Of all the people I've covered in this blog over the last fifteen years, no one has fallen farther in my esteem than Woody Allen. Not, mind you, because of the accusations against him (which may very well be true, I couldn't tell you), nor because the undisputed facts that have emerged lead one to conclude that he's, at best, creepy. Here at the Monkey — where I will happily praise the art while beating the artist with a hammer — the fact that Woody Allen might perhaps deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail doesn't mean he didn't make great movies.
No, the problem for me are the movies themselves.
The older I get, the more the "Woody Allen" character — not the screwball nincompoop of the early comedies, but the neurotic, cultured, "wise" Woody of the middle years, Manhattan especially — seems more like the kvetching of an immature, half-smart misanthrope than the epitome of New York sophistication the adolescent me (who knew nothing about nothing) seemed to think he was.
In that sense, the perfect actor to play the "Woody" character isn't Woody Allen but a young Timothée Chalamet in 2019's A Rainy Day in New York because if there's anything more annoying than listening to a teenage kid explaining the meaning of life to you ... well, it's probably reading an old man's blog complaining about teenage kids explaining the meaning of life to you.
And that's what "Woody Allen" sounds like to my ears now — snotty, self-absorbed, brimming with unearned self-confidence yet insecure as only a kid can be, and name-checking the classics without any real sense of what they're about, which can be amusing, even endearing, out of the mouth of a nineteen year old kid, but is ridiculous and sadly pathetic from a man in his forties, fifties and beyond.
Maybe that's why I've come to prefer the Woody Allen movies Woody Allen isn't in. Midnight in Paris, for example.
Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is an American writer traveling in Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her rich, pompous parents (Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy). Gil has romanticized notions about Paris, specifically Paris of the 1920s when Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein drank absinthe in the bars and argued about art and literature. His ever practical bride-to-be has romanticized notions only about the handsome know-it-all (Michael Sheen) lecturing at Versailles.
After an argument, Gil finds himself wandering the cobblestone streets of the Latin Quarter when, at the stroke of midnight, a time-traveling Peugeot pulls to the curb and the half-drunk couple inside invite Gil to join them at a fun little party their friends are hosting.
Friends like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein — and a beautiful French brunette (Marion Cotillard) who sparks something in Gil that his rich, stuffy fiancee never has.
Owen Wilson is the rare lead in a Woody Allen movie who doesn't play like he's doing a bad Woody Allen imitation — reportedly, Allen rewrote the part to fit Wilson when the actor came aboard, and you can tell: Wilson seems comfortable in his own skin in a way the likes of Colin Firth, Jason Biggs and Kenneth Branagh never did.
Equally good is Corey Stoll who is hilarious as Hemingway, macho and pretentious at the same time, and grumbling perfectly ludicrous Bad Hemingway to Gil's awestruck delight.
"And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave. It is because they make love with sufficient passion to push death out of their minds until it returns, as it does to all men, and then you must make really good love again."
As a lifelong Hemingway fan, I laughed so hard every time Corey Stoll was on the screen, I thought I'd have a stroke — because let's face it, while nobody was better at conveying action through words, when he started pontificating about life, nobody was more full of shit than Ernest Hemingway.
Pitch perfect takedowns of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dalí, Zelda Fitzgerald, Luis Buñuel, among others, played perfectly by, respectively, Tom Hiddleston, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Alison Pill and Adrien de Van.
And if that's all there was to Midnight in Paris, I'd still say it's the funniest movie Woody Allen has made since he saw his first Ingmar Bergman film.
But he also has some insightful things to say about the false promise of nostalgia and the trap of always living a life of "if only (fill in the blank), then I'd be happy."
First, be happy. Life will fill in the blanks.
Midnight in Paris is my favorite Woody Allen movie, and proof that no matter how false the artist, the art in this case is true.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
That thou mayest possess all things, seek to possess nothing. — St John of the Cross
I think 2010 must be about when I stopped accumulating every DVD that came out. At least I don't think I own a single movie that came out in 2010. Is that because I got a bit less materialistic in my outlook? Or because they stopped selling them in local stores? Or maybe I just ran out of room ...
That's not a picture of every DVD I own, by the way. A hundred or so from the silent era are in a different cabinet and thirty or forty Criterion editions are on a shelf under the television. But you get the idea.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Every fan of Quentin Tarantino has their own personal ranking of his movies. Here's mine. If you're not a Tarantino fan, skip straight to the voting. Otherwise, settle in. You're encouraged to post your own rankings in the comments section below.
10. Grindhouse (2007) — The only Tarantino movie that gives me no pleasure, Grindhouse is a loving homage to drive-ins and double features directed in two halves by Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Tarantino (Death Proof). Tarantino's half is about a stuntman (Kurt Russell) who slums as a serial killer while driving a "death proof" car. The film is a faithful rendering of what you might have seen in a 1970s "grindhouse" movie — according to Wikipedia, "low-budget horror, splatter and exploitation films for adults" — but the nostalgia is lost on me. Double features weren't really a thing in my part of the country and the closest drive-in was in a swamp next to Mansker Creek — it was literally underwater most of the time.
9. The Hateful Eight (2015) — See my original full-length review here. Eight seemingly unrelated strangers wind up stuck in a cabin during a blizzard in the days after the American Civil War. True to all Tarantino movies, baroque chat and cartoonish levels of violence ensue. I mean that as a compliment. Ennio Morricone won an Oscar for his score, Jennifer Jason Leigh earned an Oscar nomination (and an alternate Oscar win). Also stars Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and Demián Bichir. Katherine and I saw the 70 mm road show edition at the AFI-Silver. Great fun.
8 and 7. Kill Bill: Volumes 1 and 2 (2003 and 2004) — A martial arts movie released in two parts, Kill Bill stars Uma Thurman as "the Bride" who seeks revenge against a team of assassins who tried to kill her on her wedding day. She hops and chops, slices and dices her way across the globe, dispatching hundreds of trained killers along the way, until she confronts the leader of the assassins, "Bill" (David Carradine). If you're a fan of the martial arts exploitation films of the 1970s, this two-parter is for you.
6. Jackie Brown (1997) — Some people have this first, which is a reminder of how consistently great Tarantino really is. An adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch, this is a story of a stewardess (Pam Grier) who gets caught smuggling laundered cash for a lowlife drug dealer (Samuel L. Jackson) and risks everything to get out from under. Along with Get Shorty and Out of Sight, this was one of the few adaptations of the great Elmore Leonard that understood what the man was up to. The most restrained of Tarantino's movies (and maybe a tad reverential for my tastes), Jackie Brown revived the careers of Grier (Golden Globe nomination, alternate Oscar winner) and Robert Forster (Oscar nomination).
5. Django Unchained (2012) — A pre-Civil War spaghetti Western starring Jamie Foxx as a runaway slave named Django and Christoph Waltz as the bounty hunter who helps him rescue Django's wife from a cruel plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Stuff gets blowed up real good! Waltz won his second Oscar for his performance, Tarantino his second Oscar for writing, but more importantly, Foxx took home the alternate Oscar.
4. Reservoir Dogs (1992) — Tarantino's first directorial effort, this one put the video rental store clerk turned auteur on the map. The story of a heist gone terribly wrong, Tarantino took fifty years of noir tropes, drenched them in blood, added dialogue worthy of William Shakespeare and changed crime movies forever. Stars Tim Roth as a gut-shot undercover cop, Harvey Keitel as the gang member he duped, and Michael Madsen as the psychopathic killer who doesn't trust either one of them. The infamous Lawrence Tierney (read about Eddie Muller's hilarious encounter with the noir legend here) is great in support as the gang's leader.
3. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019) — If you've never seen a Tarantino movie and you're feeling a bit reluctant to dive in, this is the one I would start with. An insider's look at Hollywood at the end of the 1960s, Once Upon a Time is the story of a washed-up television actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), his stunt double (Brad Pitt in an Oscar-winning role) and the real life Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Stars hang out, deals are made, work is done. And then Pitt gives a hitchhiker a lift and drops her off at her home with (uh oh!) the Manson Family. But if you think you know where this is going, well, clearly you've never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie. Features Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Timothy Olyphant, Damian Lewis (as Steve McQueen) and Mike Moh (as Bruce Lee).
2. Inglourious Basterds (2009) — This is every great World War II commando movie ever made, only better. The story follows three broad narratives — "the Jew Hunter" Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz in an Oscar-winning turn), and his favorite prey, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent); a British officer (Michael Fassbender) and his double-agent contact (Diane Kruger); and finally the Basterds of the title, a group of commandos (led by Brad Pitt) wreaking havoc behind the German lines. These three narrative threads converge on a small cinema in Paris where the Reich's leaders, including Hitler himself, are attending a movie premiere. It's my pick for the best picture of 2009. As someone says at the end, "I think this just might be my masterpiece!"
1. Pulp Fiction (1994) — If Tarantino had stopped making movies after this one, he'd still be one of the greatest directors of all time. This black comedy crime classic weaves together multiple unrelated storylines featuring a heroin-addicted hitman (John Travolta), his Bible-quoting partner (Samuel L. Jackson), a bloodthirsty crime boss (Ving Rhames), his dance-crazy wife (Uma Thurman), a washed-up boxer (Bruce Willis), and the glowing MacGuffin in a shiny black briefcase. Told in a thematic rather than linear fashion, it should be utterly confusing but somehow isn't, and it's still one of the most wildly entertaining movies ever made. Also features Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Harvey Keitel, Eric Stoltz and Christopher Walken. Tarantino and Roger Avery won a well-deserved Oscar for the screenplay. I have it down as the best picture of 1994 which is saying something — 1994 was one of the best years for movies in history.
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
Fifteen years ago (!) when I started this blog, I roughed out a number of posts I intended to get to ... some day. Here's one for a movie no one saw, then or since, that I really enjoyed in the moment.
When back in the day my mother would complain, "They don't make movies like they used to," I think she meant they don't make witty, light-on-their-feet screwball comedies anymore, those dizzy fast-paced farces they cranked out in the '30s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, or Cary Grant and a music-loving leopard.
Except every once in a while, they do — a film like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, for example, a clever Cinderella comedy directed by Bharat Nalluri and starring three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand and six-time nominee Amy Adams. Released in 2008, it was fun, frothy and funny, exactly what you want when you're in the mood for laughs, a little romance and a glass of ice-cold champagne.
Too bad nobody saw it.
The title character, Miss Pettigrew (McDormand) is the world's worst nanny who, thanks to a mix up at an employment agency, finds herself working as a social secretary to a high society flibbertigibbet, Delysia LeFosse (the always enchanting Adams).
It's not that Miss Pettigrew is incompetent, exactly — she's just a tad too opinionated for the rest of the world. But she can wrangle a boy who doesn't want to get out of bed, even if the boy ia much bigger than the ones she's used to.
"You noticed," giggles Delysia.
As the story opens, Delysia and Miss Pettigrew meet on the thin margin between having and having not — one wrong move and they're both on the street — and what plays out is not so much a story about living it up as about discovering what living is for.
Frances McDormand as Miss Pettigrew is neither glam'ed up nor glamorously made plain in the fashion of Hollywood — she's simply allowed to inhabit that long face and those impossible cheekbones, looking at times like the saddest bloodhound who ever lived, at others like that stern third grade teacher who didn't approve of your youthful shenanigans.
Amy Adams, meanwhile, plays Delysia like an Egyptian embalmer has sucked her brain out with a straw — and I mean that as a compliment. It's the sort of role Carole Lombard made her bread and butter.
On the face of it, Delysia is what was known in the parlance of the times as a gold digger, sleeping with three different men, sometimes within minutes of each other, mostly for what they can give her. But don't judge her too harshly — there are very few career opportunities for a woman in 1939 — and anyway, her scheming is so transparent, it has a sort of integrity all its own.
That she also readily accepts the odd, gawky Miss Pettigrew into her inner circle, seeing her not as an inferior but as a soul mate, well, you can't help but like her.
This is a performance that could have easily gone wrong and just the sort that when done right, escapes everyone's notice.
The movie is set in London the day before World War II begins, and both Miss Pettigrew and her low-key love interest, perfectly underplayed by Ciarán Hinds, are old enough to have lost someone to the horror of the last war. With the trivial pursuits of youth in their rearview mirror and with another war coming, they know that everything from now on will be played for keeps.
Their ever-present past adds an undercurrent of wise melancholy to the daffy proceedings.
Miss Pettigrew is a rarity now, a romantic comedy for adults about adults — and more to the point — about adults behaving like adults. It's the sort of thing that studios turned out by the basketful once upon a time but which Hollywood has largely forgotten how to make.
Worse still, audiences have forgotten how to watch them.
Based on a novel published in 1938, I get the impression the book's author, Winifred Watson, spent a lot of time at the movies — shake two parts Lady For A Day with one part My Man Godfrey, add a dash of Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler, garnish with a twist of Frank Capra, and viola! you have a delightful comedy in the style of the old masters.
Serve in a Nick and Nora glass. Cheers!
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
