This time last week I'd only seen Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Now I've also seen;
Annie Hall
Manhattan
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Love and Death
Zelig
Radio Days
Match Point
Midnight in Paris
I'd say all nine are great movies. He's rocketing up my favorite directors list, I'd have him in my top 10 now and if the next few I check out are on a similar level he'll be cracking the top 5.
You'll be able to find others on a similar level. Going on your response to those movies, I'd say Blue Jasmine, Husbands and Wives, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Broadway Danny Rose, and Stardust Memories will put you over the top.
I haven't seen every film by Woody, but I've seen a lot of them, and even my least favourites are still decent films, better than a lot of other average movies.
I love the breadth of his work, too. People say he makes the same movie over and over, but even in your nine, saying that Manhattan and Zelig are "the same" is crazy talk.
If you check out Take the Money and Run, you'll see how he was awesome right out of the gate. Obviously, there's a maturation for any artist, but you can see that he's got "it" right from the start.
He's a true genius, really.
Oh, and once you've stomped around his movies for a while, I highly recommend checking out some of his absurdist stand-up sets and prose writing. "The Moose" - one of his standup bits - is hilarious, and "Viva Vargas!" a short story of his (similar to his film Bananas, actually...) had me laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face.
My idea was to check out his top 15 or so highest rated movies on IMDb. I'm on a roll here though and since I'm enjoying them I might add a few more to the watchlist.
The ones I need to watch to have seen that top 15 are;
Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, Broadway Danny Rose, Blue Jasmine, Deconstructing Harry.
I'll probably have those seven knocked off within three days. I'll add Stardust Memories to the watchlist. I'm also thinking Interiors, Bananas, Sleeper.
That would take me to 20 Woody Allen movies.
Oh, yeah, that's a good list. Although, I haven't seen Deconstructing Harry yet... I've seen thirty-six of the films he has written and directed. A couple more with Allen as a performer.
My favourites are Match Point and Annie Hall, and then there are a tonne of competitors for the rest of the top slots. Between gold like Husbands and Wives, Purple Rose of Cairo, Love and Death, and a dozen others... yeah, it's hard.
I think Allen has a bunch of underrated films and Stardust Memories is one of them. It's his riff on 8 1/2. I'd also say that To Rome with Love, Manhattan Murder Mystery, and Whatever Works are often overlooked and well worth a visit.
Given your sensibilities (from what I can glean off of these boards) I'd guess you'd really like Wonder Wheel, too. And, as a fellow Scarlet fan, Scoop is light entertainment, but a lot of fun.
Bullets Over Broadway is very good and has one laugh (that I wouldn't dream of spoiling) that had me howling for a good two minutes.
UPDATE:
I've now watched Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over Broadway and Take the Money and Run.
Three more great movies. Of those three I think my favorite is actually Take the Money and Run. I really like his comedy style. His more comedic efforts are right up there with the best Mel Brooks and Monty Python had to offer. Zelig and Love and Death were laugh riots. I'll 100% be checking out his earlier comedic works (Bananas, Sleeper, Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex...)
My Woody Allen watchlist is all over the place right now, I keep adding more each day. If I watch all the ones I've put on my watchlist I'll have seen 26 movies directed by him. So 14 more to work through at the moment. If I watch all them then he'll be my most watched director actually, it's currently Alfred Hitchcock who I've seen 21 movies by.
Of the 12 I've seen so far I'd say my favorites would be;
- Vicky Cristina Barcelona
- Match Point
- Annie Hall
- Manhattan
- Zelig
- Love and Death
- Take the Money and Run
Hard to rank given all twelve I've seen are at least an 8 out of 10. Superb consistency.
Who knows when all is said and done he could actually end up my favorite director. My top three are Roman Polanski, Alfred Hitchcock and Ridley Scott. Woody Allen is pretty close to joining them. When every single day you see 2 or 3 more great movies by a director it doesn't take long for them to rocket up the rankings.
I love his early stuff, too. Yeah, I agree that he's every bit as delightfully wild as Python or Brooks. The fact that he can pull off that level of humour while making some great philosophical points is an extra bonus. Okay, maybe not every sketch in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) is talking in-depth about the human condition, but he finds time to drive home beautiful points about mankind and the world into great works like Love and Death and Zelig.
To me, that's Allen's real quality that makes his work brilliant. He's able to be fully entertaining, but also to be really getting at something bigger.
As to his style, he's so unassuming with his technique, I think a lot of people don't appreciate how wonderfully he approaches cinematography and editing. Not to mention his reputation as being so marvelous with actors.
I think a lot of this comes down to Allen knowing when to let people do their jobs. He hires great choreographers and actors and doesn't shackle them down. He doesn't micromanage. He'll tell them how he wants the scene to look and feel and trusts them to do their work.
The more you see, the harder that top 10 is going to become.
Those are terrific choices for best-ever director. I'd have to think about mine for a while, because I'm sure there are two dozen I'd forget, but off the top of my head, I'd go with Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, and yes, Woody Allen.
Just for the sake of it, my favourite Hitchcock film is Rear Window, which I think is basically perfect from the opening frame to the fade out - plus its warnings against voyuerism have become more relevant in the social media era. Polanski's best, for me, is Chinatown, but I have a weird soft spot for The Ninth Gate. I don't know what it is exactly, but that film is entrancing. I think it's underrated. Its slow-burn is really captivating, it's genuinely creepy and eerie, and I love that it doesn't give us "the answers".
I adore The Ninth Gate too. It's got a delightful atmosphere, it's a movie I find to be very rewatchable.
I'm a huge fan of Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant and The Fearless Vampire Killers. Horror has always been my favorite genre and I think Polanski's forays into the genre are amongst the best there is. The Ninth Gate is also horror adjacent, that five collective is immense then when you have movies like Chinatown, The Pianist, Tess, etc it's what has Polanski in top spot for me.
I think Rear Window is Hitchcock's best too.
Yeah, The Ninth Gate could get by on its atmosphere alone. I've rewatched it several times.
I haven't seen Repulsion or Rosemary's Baby, but I love The Tenant and The Fearless Vampire Killers is very fun. I'd classify Ninth Gate as horror. It's not standard horror, but it's this creeping/dread horror that really works.
Rear Window is sheer brilliance. It's fun, it's thrilling, it's perfectly shot.
I haven't seen Repulsion or Rosemary's Baby
Believe me, Rosemary's Baby has been on my list for a while. I'll put Repulsion on there, too. But, yeah, absolutely, I've been aware of RB as a must-watch. And, yeah, I know Mia mostly from Woody Allen's films, although I also enjoy The Last Unicorn.
I agree with you: Love and Death is the pinnacle of Allen's "early comedies". In fact, I'd mark L&D as his "transition film" where he slides from almost Marx Bros. -type films (like Bananas) into his more philosophical/comedy blend (his next film being Annie Hall, of course). That's not to say that he didn't have plenty of satirical points made in films like Bananas and Sleeper, but just to say that Love and Death really ramps it up and moves him into the next big "phase" of his career.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex is just a great sketch comedy movie. It's hard to pick a favourite sketch for me. I always think of the Fellini-inspired segment first, but then I remember howling with laughter at a bunch of the others. The inner workings of the male body on a date, the cross-dresser, and Gene Wilder are all brilliant.
I keep meaning to re-watch Hannah and Her Sisters; it's been a while for me, and it's a brilliant movie.
If Woody Allen posted on Moviechat, do you think you would like him as a poster and get along with him?
shareI find it almost impossible to imagine Allen posting on moviechat. It seems like he just wouldn't care about dissecting these movies with strangers.
But, if I do envision a world where he was on the boards, I think I'd disagree with his opinions quite a lot (he can be surprisingly dismissive of comedy) but I think I'd enjoy chatting with him. I have a feeling he'd be one of the "cut through the BS" posters and there'd be little to no pretension, but a lot of insight.
He'd also be really funny, of course, so that would help.
I hear you. Put off watching his films for more that 20 years (had only seen a handful) and finally treated myself to a complete Woody Allen retrospective during Covid, and man, what a fantastic discovery it was ! Really loved his 70's output, as well as his 80's "Bergman period".
shareI love reading about this. Yourself and OP, you're discovering Woody Allen's work and I'm a big Allen fan. The guy's one of the greats.
It's just great knowing that people are still discovering his stuff.
I can’t wait to see the new one. They say it is similar to Match Point. Coup de chance. But it looks like they can’t find US distributors so it may not be released in a US theater.
shareFew American films finer than Crimes and Misdemeanors.
share'Play It Again Sam' (although not directed by Woody) is another masterpiece.
As is 'Love & Death' and 'Broadway Danny Rose'
I'm not too keen on his stuff after the mid-eighties, truth be told.
Same page with seagal72.
"Love and Death" is my all time fave comedy.
"Sleepers" is hysterical, too. "Play it Again Sam" - another fave.
And yeah, he could have packed it in in the 1980s and that would have been fine.
I did enjoy 'Small Time Crooks' however
shareSounds good - can't join you on that one - I've never seen it.
Let me see if I can think of another WA movie I like......
"Bananas"
There was another one that was pretty funny - "Midsummer nights comedy" - something like that - I don't remember the title. The girl from "Airplane" was in it. Yeah, that one had some good bits.
That's about it - you get into the 90s and he becomes more unfunny, not to mention, quite annoying.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is the film you're thinking of. I like that one. It's a nice, gentle comedy.
Have you seen To Rome with Love? I found that one hilarious. You also might enjoy Scoop.
No, I think the most recent film Woody Allen movie I saw was the the one with Mira Sorvino. The title escapes me right now. It came out in the mid 90s and it was pretty good. The problem is, when you get into the 90s - he himself became very annoying. Whiny, nasally, not all that funny. Certainly not even close to what he was in the 1970s.
Yeah I don't think he's a pedophile either. He just got caught up with a woman scorned (Mia Farrow). As far as I know, Soon-Yi (I think that's her name) was an adult when he started with her. And the poor innocent young girl - Dylan I think her name was - OMG awful. Awful she got caught up in a mess with her parents. Woody ended up going off with Soon - YI - and is still with her to this day (as far as I know). Never before or since was he accused of being a pedophile (that I know of). It was nothing but a scorned woman trying to get back at him.
Mighty Aphrodite is the one you're thinking of. I like that one a lot. The comedy Greek chorus is great. The '90s is the period in Allen's oeuvre that I am least familiar with (not by design; just the way it's shaken down). But what I've seen, I mostly like. I do think he was better in the '70s, but a lot of his post-2000 output is great.
Match Point is one of my all-time favourite Allen films. And, yeah, To Rome with Love is a series of short stories, many of which are very funny.
My theory is that Mia considers him guilty of paedophilia and incest because of his relationship with Soon-yi (which I won't pretend is 100% normal; the starting point, at the very least, is odd). Because Allen isn't legally guilty of either charge, Mia invented a crime that would nail him for both. And, yeah, I think revenge was her motive. Dylan has heard this version of events since she was too young to have a reliable long-term memory, so of course she believes it. Anybody who knows anything about human memory knows that this is a really, really plausible kind of brainwashing.
That last point is, I think, really key: he's only had one accusation. Not so much as a whiff outside of that. I can't think of a single sex offender who only gave in to such heinous impulses once in their lives. That casts serious doubts across the whole thing. Add in the motivations of Mia and the testimony of Moses Farrow and it really falls apart. Moses' accounts at least demand that the righteously indignant ought to turn their guns on Mia with equal opprobrium, but they don't for some reason.
Anyway, I hate to just dwell on the charges. Bottom line: if you feel like checking out Allen's more recent stuff, To Rome with Love is a solid comedy. It's not going to rival Hannah and Her Sisters or Annie Hall, but it's got some great laughs.
Yes - echo that:
"That last point is, I think, really key: he's only had one accusation."
To me that's 50% of it, the other is a woman scorned. I'll never believe for a second Mia Farrow didn't have something to do with it. As far as the Soon-Yi stuff - yeah, it's weird, but I don't think it was illegal. I could be wrong, I haven't studied the case. Even so, what is telling there is he is still with Soon-Yi. I believe like 30 years now. If he was some kind of whacko pedophile - I'm sure she'd have given him the boot a long time ago.
Yeah, Hannah and her Sisters was all right. Annie Hall, I have to say, I thought was overrated. It's actually directly prior to "Annie Hall" that contains his best stuff - the early to mid 1970s material - it's hysterical.
Thanks on "Mighty Aphrodite" title - that sounds about right.
No, haven't seen a single 2000s WA movie. I'll keep the films you mentioned in the back of my mind though.
Ok, nice chatting with you AceSpade - best wishes.
Woody has pointed out that he should be the poster boy for the #metoo movement, given how he's employed so many women, given them plum roles (how many have won major awards from Allen's films?), paid them the same (scale wage...) as the men, and not one problem or complaint over all those years. But because of one spurious accusation, he's vilified.
I'm not saying I'd immediately switch over if a second accusation showed up, but it would make me really re-think my position. The thing is, though, none have surfaced. I feel like, if they were going to, they would have by now.
To each their own. I love Annie Hall, personally. I think Love & Death is funnier than Annie Hall, but I think Annie Hall is the more interesting movie and what it says about the human condition is at least as profound, if not more interesting. I also think AH does a better job at telling a "real" story. It feels like watching a real life unfold, and that's very clever writing. L&D isnt trying to do that, of course; it's more of a zany comedy (again, that Marx Bros. influence is strong).
If you do venture into 2000s territory, yeah, To Rome with Love, Match Point - those are great. Scoop's a nice, little comedy, too, and Whatever Works is a bit of a throwback to his older stuff - plus, Larry David takes on the "Woody" role, which is perfect.
Nice chatting with you, too!
OMG you inspired me to keep up here - I did see "Whatever Works". I watched that one specifically because I'm a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" fan. It was just ok. It wasn't good enough to remember, LOL.
Yeah that's right, I don't even know what all that metoo stuff is. It's just what I believe - a guy goes thru life, never being accused of anything. Suddenly he's in a domestic mess, and then suddenly he's a sexual predator. Very hard to take it seriously. Now on the other hand, guys with multiple accusers (Weinstein, Bill Cosby) - it's hard to take any claims of innocence seriously by either of those fellows. When you've got multiple accusers, over multiple decades, all with similar stories - in that case, well I'm sorry buddy, but you are guilty. Woody Allen, one accusation, over one period of his life (When he was fighting with Mia). I don't believe it for a second.
Yeah, you're right, Annie Hall is a better story (and probably a better movie over all). It's just my taste, "Love and Death" had me hysterical. I don't begrudge you one bit for liking "Annie Hall" better.
Ok, great chat - best wishes to you.