Yeah?
Watch “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and then tell me how “stupid” it is…
I haven’t seen a lot of Allen’s films, but I enjoyed Radio Days and Bullets Over Broadway quite a bit. Dude’s still making movies because people keep going to see them.
I think there’s a little more to it than that. I don’t know if he’s concerned with making more money, but he does strike me as the type who enjoys working and doesn’t look forward to retirement. It’s a fairly common mindset among successful disciplined artists. Dizzy Gillespie and B.B. King performed live until they couldn’t any more. Picasso said something like “when inspiration comes, may it find me working.”
B.B. King “performed” well after he couldn’t anymore. But your point stands.
What do you mean?
It means he continued to perform even after he became infirm due to age and health issues.
I was being a little flippant, but yeah, I agree. Woody makes movies because he wants to make movies. I don’t think he’d continue making movies if people didn’t go see them though. There’s a great scene in The Wrestler (2008) where Randy the Ram tells his fans that he doesn’t care if people say he’s over the hill. So long as the fans come to see him, he’ll continue to wrestle.
I just realized that the thread was started in 2003…
Anyway, if you look at this boxoffice list, 2003 was a fairly low point for Woody with a long strong of poorly performing films but it got better soon with films like Match Point, Vicky Cristy Barcelona, Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine which all made good money and got good reviews as well. I think these four films alone justify his decision to continue working in this century. And while his most recent films haven’t done that well, it does look like his latest is being well-received.
Incidentally I am intrigued by the idea of a director doing a film in a language he doesn’t know. The only other example I can think of is the famed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami who directed a Japanese film called Like Someone in Love; I am guessing that he didn’t speak Japanese. I wonder if there are any other examples.
His films have always been hit or miss for me, nearly at random. Even late in life, he’s turned out an occasional gem, like Match Point, which I find brilliant, moving, extremely well directed and acted, and insightful, but there are a lot of carelessly filmed losers too. I think I’ve seen about 30 of his movies, maybe more.
What I find more puzzling is his short “funny” pieces for the New Yorker, which used to be entertaining and now simply confuse me.
Allen used to be one of the funniest writers I knew. His short stories in Getting Even, Without Feathers and Side Effects are consistently hilarious, but it took nearly a decade to extract those three out of him – from 1971 to 1980 – as he’s much more interested in writing screenplays and filmmaking.
It would be 27 years before another collection appeared, Mere Anarchy. That last one contains many of those New Yorker pieces you mention, and while some are pretty funny, he’s definitely losing the comedic craziness that made his early writings so hilarious, and seems to be engaging instead in a sort of obtuse pretentiousness. I’m guessing that if someone not named Woody Allen submitted the exact same material to the New Yorker so that it was evaluated on its merits, most of it or all of it would be rejected.
As for his films, I agree that the quality isn’t consistent, but it’s hard to maintain a consistently high level of quality when you’re making movies at such a prodigious rate. I don’t think Allen even at his filmmaking worst is ever really bad, though; it’s more that some of his films are truly excellent and some are just mundane.
What Odesio said. I saw him (and Buddy Guy, who was fantastic) in 2010 or 2011 and the most he could muster was leasing a sing a long of “you are my sunshine.”
I’d say “all.” Mere Anarchy is wall-to-wall lame and trite.
Woody’s one of the directors stirring debate at the Venice Film Festival alongside Roman Polanski and Luc Besson. There’s that international support and love people have mentioned. Some might say that there’s a large space between the accusations against and crimes of Polanski/Besson and Allen and I’d agree. But they’re still three of a kind.
Have you seen Midnight in Paris ? I think most people who watched it liked it, even if they aren’t Allen fans.
“I enjoy his films, particularly the early, funny ones.”
Given that, I even liked Stardust Memories. But I haven’t seen many of his later, less-funny ones.
Got to admire his energy. At 90, or whatever he is now, I’d be sitting in a chaise longue at poolside sipping a Pina Colada.
Jim Jarmusch’s “Night On Earth” consists of five episodes about nocturnal taxi rides in five different cities, filmed in the respective local language. Two are set in LA and New York, but the rest in Rome, Paris and Helsinki. I don’t know which languages Jarmusch speaks, but it’s improbable he knows Italian, French and Finnish.
What about Letters From Iwo Jima?
Apocolypto
Passion of the Christ
Clan of the Cave Bear?
One of the sketches from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex is in Italian.
mock-Italian.