Film Reviews by Steve

 This is one of Woody Allen's many attempts at magic realism, and a comic revision of his 1988 drama, Another Woman. A rich, materialistic wife and mother (Mia Farrow) enters middle age and begins to review her childhood, her past choices, and her present circumstances. Including her marriage to a very unfaithful high roller (William Hurt)

And she throws away all her privileges to work for charity in India. She is aided in her self discovery by the herbs of a wise Chinese doctor which allow her special gifts so she might mend her heart. She is able to become invisible, and fly high over Manhattan to meet the ghost of a former love...

Unfortunately, either Mia doesn't have the energy and charisma to carry the film, or Woody needed to write a more substantial lead character.  And this vacuum in the heart of the film exposes other flaws, like repetition from the director's earlier work. And a feeling that the poor of Kolkata are being exploited to illustrate the first world problems of a rich New Yorker.

Still, it's a cute idea and there are a few good laughs. And the film successfully sends up the vacuous privilege of  its assembly of super-rich trophy wives and their frivolous diversions. Though by the fade out I wondered if it might have been improved with Judy Davis in the lead rather than her eye-catching cameo as Mia's new squeeze's ex wife.

 Slight but clever experiment from Woody Allen and his technical crew- particular credit is due to cinematographer Gordon Willis- about a man who seeks to conform so completely that he actually takes on the physical characteristics of whoever is close him. It's a comedy which makes observations on celebrity and the dangers of wholesale public compliance

Leonard Zelig (Allen) becomes briefly famous as the chameleon man, a novelty of the roaring twenties. Mia Farrow is the psychiatrist who seeks to restore his individuality. Eventually the story takes a darker turn when his desire for anonymity among the acquiescent masses attracts him to Nazi Germany in the '30s.

 It feels like an extended sketch. There is a dusting of successful gags, but this is more philosophical than hilarious.. It really scores with the visual effects. Woody and Mia are inserted into old photographs and newsreel of famous figures like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Randolph Hurst. New scenes of psychoanalysis are aged to blend into the historical b&w footage.

The scene where Zelig spots his analyst in the crowd at Munich while on the stage with Adolf Hitler, is stunning. No digital technology back then. As a bonus there are a handful of songs about Zelig recorded in the swing style of the jazz age, composed by Dick Hyman. My favourite: Doin' the Chameleon. 

This has attracted considerable critical and popular acclaim and Woody Allen's script was nominated for an Oscar. It is a nostalgic reflection on New York in the late '30s, extending into the early '40s as the US joins WWII. Hard to imagine this isn't Woody's personal response to Federico Fellini's Amarcord.

It portrays an extended family, which Allen has described as a cartoonish version of his own. There's a creditable performance by Seth Green as the latest red haired child actor to play the director as a boy. It reflects on their relationship with the golden age of radio, its stars and the popular songs of the period.

There is a gentle magic. It provokes a smile rather than a laugh, and the reminiscences are familiar (though exaggerated) because they are based on well known radio events, like the panic caused by Orson Welles' famous broadcast of the War of the Worlds, or the coverage of the midwestern child trapped down a well.

The recreation of '30s Brooklyn is convincing, the music is wonderful and it's good to see Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts back in cameos. The dynamic of the family, and the love within it, is palpable. Woody evokes the persistent ache of the passing years, and the living memories of an era about to be consumed by the tide of time.

 This was released at the time of Woody Allen's separation from Mia Farrow and its raw, documentary style made it feel that some of the blows were landing close to home. It mimics fly on the wall reality tv with hand held cameras and jump cuts. The actors are interviewed in character about their emotional responses to the events.

A middle aged/middle class couple (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) visit Woody and Mia to inform them they are divorcing. This sets wheels in motion for the other marriage. By the fade out, all of them have been burned by the consequences of their inability to manage their ever evolving needs.

 It's relentless and brutal stuff and a lot of pain is condensed into its slender narrative. Woody writes about how hard it is to be married, how the manipulations that help make it work are the very things that will destroy it. There is little humour. A character says to Woody about his past work: 'All this suffering, you make it so funny'). But there's not much of that here.

Davis is magnificent as a sexy, middle aged ballbreaker. Juliette Lewis is interestingly ambiguous as Allen's young, high maintenance writing class student. At the end, Woody addresses the camera: 'Can I go now? Is this over?' As if the whole experience is too intense and destructive to endure. It's not typical, but it's one of Allen's greatest films. 

This slender horror film pastiche (loosely based on Woody Allen's own one act play called Death) disappeared without much trace, released between a pair major Allen classic dramas in Crimes and Misdemeanours and Husbands and Wives. Its main attraction is the photography and set design.

It sets a Kafka-esque nightmare inside the look of German Expressionism, which is a good fit. It looks great in inky, clinging black and white with the deep shadows swallowing up and releasing the characters. All this atmosphere is deepened by the music of Kurt Weill, performed in a variety of styles.

It feels like an extended sketch, with all the superficiality of character that implies. Woody is woken up in the night time (in an unspecified location in about the 1920s) and coerced to join a vigilante group seeking out a serial killer. And becomes suspected himself for vague, frivolous reasons.

There is an amazing cast of well known actors playing supporting roles and cameos, including genre great Donald Pleasence. And it's a blast to see Woody back in his old, neurotic stand up persona. It's a curiosity which is fun over its brief running time but it's not one that lingers long in the memory.

Following critical acclaim for Manhattan, Woody Allen experienced a backlash with his next release. The director was accused of narcissism and arrogance and patronising his audience. He responded that his character (an actor/writer/director) wasn't modelled on himself. Which feels disingenuous.

This is pure arthouse which employs dreams, visions, fantasies and flashback. Critics pointed out how much it borrows from Federico Fellini's 8 1/2.  But it owes as much to Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. Woody goes to a festival of his films and is exposed to a surreal exaggeration of the celebrity experience of superfans, critics, groupies and rivals.

 The perspective continually jumps from being about a director's personal crisis, to the surreal films the character makes, in a really satisfying, and clever way. It's an experimental film although perhaps not as much as when Fellini first made it. It's too abstract to be a crowd pleaser. But it's more entertaining than most head-movies

It reflects on the value of being a maker of comedies within a variety of contexts. It's not as funny as the early spoofs, or as good a drama as Manhattan. But there are still some extraordinary moments: like the aliens who travel across space to tell Allen they prefer his early funny films; and a heartbreaking meeting with Charlotte Rampling in a psychiatric hospital. 

In terms of subverting expectation and critical orthodoxy this was Woody Allen's equivalent of Dylan goes electric. Anyone who wandered into a cinema to see this because they enjoyed Bananas, would be astonished, and probably felt let down. He wasn't even in it! But there was no going back.

This is an approximation of classic European theatre. It's more inspired by Henrik Ibsen than the Marx Brothers. Three sisters (ok, or Chekhov) are damaged by their oppressive, domineering mother. When their father remarries, each experiences the disturbance of past traumas. The pace is slowed right down to allow the actors time and space to capture their emotional frigidity.

The exhumation of the internal conflicts of upper middle class creatives or intellectuals became so woven into Allen's films that it eventually stereotyped him. That starts here.  As does his reputation as a great writer of dramatic roles for women. Maureen Stapleton won a deserved Oscar as the second wife.

And it would eventually become Woody's standard to write for an ensemble of actors. It's easy to accept that some were not ready for this, having already experienced the metamorphosis that was Annie Hall. But it works. There's a sombre and suffocating approach- without a musical score- but it is compelling, and emotionally authentic.

This is a revision by Woody Allen of Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. It retains the same period setting, the dawn of the twentieth century, but is transferred to rural New York state. There is an impression of a society on the cusp of change; of liberation for women, and a wave of technology which will challenge the popular belief in spiritualism.

This is Allen's only entirely colour release in a run of four otherwise black and white productions. Gordon Willis cheerfully captures the golden sunlight flitting on the landscape of New England. It is a gorgeous, optimistic film nicely scored with classical pieces.  

It mostly reflects on themes related to sexual desire. Three couples meet at a country house, but change partners during a long night of enchantment as they experience the ethereal magic of the woods. The ensemble cast is wonderful. Julie Hagerty stands out as a sexually pragmatic nurse.

Woody also scores as Wall Street banker seeking to invent man powered flight. Great to see Tony Roberts back as his womanising pal.  This is one of the director's most purely uplifting experiences, brimming with wit and accessible philosophy. It really should be better known.

Cute fantasy set in New Jersey in the 1930s. Mia Farrow plays a bullied housewife so starved of love that she dreams, or wills, an explorer (Jeff Daniels) off the cinema screen and into her arms. As he is a celluloid character from a screwball comedy, the clean cut adventurer must learn to live in the real world of the depression.

Then, in a spellbinding echo of Buster Keaton's 1924 classic, Sherlock Jr, Mia ultimately enters  the screen herself, and experiences all the glamour of the Hollywood dream. This is a brilliant technical feat  from cinematographer Gordon Willis, in which characters enter/leave the screen, transforming from black and white to colour. The sets and  period detail are exceptional.

 Beyond the comic and romantic premise, this is a heartbreaking work of illusion in which cinema becomes the drug that palliates the horror of reality. Unfortunately, the misogynistic, violent and impoverished world that Mia inhabits is so appalling that it is difficult to reconcile this barbarity with such a sentimental diversion.

This conflict is mainly due to a most effective performance from Danny Aiello as the abusive husband. Still, the final scene in which his wife has been let down so badly she struggles to lose her heart to the magic one more time, while Fred and Ginger dance on the big screen, is a killer. If you don't shed actual tears, call for an ambulance.

Time has robbed Woody Allen's debut as director of its startling originality; this is what is now called a mockumentary.  It may be his most influential film. It also seeds the Naked Gun/Airplane franchises, and many others. And time has not filched its capacity to provoke laughter.

This is a phenomenal gag-fest with its distillation of Woody's stage act, an enjoyable send up of crime melodrama infused with inspired silliness, and some excellent visual slapstick. It relates the misfortunes of a useless career criminal- played by Woody- which pastiches prison/chain gang films, and Naked City style film noir. 

Woody's schtick in his early films, of the neurotic, bewildered misfit, was played out over a wide range of intellects. Often there was a creative mind, or an intellectual, but sometimes, as with this one, a complete idiot. An endearing, well meaning schmuck who barely functions in the world.

He hasn't yet merged Buster Keaton into Bob Hope as he would over the next few films.  There's a joke along every minute, and few of them miss. The bank robbery when Virgil hands over a note to the cashier announcing he has a gub and to abt natural is surely one of the most retold sketches among film fans ever.

All of Woody Allen's early comedies draw on the cinema for inspiration. This narrative is very close to the silent Harold Lloyd vehicle Why Worry; a US hypochondriac milquetoast travels to South America and becomes comically entangled in a revolution. And the visual style borrows from the hip underground docudrama, The Battle of Algiers (1966). 

This is less consistently funny than Woody's previous release, Take the Money and Run, but is more typical of his emerging motifs: some of the film is set in New York; Woody's role is foolish (and cowardly), but academic, having completed two days of college which enable him to make absurd observations on philosophy; he has a psychoanalyst and is troubled by his Jewish upbringing.

And his (now ex) wife, Louis Lasser, co-stars, as his partner often would. The gags are erratic, but when they come off, they are hilarious. Such as when Woody visits a deli to order lunch for the revolutionary army. Or when he seeks to inconspicuously buy a porno-mag. Though there are some misfires, as when he visits his parents in an operating theatre.

Woody's persona is an inspired comic construct that transfers brilliantly from stand up to screen. Sure there's some Bob Hope in there, but he's also very contemporary. The anarchic craziness made this a big hit with younger audiences, including many future film makers, and it would be hugely influential in '70s American comedy.

Uninvolving cold war thriller with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews as a pair of nuclear scientists/lovers feigning to defect in order to gather some scientific MacGuffin. At their back Alfred Hitchcock assembles a supporting team of West Germans and expat Russians, but is unable squeeze much trademark humour from these unfamiliar character actors.

The classic production crew Hitch assembled in the late '50s had drifted away, and the problems with dated effects are harder to overlook. He went on to make some excellent films, but this feels out of touch. It isn't just a misfire in comparison with peak Hitchcock. There were many better spy thrillers being made in the mid '60s by others.

The scene usually used to promote Torn Curtain is the death of a Stasi assassin in a gas oven. Was that supposed to make us think of the holocaust and the possibility that some of these German heavies are former Nazis? It's one of the few times the worn out narrative- by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse- actually stimulates. 

 There is an uncomfortable element of blunt US propaganda, and the plot diversion towards the end with Lila Kedrova is unfathomable. There are maybe three good scenes, but far too many bad ones. The most startling moment is seeing two Hitchcock stars in bed together, and not even married! Hollywood censorship sure was changing fast.

This is the film Woody Allen released after Sleeper, so arguably it is a slight backward step, being episodic and a little erratic. But it's still funny and entertaining, and benefits from superior photography and music borrowed from Sergei Prokofiev. This is the last of Woody's early funny ones.

It is a satire inspired by the giants of Russian literature, particularly Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, but visually this is very much a comic tribute to Ingmar Bergman (which Allen makes explicit at the end when he melts a face and a profile into one image in homage to Persona.

Woody style is to parody intellectualism and then puncture its pretentiousness with a low joke. There are long discussions about philosophy and the absurdity of Being in an indifferent cosmos: 'All men go eventually, but I go six o'clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at five o'clock but I have a smart lawyer.

Woody and Diane Keaton suffer famine and existential trauma, fight a duel and plot to assassinate Napoleon. It's a series of sketches which deliver a blizzard of gags, and some hit and some don't, but the stars make it fun. Woody's schtick in his early films often drew on Bob Hope. Never more than this one.

The best of Woody Allen's early comedies. The character of the neurotic New York/Jewish intellectual  is established. He looks to Bob Hope for mannerisms and bursts of poetic gallantry. And the physical humour is inspired by Buster Keaton. Woody imitating a robot butler about to get his head replaced is all time great silent slapstick.

It is a science fiction comedy. Woody wakes up 200 years after a botched operation on his ulcer, still wearing his trademark glasses. This allows for comical comparisons between the now vanished Greenwich Village and the mock-Californian culture of the brave new world which has replaced it.

Like Bananas, it's about an underground uprising which plots to replace a totalitarian dictator (Diane Keaton even sings the rebel song from Bananas). Woody scored the film and recorded the ragtime soundtrack which is used to great effect during the speeded up slapstick scenes.

This is a giant leap forward for Woody. It isn't inconsistent; it all works. There is nothing of questionable taste. Best of all, this is the first film he directs with Diane Keaton. She's a comedy great and even introduces a glimmer of genuine romance. When she is on, everything is more fun.

Woody Allen took the title and some of the chapter headings from a contemporary non fiction book addressing sexual anxiety and constructed a collection of comic sketches on the theme of erotic diversity.  Time has taken the edge off how outrageous they once seemed, but that's partly because this was so influential.

It's Woody at his most farcical. There's little verbal wit. They are pastiches which operate on the edge of good taste; what we now call gross-out comedy. Like Gene Wilder's affair with a sheep. The characters explore their ludicrous fetishes and the actors play it very straight and the comedy is the contrast between the two.

My favourite episode is the one where where Woody and Louise Lasser engage in public sex, in a very close pastiche of the arthouse films of Michelangelo Antonioni. More typical is the Universal horror send up with the locals smothered to death by an enormous rampant breast.

 It works because the cast gets the surreal tone of the comedy just right. Lynn Redgrave stands out as a medieval queen stuck in her chastity belt- having been given an aphrodisiac. It was a genre that arrived more fully with the National Lampoon franchise (such as Animal House) and The Kentucky Fried Movie in the late '70s.