CAFE SOCIETY (2016)

STARS: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively
DIRECTOR: Woody Allen
GENRE: Drama

When we buy a ticket to a Woody Allen film we know that he will be dispensing his philosophy on life, love, sex and mortality through his characters. As I've mentioned in previous reviews, we can often close our eyes when a character is speaking and see him standing right there--the voice of the master coming through loud and clear. (Allen narrates the story as we go along as well.) 

It's an acquired taste. But for true aficionados, Cafe Society will provide some very pleasant rewards--offering up a sumptuous feast of fine acting performances, gorgeous milieu, and a nostalgic soundtrack of classics from the 1930s.

Young New Yorker Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg) heads to Hollywood seeking gainful employment, hitting on his big shot talent agent uncle Phil (Steve Carell), who eventually takes him under his wing. Phil's assistant, Vonnie, (Kristen Stewart) gives Bobby the nickel tour of the Hollywood scene, and before you know it he's smitten by her. After some initial coyness, she takes a shine to him as well. But Vonnie has divided loyalties, and I won't spoil what that is all about for you. 

The scene will shift to New York, where Bobby's gangster brother, Ben, runs a posh nightclub. Bobby hires on there, and matures into a suave and debonair thirties kinda guy. He marries the alluring Veronica (Blake Lively), and all seems well until his past shows up one day at the club, and divided loyalties once again becomes the watchword of Cafe Society.

Jessie Eisenberg is the Peter Pan of Hollywood. Now 33 years old, he continues to play characters in their early twenties and gets away with it.  He is totally believable here as the callow kid who heads out west, and again as the smooth talking nightclub denizen--looking more like his chronological years. (I wonder if they had to "age" him cosmetically to make him look like what he really is. Bizarre.) 

Kristen Stewart imbues her character with a sweetness and a vulnerability I haven't seen from her before ( recalling her sizzling turn in On The Road from 2012.)  

And it's Steve Carell in another understated role, proving himself an actor with depth, as I'm sure he must still feel the urge sometimes to break out into the comic persona that established his greatness for a long while, but he seems more fond of the straight face nowadays.

Cafe Society drew me into its world of elegance and style, and a pre-war kind of innocence that, if you're like me, you may never want to leave. 

GRADE:  B +

JILL'S TAKE

Phooey! Tim made all the points I was going to make. I absolutely loved this film and I'm not necessarily a Woody Allen fan. (Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Deconstructing Harry, to name a few of my thumbs downers.) But this film was romantic to the max with what I like to call 'Jewish realism.' Yes, the actors were brilliant. And yes, the sets and the costumes--especially the jazz singer wearing a huge peacock-feathered beret were spot on! But in my view the best character of all was -- the score.

Allen chose wisely, using sentimental tunes like "Tea For Two" while showing a freshly murdered corpse being dumped into a cement-mixing grave. If ever there was a film where the music manipulated the audience's emotions, Café Society takes the cake. Of course, as an excellent clarinet player himself, Allen's musical knowledge knows no bounds.

Although this has nothing to do with the movie, I want to make a point. When I told a friend I was looking forward to seeing Woody Allen's latest, he bristled. "Not me, I refuse to see any of that creep's movies, considering how he's conducted his personal life!" I said nothing. But I think it's worth mentioning. For me, talent trumps dysfunction. I know other movie-goers who won't see a movie if the actor's political views don't jibe with their own. How sad. They often don't know what they're missing.

Anyhoo, back to Café Society. I'd like to give it an "A" grade but, to be honest, I'd probably give any well-written dramedy an "A" right now due to the dearth of any decent summer films....

GRADE: B+ 
(sorry to be such a copycat, Tim)

MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT (2014)

Rated: PG-13

Stars: Colin Firth, Emma Stone, Marcia Gay Harden, Simon McBurney, Eileen Atkins

Director: Woody Allen

Genre: Romantic Comedy


In Woody Allen's Magic In The Moonlight, the age-old debate between rationalism and mysticism takes center stage (though I've oft observed that many who wish to poo-pooh mysticism aren't extremely rational in their approach, and some who take up the new-age banner don't strike me as being spiritual in truly significant ways.)

The year is 1928, and Colin Firth is Stanley Crawford, who performs in the persona of a Chinese magician, wowing audiences with his fantastic illusions. Fellow magician Howard (Simon McBurney) informs Stanley of his encounters with a young medium named Sophie (Emma Stone), who has been creating quite a stir with her seances, ostensibly communicating with the dead.  Stanley's favorite pastime is to debunk spiritualism, because to him, it's all illusory--just like his magic tricks. So he's off to the French Riviera to find the girl and expose her as a fraud. The stage is now set for some typical romantic comedy fare, where opposites attract.  
  
As in any Woody Allen effort, Magic in The Moonlight is transparent with the hand of the master pulling the strings behind his characters, and waxing philosophical about the human condition. That is the heart and soul of any Allen film, and this one won't disappoint his fans on that score. 

And though the film plods along for about the first half, you find yourself increasingly drawn to these characters--especially Firth's pompous and curmudgeonly Stanley, who is ripe to be taken in, not only by Sophie's persuasive powers of making you see what you want to see, but by her charms as well. The hunter gets captured by the game!   

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

Because Tim and I are in different states during the summer months (Me, California; Tim, Arizona), it is often difficult to coordinate seeing the same film at the same time. I saw Magic In The Moonlight two weeks ago so my observations may be dulled by time—and having seen another really great film since. I hate to let my personal biases get in the way of enjoying any movie. But Woody Allen's "alleged" behaviors do make it difficult. And it sort of creeps me out that, in his septuagenarian years, Allen insists on creating romances between much older gents and barley legal nymphets.

Sweeping all this aside, I have to admit I really enjoyed this latest romantic romp. And I'd give the lion's share of credit to Colin Firth's performance. He has the ability to make audiences love him in spite of his foppish pig-headedness. The object of his ridicule -- and later infatuation -- is ably played by Emma Stone (a Scottsdale native, by the way!) Too bad Marcia Gay Hardin, as her ambitious, social-climbing mother, wasn't given more screen time. Magic is definitely a feel-good movie and, had I reviewed it before seeing The 100-Foot Journey, I would have given it a higher rating. But you can't award every film an A. So I'll follow my co-writer's lead.

GRADE: B

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS--2011

Rated: PG-13

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates

Written and directed by Woody Allen

Genre: Romantic comedy

It's all about finding one's place.

Gil, (Owen Wilson) a Hollywood "hack" screenwriter who aspires to be a novelist, has come to Paris with his fiancee and her parents. The parents are on a business trip. His material girl, Inez, (Rachel McAdams) is all about shopping. Gil--an incurable romantic--has a fantasy about living in the City of Light during the golden age of the twenties, where he could rub elbows with the legendary artists and writers of the Lost Generation. He talks about chucking Hollywood and moving to Paris. Neither Inez--who thinks he's gone off the deep end-- nor her stuffy parents, understand him.

Gil ends up walking the streets alone at night, and at the stroke of midnight, a vintage Peugeot pulls up and he is ushered into the vehicle to join a group of revelers inside. In short order it becomes apparent that he has entered a time warp, as he in turn meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and a host of other literary and artistic figures. He even gets the opportunity to have his novel-in-progress critiqued by Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Then there is Adriana, (Marion Cotillard) an alluring flapper who may be stealing his heart.

Midnight In Paris is peppered with Woody Allen's trademark philosophical musings about life and death, as it meanders through the winding streets of the city and of time--arriving at a small, yet comforting epiphany (if you've spent most of your life wondering why life isn't very satisfying) about why it's imperative for us to BE HERE NOW.

A charmingly quirky movie, Midnight In Paris is much like the Parisians themselves. They won't wear white tennis sneakers on the city streets, as if that were some kind of major fashion gaffe, but then, they don't mind if you bring your dog into the cafe and let him sit at the table with you while you dine.

Sometimes finding one's place is as much about finding one's place in time as it is anything else. Midnight In Paris is time well spent with a bunch of fascinating characters who spring to life from the pages of history.

Grade: B +

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER--2010

Rated: R

Stars: Gemma Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Lucy Punch, Freida Pinto

Director: Woody Allen

Genre: Drama/comedy

There are no single, lonely people at the beginning of Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger-- just married and lonely people--ready and ripe to fall under someone else's spell and rekindle the fire of romance that all too quickly peters out in the day to day reality of monogamous "bliss."

Helena (Gemma Jones) is a ditzy old gal who has been divorced by Alfie, (Anthony Hopkins) and now she's seeing a "fortune teller" who tells her just what she wants to hear. Alfie falls for a young opportunistic prostitute named Charmaine, (Lucy Punch) who likes the finer things in life that he can provide her--as long as his money holds out! Alfie and Helena's daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) is married to once promising--but now frustrated--writer Roy, (Josh Brolin) who has an eye for the exotic young guitar player in the window across the way, Dia (Freida Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire). Sally, who works at a high-profile art gallery, develops a thing for her boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas).

But are they all delusional?

In You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen is exploring the idea of faith, or more accurately, the tendency that many of us have to want to believe in something--often another person--to the point where we are willing to believe only what we want to believe, and don't confuse us with the facts.

Woody's endearing (at least to me) brand of cynicism tinged with irony is all over this one--his fourth in a row set in London--but the sense that he is literally speaking through his characters, so apparent in some previous films, (I could close my eyes and hear his voice, even through his female characters, which was freaky) isn't present here--perhaps refreshingly so.

Quite an impressive cast he's assembled--and Gemma Jones is a hoot as Helena, who goes on ad nauseam about reincarnation as if she'd never heard of the concept before... happy as a clam because her psychic has told her she has lived before and will live again. (Not everyone--the Buddhists for example--are pleased about that wheel turning round and round and going back, Jack, and doing it again!)

But it's Lucy Punch as Charmaine--the happy hooker supposedly gone straight who is now Alfie's wife-- still playing him for all he's worth while maintaining an air of bewildered innocence, even when he catches her in the act with some young buck, who upstages them all.

Anthony Hopkins, who I never thought was very scary as Hannibal Lecter, is more believably cast as a guy who's extending his mid-life crisis--and all the delusional flamboyance that goes along with that-- into his golden years.

And there's a delicious twist at the end of You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger that reinforces Woody Allen's philosophical bent that oft-times you can't win for losing.

GRADE: B

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA (now playing at home where you can lounge in your funky ripped underwear)

Vicky and Cristina are two sexy young Americans, on the loose in Barcelona for the summer in this Woody Allen offering that explores the "ins and outs" of seduction. Cristina (the lovely Scarlett Johansson) is a free and easy bohemian type, while Vicky (the equally lovely Rebecca Hall) exudes rationality, practicality, and common sense. At least at the beginning.

There are many ways to be seduced, not the least of which is the sound of Spanish guitars in the romantic milieu of Barcelona. Enter the ultra-persuasive Juan Antonio, (Javier Bardem) a smoldering artistic type who, upon meeting the two girls, unabashedly proposes that they join him for a threesome with the line: "Life is short, life is dull, life is full of pain." (Geez, I wish I'd thought of that when I was dating Barbara Jo Wilkerson!)

What ensues is an unpredictable love triangle. The heat is turned up further when Juan Antonio's spooky ex-wife, played convincingly by Penelope Cruz, re-enters the picture and turns the triangle into a quadrangle, with amusing complications.

Allen's dialogue is so distinctively "Woody" that one cannot totally avoid picturing the writer/director mouthing those words instead of his characters, which can really screw with your head when it's one of the beautiful women speaking!

One of the marks of a good movie is that you don't want it to end. I was thoroughly seduced by Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and I bet you will be too.

Cigarette?

Grade: B+


TIMMY'S TIDBITS: Scarlett Johansson had been cast in the 2005 film Thumbsucker --but dropped out before filming started. (Unfortunate...there would have been something quite sexy about watching Scarlett sucking her thumb!)

A Scarlett quote: "I don't think human beings are monogamous by nature."

Penelope Cruz dated Tom Cruise for about three years. (Had they married, she wouldn't have had to change her name.)

Penelope likes to have stray cats around. After filming All The Pretty Horses in 2000, she became a vegetarian.

A Penelope quote: "Sometimes I think I'm an Italian trapped in a Spanish woman's body."