, The Golden Child).)
Ewan MacGregor, Colin Farrell, and Tom Wilkinson sign aboard Woody Allen's next project, set to begin filming next month in London. MacGregor and Farrell "will play two brothers with serious financial problems that lead them to become enemies when a third party suggests they turn to crime."
It's a good time to live in New York: Not only are the Knicks suddenly playing winning basketball again, but Match Point is, as rumored, a return to form for that consummate Manhattanite (and unabashed Knicks fan), Woody Allen. Mining the same misanthropic vein as Crimes and Misdemeanors, the movie nevertheless feels -- aside from a few nods to Allen's usual high-culture influences and the occasional Annie Hall-ish quirk by Emily Mortimer -- unlike anything Woody's done in years. Gone are the Upper East Side setpieces (we're in London this time) and that quintessential Allen stammer. (Heck, Ewen Bremner, a British Allen analogue if there ever was one, is in this movie and even he's not doing it.) Instead, we're left with an increasingly dark amorality play about ambition, adultery, and the considerable, if not terrifying, role of blind luck in organizing the universe.
Unfortunately, Match Point suffered from one of those three-minute summary-type trailers. If you've seen it, you probably already know more than you want about the story. If you haven't, here's the abbreviated version: Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, more believable as a tortured soul than a romantic lead), a former tennis pro who gives lessons at the club by day and reads Dostoevsky by night, befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode) one of his more dissolute upper-crust students, and, over opera and cocktails, wins the heart of Tom's sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer). Soon, with his good graces and acquired cultural literacy, Chris has managed to seduce the whole Hewett family, including Tom and Chloe's father (Brian Cox, surprisingly not chewing the scenery) and mother (Penelope Wilton, surprisingly -- to me -- not chewing on flesh.) But, trouble arises in the second set when Chris meets a kindred spirit in Tom's fiancee, the vampish American Nola (Scarlett Johansson, better-than-usual). Soon, Chris finds himself laying his new life on the line in order to get closer to Nola, with potentially disastrous results...
As the paragraph above attests, Match Point is in part a tale of scheming class climbers skulking about London's higher social echelons, a conceit that still paid dividends in Henry James' day but may seem relentlessly dated now, at least as it's presented by Allen. And, indeed, what with the high-culture name-drops (Strindberg, Sophocles) and all the old-money accoutrements favored by the Hewetts, this often seems like London by way of Merchant-Ivory more than any real place on the globe. But, I think this stylization is forgivable, particularly since, ultimately, Woody is hunting bigger quarry than class and its pretensions anyway. Giving away the details of the third act would be a crime, but Allen aficionados won't be surprised to find that Chris eventually finds himself wrangling with an -- or the -- existential dilemma. And it's with this final act that the film itself leaps a notch and joins the upper ranks of Allen's oeuvre. Who knows? Perhaps Woody just got lucky this time. After all, chance favors the prepared mind...or are we all just fortune's fools?
