Chris Blohm | On 09, Feb 2015

With Magic in the Moonlight now on VOD – and Scoop finally emerging on UK shores almost a decade after it was made – we look back at the director’s 49-year career. From Tiger Lily to Blue Jasmine, here is every Woody Allen movie ranked and rated, plus where you can watch them online.

Cassandra’s Dream (2007)

Wonky accents galore in Woody’s worst ever effort, a kind of dim-witted Cockney noir that trawls the depths of cinematic awfulness. Everything’s lost at sea, from the implausible script to some insane casting decisions. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, and their respective interpretations of a London accent, are almost stubbornly inadequate. Every single creative decision is a calamity, basically. A ship fit only for sinking.
1/10
Amazon Prime Instant Video
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Sky Store
Google Play

Scoop (2006)

Lovejoy shows up as a ghost. That’s all you really need to know about Scoop, an amiable fiasco that could well go down in the annals as Woody’s second most catastrophic picture. Features the sort of wacky, supernatural premise Woody may well have nailed in the 60s or 70s. But he’s too old for this baloney. Everything’s so very Radio 4, and not in a good way. You half-expect Pam Ayers to pop up and start mouthing off about her husband. It’s that kind of film. Features moments of extreme Hugh Jackman befuddlement.
2/10
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The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

Woody’s most expensive film (production budget: $26 million) is a twee period caper about two sparring colleagues who are cursed into thinking they’re a newlywed couple by a cabaret hypnotist. Not the most heinous film in the Woody catalogue, but not far off. It looks gorgeous, and the supporting cast does well (Helen Hunt rises above it all, as usual) but Woody just hasn’t got the spark or rhythm for this kind of madcap nonsense anymore. His casting kills the movie.
3/10
Amazon Instant Video
Wuaki.tv
Google Play

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

This astrologically dull melodrama sees two generations of the same family struggling to achieve optimum levels of matrimonial harmony. Featuring a rather strange performance from Anthony Hopkins as an ageing philanderer, YWMATDS is one of Woody’s least satisfying meditations on fate and the spirits that guide us. Naomi Watts gets to try out her Diana accent. Josh Brolin is a fork in a knife drawer: woefully out of place.
4/10
Amazon Instant Video
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Google Play

Whatever Works (2009)

It’s the kind of irony you can see from space. That is, virtually nothing about Whatever Works actually works. The gags fall flat. The story’s a mess. Some of the editing is just plain weird. The casting of Larry David brings some inevitable Curb Your Enthusiasm-ness to the proceedings, but the film plays like Curb Lite when it should be Woody Supreme. Even the casting feels awkwardly experimental: hot young things like Evan Rachal Wood and Superman himself Henry Cavill rubbing shoulders awkwardly with old troopers like Michael McKean and Ed Begley Jr.
4/10
Amazon Instant Video
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What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)

Woody Allen’s debut film as a director is also his most frivolous and naively experimental. He didn’t even direct it, technically speaking. Instead, Woody bought a cheapjack Japanese thriller called International Secret Police: Key of Keys, and replaced all the dialogue with an entirely new, over-dubbed script. Fitfully amusing and mercilessly zany, What’s Up Tiger Lily? is a weirdo outlier on the Woody Allen CV. It’s the work of a young, curious new film-maker playing in the sandpit, dreaming of building castles. Is it racist? Perhaps a little.
5/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Anything Else (2003)

Jason Biggs (playing a young Woody type) consults his ageing mentor Woody Allen (playing an older Woody type) for dating advice. Somehow, the world doesn’t collapse into a shining ball of incredulity. Marketed as a banal, studio-grade romantic comedy, Anything Else is actually more subtle and philosophical in bent than the poster suggests. But it’s still sloppy. The film’s themes, and almost all its gags, get lost in the mix.
5/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Hollywood Ending (2002)

The only Woody Allen picture not picked up for distribution in the UK. And while it isn’t quite the disaster the film’s lack of availability would suggest, it’s hardly a barnstormer, either. The movie is essentially an indulgent metaphor for the film-maker’s own career, like Stardust Memories but without any of the wit, wisdom or bravado. It’s awfully flabby, too, which is something you can’t say about most of Woody’s features. Tellingly, Woody never cast himself as the lead in one of his own films again.
5/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

To Rome with Love (2012)

More thin crust than deep pan. Despite a starry cast (Jesse Eisenberg! Alec Baldwin! Penelope Cruz!) this doughy love letter to Roma Capitale feels rather half-baked compared with its Parisian predecessor. Blame it on the undercooked script: cheesy coincidences abound, and the dialogue feels more dilapidated than the Colosseum itself. The cringe-worthy presence of Roberto Benigni doesn’t help matters.
5/10
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Wuaki.tv

A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982)

Well, the streak had to end somewhere. Ostensibly one of the director’s daftest movies, this ribald relationship romp is structurally a tribute to both Renoir and (of course) Bergman. With extra sauciness. Sadly, it doesn’t all work, despite the occasional waggish insight (‘sex alleviates tension, and love causes it’) and an assemblage of characters with intentionally loaded names like Leopold and Ariel. The film should be a frolic in the fields, but finds itself stuck in the mire. It’s only really notable for being Woody’s first ever collaboration with Mia Farrow. Ominously, and somewhat unfairly, Farrow was nominated for a Razzie. What a shame they couldn’t have sparked over something more memorable.
5/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Small Time Crooks (2000)

Watch your wallets. Genial hi-jinx aplenty in this caustic crime fable that features Woody and Tracy Ullman as a couple of (oh yes) small time crooks knee-deep in a series of increasingly convoluted scams. Likeable enough, even if Woody’s firmly in potboiler mode. Hugh Grant turns up playing a Hugh Grant type, such is life.
6/10
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Celebrity (1998)

A barbed depiction of a relationship slowly disintegrating within the scabrous world of showbiz, Celebrity comprises a number of sardonic moments that entertain on their own terms but never add up to a satisfying whole. Woody’s repulsion with the Hollywood machine is plain to see, but he’s retreading old ground. Kenneth Branagh takes a decent stab at Being Woody. Leonardo DiCaprio, caught in the watery vortex of Titanic, makes a weirdly self-deprecating cameo. The film depicts a late-Nineties inferno that feels strangely dated compared with the timelessness of Woody’s other contemporary work.
6/10
Netflix UK
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Amazon Instant Video
Google Play

Shadows and Fog (1991)

We know what you’re thinking: German Expressionism is all well and good, but it could always do with a little more Madonna. That’s one of the main takeaways from Shadows and Fog, a piece of Fritz Lang fetishism that gives Woody an opportunity to unleash his inner fan-boy, at the risk of excluding non-cineaste audiences. For a film with such a niche concept, it boasted a not-insignificant production budget of $14 million, lavish design and an all-star cast. And yet it remains an under-seen curio: part ‘Penny Dreadful’, part existential monograph, featuring a rogues gallery of prostitutes, hucksters and assorted ne’er-do-wells.
6/10
iTunes

Alice (1990)

Partly inspired by the 1965 Fellini film Juliet of the Spirits (check it, cinephiles), this one tells the story of Alice (Mia Farrow), a privileged housewife whose world is turned upside down when she visits a herbalist called Dr. Yang. Under the influence of Dr. Yang’s hypnotic treatments, Alice starts a love affair that transforms her attitude to the opposite sex forever. Rather than choose between her husband and her boyfriend, however, Alice ultimately ditches both, preferring to plough her own furrow rather than be defined by the men in her life. It’s a strange, and empowering little picture, one that confirms Woody’s knack for interesting, believable female characters.
6/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)

An absurd sketch film that fires blanks for a good portion of its running time, before coming up trumps with an orgasmic final sequence starring Woody as (yes!) a sperm suffering an existential crisis, and Burt bloody Reynolds as the guy that flicks the switch. Star of the show, however, is Gene Wilder, who shows extraordinary commitment as a psychiatrist who conducts an illicit affair with an Armenian sheep called Daisy. Tasteless, yes, though maybe not quite as dodgy as a segment called ‘Are Transvestites Homosexuals?’ that surely couldn’t get made today. Tellingly, the movie was an enormous hit back in 1972, though it hasn’t dated well.
6/10
iTunes

Melinda and Melinda (2004)

File under ‘high concept’. Its conclusion (life can be both comic and tragic, and how) is both pointless and admirable, which makes for a rather odd viewing experience. You’ll appreciate that the film exists, even if the very nature of its existence is pointless. Which is entirely the point. Or something. Cinema as cosmic waste of time, with added Will Ferrell for ironic effect. A misfire, then, though an admirable one.
6/10
Amazon Instant Video
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Google Play

Take the Money and Run (1969)

Unlike Woody’s patchy debut, Take the Money and Run is an actual, proper, honest to goodness feature film. And it’s a reasonably accomplished one, too, albeit lacking in the kind of intellectual depth of his subsequent pictures. The movie also showcases one of Woody’s greatest comic conceits: a small, unspectacular, nebbish young man earns a terrifying reputation as America’s most nefarious bank robber. Foreshadowing his (better) 1983 film Zelig, Take the Money and Run is framed like a documentary, with an omnipresent voiceover guiding the proceedings. It’s frequently hilarious and pleasingly anarchic. Check out the moment when Woody’s character, Virgil Starkwell, plays cello in his hometown marching band. Or the interview with Starkwell’s parents, who are so ashamed of their son’s crimes, they’ll only appear on-screen disguised as Groucho Marx. A slight work, then, but you’re never far away from the next punchline.
7/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Deconstructing Harry (1997)

The clue’s in the title. A psychoanalytical comedy about a writer (so many of Woody’s films focus upon the metaphysical plight of writers) who draws a little too much inspiration from the world around him, this is one of the director’s more acute films. A funny, foul-mouthed treatise on one creator’s topsy-turvy relationship with his own creations.
7/10
Netflix UK
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Bananas (1971)

Woody starts a revolution, and wins. Kind of. In retrospect, a strange, risky and fairly uncategorisable movie, one that takes a mistaken identity premise and throws several layers of absurdity, and some of cinema’s worst ever false beards, into the mix. So many great nuggets, including one of the funniest courtroom scenes of all time (worth it for the appearance of ‘J. Edgar Hoover’ alone) but it doesn’t quite hold together. The humour is perhaps just a little too scattershot, and the jokes aimed at too niche an audience, in order to really connect. Peel back the layers and there’s nothing there.
7/10
Netflix UK
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Amazon Instant Video
Google Play

Radio Days (1987)

The film’s roots are in the flashback sequences of Annie Hall, but Radio Days easily manages to stretch its blissed-out nostalgia to feature-length. It’s an eloquent, sumptuous work that wistfully ruminates on the passing of time and the opportunities life throws at us. A bittersweet whirlwind of reminiscences, in fact. ‘I never forgot that New Year’s Eve when Aunt Bea awakened me to watch 1944 come in,’ ponders our Narrator. ‘I’ve never forgotten any of those people or any of the voices we would hear on the radio. Though the truth is, with the passing of each New Year’s Eve, those voices do seem to grow dimmer and dimmer.’
7/10
Netflix UK

Another Woman (1988)

Gena Rowlands stars in one of Woody’s most esoteric numbers, a Bergmanesque story about a philosophy professor whose eavesdropping on the therapy sessions of others leads her to question her own place in the world. It’s an intimate and inquisitive film, though perhaps one for the Woody faithful. The dial is set firmly to serious. Rowlands is a solid, sobering presence. There’s a strong supporting cast, too: Ian Holm, Mia Farrow, Blythe Danner. All sublime.
7/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

This fizzy charmer combines two of Woody’s most recognisable tropes: a troubled writer with relationship troubles, and an adorable prostitute. It’s that increasingly rare thing: a bold and brassy rom-com bookended by a Greek chorus. The film secured Woody’s reputation as an outstanding director of actors when Mira Sorvino took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The script shows off some of Woody’s best zingers, many of which perhaps appear to reflect his unusual domestic situation at the time: ‘I see disaster. I see catastrophe. Worse, I see lawyers!’
7/10
Netflix UK
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Match Point (2005)

Woody’s tennis-based murder ballad drew critical raves upon its original release (Roger Ebert even went with the full five stars) but time has not been kind. It’s more twee than brutal, like an episode of Jeeves & Wooster directed by early Polanski. The film looks gorgeous, however. And what’s more, Rhys-Meyers and Johansson make for a deadly partnership. A miss, but only just. Watch out for a gaggle of UK TV regulars like Mark Gatiss and Alexander Armstrong lording it alongside the star names.
7/10
Netflix UK
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Google Play

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Frankly, after the abominable double-bill of Cassandra’s Dream and Scoop, Woody could’ve taken a picture of a turd in a bucket only for critics to hail it as a sparkling return to form. Thankfully, such desperate measures were not required. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is smart, sassy and sexy. The kind of film you’d take out for cocktails and tapas, in fact. Scarlet Johansson and Rebecca Hall are radiant in the Spanish sunshine, while Javier Bardem gives good gruff.
7/10
Amazon Prime Instant Video
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Zelig (1983)

The eponymous Leonard Zelig is a ‘human chameleon’. He has the unique ability to transform his demeanour and appearance in order to suit his current environment. He is all things to all people. Completely nondescript, yet utterly unforgettable. This curio of a film follows Zelig as he unassumingly shuffles through the Twenties and Thirties, bumping into assorted luminaries, including politicians, celebrities and other figures of historical curiosity along the way. Woody uses the opportunity to play with form, presenting Zelig’s remarkable story as a documentary, and employing real-life intellectuals like Susan Sontag as pseudo-pundits. The film itself wrestles with a split personality. On the one hand, Zelig is a technically dazzling romp fit to burst with some of Woody’s best ever jokes. On the other, it’s an erudite exploration of the Jewish identity in the early part of the Twentieth Century. The film succeeds on both counts.
7/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

The director re-teams with Diane Keaton for this fizzy tale about a pair of amateur sleuths who suspect foul play when their next door neighbour shuffles off the mortal coil in the most mysterious of circumstances. A dainty, but consistently amusing potboiler that proves once again that Woody’s never more cantankerous than when he’s dabbling in matters of the macabre. Alan Alda impresses as curious best pal Ted. Hot trivia: the screenplay dates back to the seventies, starting life as an early draft of Annie Hall.
7/10
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September (1987)

Woody sends a letter of love to Anton Chekhov. September is a small, contemplative picture, and one of the director’s most personal and heartfelt achievements. Mia Farrow leads another terrific cast as Lane, a woman slowly readjusting to the world after a botched suicide attempt. Lane’s friends and family (all well-meaning, but kind of awful and tragic too) descend upon her country residence in an effort to make her see sense, pathetically unaware of their own shortcomings. Farrow is a wonder (of course) and there’s a strong triumvirate of performances from the male side of the cast: Denholm Elliot, Jack Warden, and Sam Waterston. But the late, great Elaine Stritch takes it all, as is her right.
8/10
iTunes

Interiors (1978)

Divorce, depression, suicide and rape. Has Woody Allen ever made a more serious and sombre film? Interiors is a leap of faith for Woody fans. The director’s first foray into purely dramatic film-making, it remains one of the most important films in his back catalogue, if not the most important. Without it, there would be no Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters, Husbands and Wives nor Blue Jasmine. Bolstered by the success of Annie Hall, this morose tribute to Ingmar Bergman marks the moment when Woody transforms into the complete film-maker. Does he get away with it? Just. Interiors is the kind of film that feels like it has a million things to say, but without the appropriate toolkit at its disposal. Still, powerful performances from the likes of Geraldine Page and Diane Keaton. And those all important ‘staring out the window/waiting for the gathering storm/contemplating existence’ shots are iconic.
8/10
iTunes

Sleeper (1973)

Woody takes a glimpse into our pastel future and sees a techno nightmare of mechanical sex, emotionless interactions and genetically exaggerated bananas. Like the very best science-fiction (and Sleeper is, for all its apparent frivolity, great science-fiction) the film says more about the period of its creation than anything else. The most visionary Woody Allen film of them all? Undoubtedly, and also one of his most nihilistic. For instance, Miles, the movie’s protagonist, refutes both science and faith. For him, there is only sex and death: ‘Two things that come once in a lifetime. But at least after death you’re not nauseous’. Fire up the Orgasmatron.
8/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Middle-class magical realism for boozy bookworms. Woody takes on Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein in a gin-fizzed fantasy that sees Owen Wilson drunkenly travelling back through time to clash heads with the ghosts of our intellectual past. Warm and witty from the outset, this low-key slice of literary whimsy somehow struck a chord with audiences, concluding its theatrical run as Woody’s highest grossing film to date.
8/10
Amazon Prime Instant Video
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Sweet and Lowdown (1999)

Now this one’s a real labour of love. Sean Penn plays Emmett Ray, an acclaimed jazz guitarist living in the shadow of Django Reinhardt during the Thirties. The film nostalgically chronicles his life and loves, as well as the occasional run-in with the mob. Ray isn’t the most likeable of characters, and yet the film still feels warm to the touch. Woody revels in the process of sheer storytelling, and it showcases one of his best ever soundtracks, too.
8/10
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Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

One of Woody’s most unabashedly commercial films, Bullets Over Broadway is a bona fide crowd pleaser. An absolute cappuccino of a movie: light, frothy, a hint of bitterness at its centre. The film tells the tall tale of a neurotic, romantically incompetent writer (naturally!) who gets on the wrong side of the mob (of course!) forcing him to make a choice between life or art (say it ain’t so!) Dianne Wiest steals every scene she’s in. ’Don’t speak!’, indeed. To date, the only Woody Allen film to get its own Broadway adaptation, and it’s not hard to see why: Bullets Over Broadway is pure showbiz.
8/10
iTunes
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Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

One of Woody’s most shamelessly joyous excursions into whimsy, Everyone Says I Love You sees his characters break out into song at a moment’s notice, articulating their thoughts and feelings through a series of jazzy standards. As usual, Alda gets a chunk of the best lines, particularly when sparring with his fiercely Republican younger son (Lukas Haas). Norton and Barrymore make for a darling central combo. There’s something of the Pennies from Heaven in the execution, though the film’s disposition is a heck of a lot sunnier.
8/10
Netflix UK
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Husbands and Wives (1992)

Woody’s best 90s effort, and possibly his most prophetic movie. This is a savvy and sad rumination on the inconvenient truths that tear people apart, one that hit theatres slap-bang in the middle of the film-maker’s devastating break-up with Mia Farrow. The parallels are clear: Woody plays Gabe, a fatigued academic who develops an infatuation with a student (Juliette Lewis), the kind of doomed obsession that threatens to destroy his marriage with long-suffering wife Judy (Farrow). Husbands and Wives is unflinchingly honest, caustically witty, and probably about as close to a confessional as Woody gets.
8/10
Amazon Instant Video
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Google Play

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)

The premise of The Purple Rose of Cairo is an idea of such creative elegance that only an intensely complicated and neurotic film-maker like Woody Allen could have dreamt up the damn thing. Evoking a beautifully grim, Depression-era New Jersey, the film follows Cecilia (Mia Farrow) as she watches her favourite movie, a rip-roaring romantic adventure called The Purple Rose of Cairo. This time around, however, something strange and intoxicating happens: the hero of the piece, an archaeologist called Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), stops the movie to address Cecilia directly, stepping out of the screen and straight into the middle of the theatre. Thus commences a rather fantastic tryst, and one of Woody’s most enchanting flights of fancy. ‘I just met a wonderful new man.’ says Cecilia. ‘He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything.’
8/10
Netflix UK
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Google Play

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Hannah and Her Sisters was the highest-grossing Woody Allen film at the US box-office until Midnight in Paris gaily galloped its way into view a couple of years ago. It was the kind of breakout success that rarely happens anymore: a serious comedy of substance, with a lot on its mind. A mid-Eighties anomaly, then, albeit a transfixing one. The film finds Woody again lost in a Bergmanish reverie, invoking an intriguing and rigid three-act structure that eavesdrops on the lives of the same circle of friends and family over the course of two traumatic years. Failed marriages, doomed romance, religious conversion, family feuds, sibling rivalry: it’s all here, and it’s none more Woody.
9/10
Netflix UK

Love and Death (1975)

‘Oh don’t, Boris, please. Sex without love is an empty experience.’ ‘Yes, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.’ Joke for joke, this screwball riff on classic Russian literature is the most uproarious Woody Allen film of all. The director mines some of the most intense material imaginable, repositioning the revolutionary philosophy of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky alongside the gleeful, parodic abandon of Duck Soup or Night at the Opera. It’s not a deep film, by any means. If anything, Love and Death feels like Woody letting off steam, purging himself of surplus goofiness before changing the game with Annie Hall. If only all palette cleansers were this smart and entertaining. ’Wheat… lots of wheat… fields of wheat… a tremendous amount of wheat…’
9/10
iTunes

Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

More gangland shenanigans and general showbiz peril in this sparky vignette about a good-hearted but ultimately jinxed theatrical agent who finds himself on the wrong side of the mob. The far-fetched tale of Danny Rose is one of Woody’s least pretentious, most effervescent films: a love letter to the Borscht Belt scene and a grand caper in its own right. The story is ingeniously framed by a gaggle of veteran comics over lunch at the Carnegie Deli. Like all the best and most intricately spun anecdotes, though, the joy is in the telling. Razor-sharp wit abounds in dreamy black-and-white. Mia Farrow shimmers.
9/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

The astonishing Martin Landau stars as Judah Rosenthal. Judah is a very naughty man. So naughty, in fact, that’s he having an affair with a flight attendant (Anjelica Huston). But rather than come clean and admit his discretions, Rosenthal hires a hit-man to dispose of the mistress, leading to all manner of guilt and emotional turmoil. Meanwhile, Woody plays Cliff Stern, a documentarian hired to make a puff-piece about his brother-in-law Lester (Alan Alda). As his contempt for Lester grows, however, Cliff’s film transforms into something more incendiary. Two men. A plethora of sins. Temptations running riot. A sensational modern day morality tale, in other words, with no easy answers.
9/10
Not currently available on UK VOD.

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Cate Blanchett is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers in this tragi-comic portrait of one woman’s fall from social grace. Despite his protagonist’s predilection for vodka Martinis, this is Woody at his most sober. Check out that caustic final shot: Jasmine, teetering on the edge, nowhere to go but down. Bleak to say the least, Blue Jasmine feels like Woody’s most crucial and significant work for years. Even Andrew Dice Clay comes out of it with his reputation enhanced. Streetcar reborn.
9/10
Amazon Prime Instant Video
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Annie Hall (1977)

The textbook Woody Allen movie. The definitive Diane Keaton performance. The last comedy to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In a nutshell, the sassiest, most human film Woody ever made, and the greatest rom-com of the modern era. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas may well have ripped up the blockbuster rulebook back in 1977, but the hippest film of the year wasn’t Star Wars or Close Encounters, it was this quirky relationship yarn about a couple of kooks trying to figure it all out on the New York social scene. Erratic tennis, terrible driving, chaotic gastronomy, questionable cabaret, and even Marshall McLuhan: Annie Hall has it all. The film starts with one great joke (‘such small portions!’) and squeezes in about a thousand others by the end of its lean 93 minute running time. Thankfully, Woody swerves skilfully around cheap sentimentality, eschewing schmaltz in favour of a non-linear ramble through universal truths and witty reflections upon life, love and everything. ‘As Balzac said, there goes another novel’.
10/10
Netflix UK
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Amazon Instant Video
Google Play

Manhattan (1979)

‘Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion. Eh, uh, no, make that: he, he romanticised it all out of proportion. Better. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. Uh, no, let me start this over’. Manhattan is Woody Allen’s finest artistic achievement, yet Woody himself regards it as an inconsequential effort, if not an outright failure. At the time, he even offered to direct a film for free if Universal promised not to release the damn thing. Thank goodness for gutless studio execs. The notion that Manhattan could well have ended up as road fill is beyond depressing. It’s the director’s most decadent and cinematic work, one that expresses sophisticated ideas through the shadow and light of an idealised, dreamscape version of New York. The introductory monologue is essential: this is the Big Apple of Woody’s construction, the rendition he observes enveloping the skyline every time he looks out of the window. It is his and his alone. Everybody else is a tourist. Perhaps that’s why Woody treats the picture with such disdain. After the sheer emotional truthfulness of Annie Hall, Manhattan feels cheeky, deceitful and seductive, like a late night cocktail. Bottoms up.
10/10
Netflix UK
iTunes
Amazon Instant Video
Google Play

Stardust Memories (1980)

Artistic flagellation? Or Surrealist flight of fancy? Woody goes full-on Fellini in this acerbic neurosis poem about a film-maker called Sandy Bates, who suffers an existential crisis while attending a retrospective of his work. His problem? The cruel mistress of time. Check out the unforgettable opening scene, possibly the most accomplished opening scene in all of Woody’s movies. It’s a dream sequence, or at very least a hyper-aware pastiche of a dream sequence. In the dream, Bates anxiously waits for the departure of his train. The atmosphere is so morbid he might as well be biding his time in God’s own waiting room. The elemental ticking of some unseen timepiece punctuates his thoughts. He glances out of the window. Over on the parallel track, another train, accommodating some swanky society soiree. He sees a girl. She blows him a kiss. He pleads with the inspector to let him switch trains, but it’s too late. The train pulls away, and the moment is lost forever. He eventually arrives at his destination: a junkyard by the sea, where the only scenery is trash. Is this heaven? Is this hell? And does anyone know if the Pope is in town, or is it just some other showbiz figure?
10/10
iTunes

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