Review: "Irrational Man"

I’ve liked a lot of Woody Allen’s stuff over the past decade, as he got out of his comfort zone and did crime dramas, period costume trifles, romantic European adventures -- anything besides self-involved New Yorkers spinning in their own delusions and neuroses. For a guy nearly age 80, I think the last 10 years been his most fertile period since the 1980s.

(Most people consider the ’70s his heyday, but really aside from “Manhattan” and “Annie Hall” his flicks of that era are rather overrated.)

“Irrational Man” is the dry, tasteless chaser at the end of a long and exquisite banquet. This morality-play-cum-murder-mystery is flat and stale, playing out like fourth-string Dostoevsky warmed over with postmodern irony and angst.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe Lucas, a rock star philosophy professor – such persons exist only in the movies – who’s come to a tiny provincial liberal arts college in Rhode Island to teach for the summer. His reputation precedes itself: he’s a boozer, womanizer, moody rebel and suicidal free-thinker. Half the campus is gabbing about him even before Abe anticlimactically pulls up in an aging Volvo, his untucked shirt swaddling a protruding beer gut.

It’s an insular community where everybody knows everyone else’s business. Rita (Parker Posey), a fellow professor whose mid-life crisis seems to ooze from her very pores, has soon wrangled Abe into her bed. But his deepest relationship is with one of his students, a smart and discerning lass named Jill (Emma) whose parents are both music professors at the college.

They strike up a friendship that soon becomes more, at least to Jill, though Abe goes to great lengths to deny it. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, Roy (Jamie Blackley), practically vibrates with jealousy toward his older rival, though he labors to make a joke of it.

Abe is searching for a reason to go on living, and he thinks he’s found it by stumbling upon the idea of ending another person’s life. He and Jill overhear the tale of a corrupt judge ruining an innocent woman’s life. Abe becomes obsessed with the idea of pulling off a Hitchcockian murder. The fact that he has no attachment to the victim and no motive for killing him will ensure the perfect crime.

It doesn’t, of course, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. Things go on, with Abe moralizing his act to himself while Jill plays Nancy Drew, slowly circling a corkscrew of clues that inevitably leads back to the man she (thinks she) loves.

Allen’s storytelling method is to have Abe and Jill pass the narration back and forth between them, so we perfectly understand their thought process and interior monologue. The problem with this approach is that neither character ends up holding any mystery. How much better to make it a game about the impressionable student trying to suss out if the professor she’s sleeping with could be a murderer, or the morally compromised teacher worrying about being bested by his pupil.

In the end “Irrational” is more an exercise than a movie, a bunch of smart, educated people engaged in a grand game of deception – of each other, their moral posturing and, mostly, of themselves.

Video review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

Woody Allen, who started out as a TV punchline writer while still a teenager, has moved restlessly between comedy and more somber fare all his career as a film director. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his dour stuff, such as “Hannah and Her Sisters” and “Match Point.”

But his newest, “Magic in the Moonlight,” is one of his most light-hearted and purely entertaining movies in years.

Set in the upper-crust world of the 1920s, it’s the story of a magician named Stanley who’s also a man of science. Played unctuously and splendidly by Colin Firth, Stanley makes a hobby of exposing charlatans who pretend to have psychic abilities. His latest target, a young would-be seeress named Sophie (Emma Stone), proves to be his greatest challenge – and an unlikely love interest.

Though Sophie’s manner while doing her act is amateurish and transparent, her divinations have the disturbing habit of being unerringly accurate. Soon Stanley, who places more trust in Nietzsche than religion, is wondering if his life of agnosticism about the great beyond has been a tragic mistake.

It’s a great-looking movie, filled with sun-dappled gardens and shorelines, terrific period costumes and lots of pretty people to look at.

Filled with wry humor, delightfully clumsy encounters and a whole lot of extravagant mannerisms, “Magic in the Moonlight” is best described in one word not lately applicable to Woody’s work: fun.

Alas, as is often the case with the Woodster’s video releases, there is only the bare minimum of bonus features. And they are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray versions: A making-of featurette, “Behind the Magic,” and publicity footage from the film’s red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.

Movie:

Extras:

Reeling Backward: "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)

"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is perhaps Woody Allen's most ambitious film, and not his most successful. Though it was a substantial critical and popular hit, I found it rather dreary and ineffectual. It's a self-conscious exploration of morality, of whether belief in God or in humanist choices are incompatible, and whether dark crimes -- big and small -- can weigh down our souls like anchors in the ocean.

It's the sort of movie, in fact, where the two main characters, whose stories have paralleled without ever intersecting, bump into each other in the last scene and blatantly discuss the theme of the picture. It's the classic example of telling rather than showing, and I'm of the school that when you tip your hand too much into the light, the audience is quick to check out emotionally and intellectually.

In many ways "Crimes" reminded me of "A Serious Man," another movie by great filmmakers that I disregarded despite the widespread affection with which it was met. Both also focus on Jewish figures whose faith is called into question, though Allen's picture is more about the general question of faith in a higher power, while "Man" is essentially a rumination on Jewish theological imperatives.

Martin Landau received a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Academy Awards, which is ridiculous for what is so clearly a leading role. He plays Judah Rosenthal, a very successful ophthalmologist who has reached the "great man" point of his career, where he collects awards and salutations in his final years before retirement. He has a loving wife (Claire Bloom) and daughter, a fabulous Long Island mansion, status and respect, and is by all measures a good person who does charitable work.

But he has a secret. For the past two years he's been carrying on an affair with a younger woman, a flight attendant named Dolores (Anjelica Huston). He recently broke it off and she's become unstable, threatening to confront his wife and making all sorts of demands upon him. Dolores appears ready to blow up his life if she can't have him, destroying his marriage and even having him arrested as an embezzler, since he confided in her about some financial improprieties involving the foundation he heads up.

On the flip side is Cliff Stern (Allen), a wannabe documentary filmmaker whose entire existence seems to be built around hollow aspirations for the sort of success Judah takes for granted. His marriage to Wendy (Joanna Gleason) is an empty husk, drained of all passion and joy -- they're just marking time until the inevitable. He spends most of his days watching old movies or trolling book stores, often in the company of the niece he dotes upon.

Cliff is given a huge opportunity to direct a PBS profile of Wendy's brother Lester, a famous television comedy producer and writer. Cliff can't stand his preening, self-adoring brother-in-law, played with full-bore snark and smirk by Alan Alda. (Lester has the habit of interrupting conversations so he can whip out a tape recorder to document his awful, but commercially viable, ideas for shows.)

But Cliff falls hard for Halley (Mia Farrow), a producer on the show. Lester also has an eye for the careful, cautious woman, who's just come out of a nasty divorce. So at first it's unclear if Cliff is wooing her just to spite Lester. But they find a genuine attraction between them while collaborating on Cliff's true labor of love, a documentary about little-known but brilliant philosopher.

The two characters share a lot of the same New York City bandwidth without ever actually tripping over each other, at least until the movie's end. Judah treats Lester's brother Ben (Sam Waterson), a rabbi who is going blind but seems to retains his full vision about the human condition and its perils. The two men are eventually brought together by a wedding that Lester is paying for, as Cliff and Wendy make their final appearance together before announcing their divorce.

It's pretty clear that Allen was using Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" as the basis for a modern riff on the themes of guilt and morality. Judah uses his scuzzy brother (Jerry Orbach) to have Dolores murdered, and then he spends of the rest of the picture anguishing over his terrible actions. He even visits her apartment after the deed is done, ostensibly to collect incriminating photos and journal entries but mostly, we suspect, to gaze upon her dead body and punish himself.

A doubter who grew up in a deeply religious family, Judah begins to feel the weight God's gaze upon him, and wonders if he'll ever be able to see the light again. When a police detective drops by to ask routine questions, he almost confesses his sins upon the spot.

Cliff, on the other hand, is guilty of much less serious acts of immorality -- desired, if not commissioned, infidelity -- and does not feel any remorse over how much he disdains his wife. It's a fairly typical Woody Allen character, full of neurotic bombast and nebbishy charm, and we feel greatly for the little fella when his worst fears are realized and Halley returns from a long assignment in Europe affianced to Lester.

Though it's more or less a straight drama, Allen can't resist throwing in bits of his trademark humor, such as Cliff's edit of the profile about Lester including cutaway shots to Mussolini. Or lamenting about his nonexistent sex life: "The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty."

I adored Martin Landau's performance in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," but on the whole I found the juxtaposition with Allen's own character incongruous and unsatisfying. Allen tries to split the difference between two interesting characters, and loses his way.

Supposedly the filmmaker threw out most of the first act while editing the movie, and called back his cast for reshoots. I think the best movie he could've made would have been to write himself out of the picture.

Review: "Magic in the Moonlight"

One of Woody Allen’s most briskly entertaining movies in years, “Magic in the Moonlight” is about love, mysticism and con jobs.

Set in 1928, it boasts gorgeous locations in the south of France, incredible vintage cars and costumes, and lots of beautiful rich people to stare it. In many ways, this looks and feels like Woody’s riff on the Jay Gatsby era (and the movies made about it).

Colin Firth supplies a delicious performance as Stanley, a famous magician and man of science. The marriage of those vocations may sound like a contradiction, but the erudite and very snobby Stanley would correct you -- and probably quote Nietzsche while doing it.

Because he approaches the craft of illusion with methodical precision, Stanley fashions himself a genius in ferreting out the difference between truth and charlatanism. Indeed, he has a healthy side venture debunking purported mystics and seers. A professional faker who has made his fortune at it, he looks down his nose at others for using similar talents to fool the gullible rich.

Alas, Stanley’s cold rationality has translated into a bleak pessimism about all forms of spirituality, and indeed most human endeavor: “It’s all phony, from the sales counter to the Vatican and beyond,” he sniffs.

Peevish, arrogant and yet slyly magnetic, Firth gives Stanley a sort of petulant charm.

But then he’s recruited by a fellow magician pal, Howard (Simon McBurney), to debunk a young American woman who has ensorcelled a fabulously wealthy family.

The matriarch (Jackie Weaver) has agreed to fund a foundation for her and even dangled a marriage with Brice (Hamish Linklater), the handsome, amiable but dim eldest son. Howard himself was brought in to disprove her, and ended up stumped. Stanley is quite sure he’ll have no problem ferreting out her tricks.

Their meeting, however, serves to lend credence to her psychic abilities. Despite the fact that Stanley is known only by his stage personality, a Chinese wizard by the name of Wei Ling Soo, and he adopts a fake name, career and backstory, the woman soon figures out who he is.

The fact that Sophie (a beguiling Emma Stone) is young, ravishing and full of vim catches the crusty, older Stanley off guard.

Sophie represents a beguiling puzzle to him: her occult act and amateurish demeanor would seem straight out of a carny sideshow, complete with a controlling mother (Marcia Gay Harden) who accompanies her and handles the pressing of flesh and conveying of funds. Yet Stanley can’t pierce the veil of her performance, and even begins to wonder if her gifts are authentic.

He’s finally convinced when he takes her to visit his beloved Aunt Vanessa (a spot-on Eileen Atkins), and Sophie is able to summon intimate details about the older woman’s life by clutching her favorite set of pearls. This revelation throws Stanley’s entire life of rationality and divine asceticism into peril.

If there is a great beyond, then why not a God, and love at first sight, and if there is such love, could it be shared between Sophie and Stanley?

Allen seems to be having a great deal of fun here, playing with his characters’ and the audience’s expectations. One soon senses that it’s not just Sophie and Stanley, but the venerable filmmaker himself, who enjoys wielding the tradecraft of deception.

Funny, smart and wry, “Magic in the Moonlight” conjures up a delightful impression.

Review: "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"

I'm enough of a Woody Allen fan to say there's no such thing as a bad Woody Allen movie. The problem with "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is not that it isn't good, but that it feels like we've already seen this movie too many times before.

The narcissistic writer, the ambitious career woman trapped in dead-end marriage, the workplace flirtation that turns into (maybe) something more -- we've encountered these characters many times before in various iterations over Allen's 40-plus years of filmmaking. The only thing that changes is which actors play them.

Allen is a famously prolific writer/director, cranking out about a movie a year. There's bound to be repetition of themes and plots across such a huge body of work, but lately it seems he sticks to a formula with interchangeable parts.

Even the plain, spare black-and-white title sequences and old-timey musical score feel less like the affectations of a stubbornly independent artist than the rut of someone who can't find anything fresh to say.

That's also the plight of Roy (Josh Brolin), an American novelist living in London with his wife Sally (Naomi Watts). Roy gave up a career in medicine to write, and after one modestly successful book he's been unable to come up with anything publishers want.

They depend on financial assistance from Sally's mother Helena (Gemma Jones), who recently was abandoned by her husband of 40 years, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins). He didn't seem to have any real reason for divorcing Helena, other than fear of getting old, and she took it rather badly -- first attempting suicide, and then turning to a fourth-rate psychic for spiritual help.

Sally has recently taken a job working for successful art gallery owner Greg (Antonio Banderas), and it's not long before she's longing for the attention of her sexy boss. Roy, meanwhile, has become enamored with the young Indian girl (Freida Pinto) who moved into the apartment across the way, allowing him to play peeping tom.

Helena takes to popping in at Roy and Sally's any hour of the day, chattering away about her latest revelation from the psychic. She believes she's destined to meet a new love, and that Alfie won't be nearly as happy with his new wife as he was with her.

That psychic may just be stringing Helena along, but proves prescient about Alfie's new relationship. Charmaine (Lucy Punch) is half his age and a prostitute -- that's actually how Alfie meets her. But the old dodderer convinces himself she's got a the proverbial heart of gold, instead of just being a digger of it.

When Allen is really clicking -- say, with "Hannah and Her Sisters" or "Annie Hall" -- these self-deluded creatures seem, for all the ridiculousness of their relationships, at least believable. But here, the characters are mere comedy constructs, built to be laughed at.

Is Alfie such an aging lothario that he'd hand over his life to an obvious tart? Could Roy be any more obvious and piggish in his overtures to his lovely neighbor? Would level-headed Sally really throw herself at a man who makes no pretense of returning her affection?

Only Jones, as the increasingly discombobulated Helena, has any real weight or plausibility to her character. She's wallowing in self-pity and half a loon to boot, but we at least deem her a real person we could pass on the street.

"You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" is cookie-cutter Woody Allen. His fans will savor the familiar taste, while the rest of us wish he'd seek out new recipes.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "Whatever Works"

Here's my take on "Whatever Works": Woody Allen got too old to play Woody Allen, so he hired Larry David to do it for him.

The 73-year-old auteur is getting a mite long in the tooth to do his neurotic New York misanthrope shtick, so other actors have had to take over. Larry David, co-creator of "Seinfeld" and star of his own show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," makes for a decent stand-in.

Actually, David is a double stand-in: Allen wrote the screenplay in the 1970s for the late, great Zero Mostel, who unfortunately left this mortal coil before the movie could be made.

David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a brilliant but unlikeable guy who gave up physics to teach chess to children. Boris is in perpetual holler mode, shouting at his students, people who annoy him -- which is just about everybody -- and at the world in general.

A 21-year-old Southern belle runaway (Evan Rachel Wood) shows up on his doorstep begging for food, and soon she's living with him, and eventually marries him. She's dumb as a doorstop, but her presence keeps Boris' jangled nerves relatively calm.

It's mostly rehashed Woody Allen jokes, occasionally funny and occasionally annoying.

Things really get screwy when first the girl's mother (Patricia Clarkson) and then her father (Ed Begley Jr.) come traipsing along in search of her. Both are Bible-thumping caricatures, and to these Southern ears, both their accents and portrayal are ludicrous, bordering on the offensive.

Seeing how Woody is one of the highest-profile defenders of Roman Polanski in his bid to avoid extradition for raping a 13-year-old girl, it's uncomfortable to ponder how often these romances between crusty old men and impressionable young girls crop up in Allen's movies -- and his own life.

If you're looking for video extras, you won't have to search long: Both the DVD and Blu-ray versions contain only the theatrical trailer.

But I guess if Woody is content to dust off hum-drum 30-year-old scripts, it's obvious he wasn't interested in putting in an extra effort. "Whatever Works" mostly doesn't.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 1 star

Reeling Backward: "Manhattan"

When it comes to Woody Allen movies, I'm with Ned Flanders.

The do-gooder neighbor on "The Simpsons," who's sort of a caricature of middle-America suburbanites, once opined that "I like his films except for that nervous fella that's always in them."

I've seen nearly all of Allen's movies, liked most of them, loved a handful, been indifferent to a few, never outright hated any of them. But when I think about it, I tend to like his movies in which he, Woody Allen, is not the main character -- "Hannah and Her Sisters" is probably my favorite.

The Woody persona of the nerdy, high-strung New York intellectual may bear little relation to Woody the Manhattan filmmaker, but I find that a small dose of it goes a long way in his movies.

So it's strange that 1979's "Manhattan" is also among my favorite Woody Allen movies, since he's in almost every scene, and is at the very center of the story.

He also narrates it, as he did in "Annie Hall," but I really feel that movie was about the Diane Keaton character, with Woody acting as the lens through which we viewed her. In grammatical terms, she was the subject and he was the object. In "Manhattan," Woody is the object, subject and all the adjectives, too.

There's a scene near the end where Isaac Davis, Woody's cinematic alter-ego, muses that people like him are so self-obsessed and tie themselves into all sorts of psychological knots in order to prevent themselves from thinking about the really big, scary stuff: Life, death, God, love. If this constitutes his attempt to justify the narcissism that is a hallmark of his characters, then he fails miserably.

The main plot of the movie is a love triangle -- or rather, a love quadrangle. Isaac falls for the mistress of his best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy), who is married. Mary (Diane Keaton) is a self-doubting writer and feminist who can't believe she's fooling around with a married guy. She turns to Isaac, almost as a way to ween herself off Yale. But eventually she changes her mind, dumps Isaac and runs back to Yale's arms.

The other notable thing about "Manhattan" 30 years later is its resemblance to controversial parts of Woody Allen's real life. In the movie, Isaac (who is 42) is dating a 17-year-old girl, Tracy, played by Mariel Hemingway (nominated for an Oscar). Allen, of course, was involved in a long-term relationship with Mia Farrow that ended when she learned that he had been carrying on a dalliance with one of her adopted daughters, Soon-Yi Previn. He was 56 and she 22 when this came to light, and they eventually married and remain so to this day.

The film ends with Isaac, who had pushed Tracy to forget about him and take up a scholarship to study acting in Europe, arriving just before her taxi leaves to take her to the airport. In a grand gesture, her begs her to stay and take him back. Tracy, who despite her youth is perhaps the most centered and mature character in the film, asks him to wait for her and to trust her. The film ends on that ambiguous note.

There is much to say about a romantic relationship between a 42-year-old man and a girl in high school, the most important of which is that this is a crime. Isaac even lightly jokes about being arrested once or twice during the movie. I cannot for the life of me imagine what sort of parents have so slight a yoke on their teenage daughter's life that allow her to wander New York at all hours of the night, even sleeping over at someone else's apartment, without objection. I hope that such parents exist only in the movies.

Meryl Streep, who was just launching her film career three decades ago, has a small but interesting turn as Isaac's ex-wife, who is now a lesbian and has written a tell-all book about their sordid marriage. It's an underwritten role -- as most of Allen's non-lead female roles tend to be -- but she makes quite an impression.

Perhaps the thing most remembered now about "Manhattan" is the black-and-white cinematography by the great Gordon Willis, which somehow was not nominated for an Oscar that year. The film is an unapologetic love song to the Big Apple, with its loving portraits of majestic skylines and many shots of Central Park. The shot of Mary and Isaac looking at the Brooklyn Bridge as the sun comes up is perhaps the most famous image of Woody Allens long and storied film career. I lived in Manhattan for nearly two years while attending school, and the city never looked as good as it does in this movie.

3.5 stars

Catching up with "Vicky Christina Barcelona"

Woody Allen's latest reminded very much of "Barcelona," Whit Stillman's take on Americans living in Spain from more than a decade back. This is ironic, since Stillman was often compared to Woody Allen when he first broke onto the scene.

You've got the understated narration that discusses life-moving events with the same calm tone as when it describes their meal. "Vicky ordered the clam bisque but found it too salty. Later that night she decided that she no longer loved Mark and never wanted to see him again. In the morning, she picked up her dry cleaning before she headed out to see the architectural columns in Belize."

Penelope Cruz is nominated for an Oscar in Best Supporting Actress for this film, and it's easy to see why. As the unhinged, wildly spontaneous Maria Elena, she roars in the movie somewhere around the halfway point and literally steals the show.

Up until that moment, it had been the story of lifelong friends Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) spending the summer in Barcelona. One night they are propositioned by Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who introduces himself, offers to fly them down to a resort town and have sex with one or both of them, or all at once if possible. The carefree Christina agrees, bringing the engaged and comparatively uptight Vicky along as chaperon. As it happens, Christina falls ill, and while Vicky and Juan Antonio are alone they have a passionate encounter.

Still, it's clear that the flighty Christina and Juan Antonio, a renowned painter, are more temperamentally suited to one another, and soon they're living together. Around this time Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's ex-wife, turns up after a suicide attempt and moves in with them. Vicky essentially disappears around this time, as the movie becomes the triangle of Juan Antonio, Christina and Maria Elena.

It's an interesting dynamic, with the two exes constantly at each other's throats, when they're not rekindling their love. It seems they always had something missing in their tempestuous relationship, and having Christina around somehow calms their storms. But Christina is the ultimate fair-weather navigator -- as soon as she finds something stable and rewarding, whether it's a relationship or deciding between being a filmmaker or photographer, she soon grows bored with it.

As is typical of the lesser Woody Allen films, I had a hard time buying the authenticity of the main characters. Vicky, for example, after disappearing from the movie for an entire reel or so, suddenly decides she's in love with Juan Antonio and begins maneuvering to claim him. Vicky and Christina never seem like more than literary constructs, designed to act in a particular way so as to carry out the functions of the plot.

Cruz truly is vibrant in the film, which makes me able to recommend it on a marginal basis. "Vicky Christina Barcelona" is a typical Woody Allen movie with a cross-Atlantic flavor.

2.5 stars out of four