Wonder Wheel: Wheel of Misfortune

By Pamela Zoslov

The number of films written and directed by Woody Allen is impressive — 48 since 1969, an average of one every year. That prolificity, writes Peter Biskind in the New York Times Book Review, often works against him. “The time when Allen’s every new release was a cause for celebration is long over; now we take him for granted,” Biskind writes, “and the thematic consistencies that are applauded in other auteurs are derided in Allen.” Biskind argues convincingly that Allen is “simply one of the great world-class directors, up there with his hero, Ingmar Bergman, and the rest.”

Kate Winslet as the troubled Ginny.

The volume of Allen’s output also means that some of the films will be less than great, like his latest, Wonder Wheel. But even the least successful of the films will have something thematically and stylistically memorable. Wonder Wheel, a nostalgia piece set on Coney Island at a time described broadly as “the 1950s,” the vintage theme-park setting is the star. Allen has always had good taste in cinematographers: Vittorio Storarro renders the tacky loveliness of the amusement park roller coasters, Ferris wheel, diners and signs in gloriously artificial carbro-print type colors. The story, a rather thin melodrama, doesn’t make as much use of its setting as it might, but what a wonderful setting it is!

Cafe Society

Review by Pamela Zoslov

The narrator's voice is familiar, if a bit thin, because the man, Woody Allen, is now 80. CAFE SOCIETY is his forty-seventh feature film, and as usual with this director, it recapitulates settings and themes of his earlier works. But as with the aging voice of the narrator, echoes of more vigorous days are faint.

The setting for the film is Hollywood of the 1930s, which gave production designer Santo Loquasto an opportunity to re-create glamorous movie-star mansions, clubs and restaurants, and famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro a chance to set it all aglow in golden, nostalgic light. A soundtrack of '30s standards (Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Richard Rodgers, Johnny Mercer) identifies this as a Woody Allen film as reliably as the Windsor Light Condensed title font.

Repost: Irrational Man (opening in Akron October 23rd at The Nightlight Cinema)

Review by Pamela Zoslov

In 2008, Woody Allen said that he isn't an intellectual. “I'm basically a low-culture person,” he said to a group of film critics, including me. "I'm not saying I'm an insensitive Neanderthal. But basically, I'm the guy who's watching the playoffs and drinking a Beck's. I'm not at the opera. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of people thinking I'm an intellectual." Here is what I wrote at the time:

If fans have mistaken a beer-drinking, Knicks-watchings shlub for an intellectual, it's understandable: Allen's movies are studded with references to Kafka, Freud and Tolstoy, and his filmography includes homages to Bergman and Fellini. But beneath it all, he insists, beats the heart of a comedy writer. During his nightclub days, audiences assumed, based on his bookish appearance, that he was an academic type, and the persona stuck. When he wrote jokes, he says, it seemed funny to drop names like "Kierkegaard." "I learned to utilize the intellectual patois," he says. "It's just a skill. People think of me more seriously than I really am.” (Sadly, many people — myself firmly excluded — now have darker opinions of Woody Allen.)

Irrational Man

Review by Pamela Zoslov

In 2008, Woody Allen said that he isn't an intellectual. “I'm basically a low-culture person,” he said to a group of film critics, including me. "I'm not saying I'm an insensitive Neanderthal. But basically, I'm the guy who's watching the playoffs and drinking a Beck's. I'm not at the opera. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of people thinking I'm an intellectual." Here is what I wrote at the time:

If fans have mistaken a beer-drinking, Knicks-watchings shlub for an intellectual, it's understandable: Allen's movies are studded with references to Kafka, Freud and Tolstoy, and his filmography includes homages to Bergman and Fellini. But beneath it all, he insists, beats the heart of a comedy writer. During his nightclub days, audiences assumed, based on his bookish appearance, that he was an academic type, and the persona stuck. When he wrote jokes, he says, it seemed funny to drop names like "Kierkegaard." "I learned to utilize the intellectual patois," he says. "It's just a skill. People think of me more seriously than I really am.” (Sadly, many people — myself firmly excluded — now have darker opinions of Woody Allen.)

Blue Jasmine

Review by Pamela Zoslov

In his nearly 50-year directing career, Woody Allen has emulated Bergman, Fellini, Cassavetes, Fritz Lang and other masters. In his new film, BLUE JASMINE, Allen unexpectedly tears a page from Tennessee Williams, a playwright with whom he shares an interest in vivid female characters.

(A brief aside: I once published an essay defending Allen against a snarky film critic's denunciation of him as outrageously sexist. This opinion was presumably based in large part on his unorthodox personal life — call it the Polanski Perplex. But whatever one thinks of Allen's past conduct, the fact is that few filmmakers have created better or more complex roles for women. Just after I wrote these words, the New York Times published an article on this very subject.)

Casino Royale (1967) (April 6th at the CWRU Film Society at Strosacker Auditorium)

[CASINO ROYALE screens Saturday April 6th at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm at the CWRU Film Society at Strosacker Auditorioum.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

 

Unless their schedule is seriously in error (and it does happen, damn college students), the Case Western-Reserve University Film Society is pairing the campus showing of the latest James Bond masterpiece, 2012's SKYFALL, this weekend, with a revival of CASINO ROYALE - no, not the critically overpraised 2006 CASINO ROYALE that relaunched the franchise, with Daniel Craig as a tough, realistic Bond, true to the hardboiled prose of Ian Fleming. The CWRU crowd have instead (I hope) impishly programmed the CASINO ROYALE from 1967 - a daffy spoof serious Bond buffs would wish could disappear, like Lucasfans hope could happen to Jar Jar Binks. No kidding, this notorious camp makes the Roger Moore MOONRAKER look like TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY.

To Rome With Love

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Woody Allen, who has just released his 43rd film, TO ROME WITH LOVE, has become like that aged uncle you remember from your childhood for his brilliant sense of humor, but whose increasingly feeble jokes you now laugh at out of polite nostalgia. He remains a formidable filmmaker — last year's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS was a thoroughgoing success — but his insistence on making a film every year means that lately there are more misses than hits, and the misses are all the more disappointing.

TO ROME WITH LOVE, set in the colorful Italian capital because backers put up the money for it to be shot there, is based on a collection of half-developed ideas Allen had tucked away in his desk drawer. The randomness (and mustiness) of the stories is evident.