The Writer's Poke

Why is this movie shot in black and white? I might Google it, but after watching it and spending a night to sleep on it, I don't have a clue.  Danny Rose (Woody Allen) is an agent, and all of his acts are pathetic. Anytime he represents an act that has any sort of potential, they immediately leave him at the earliest opportunity. And for the most part. Rose has come to terms with that.  Then he's representing Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte). What is he? A Lounge singer? But Canova's career has floundered, and he's thinking about seeking new representation. At the same time, he wants Rose to be his "beard" for his girl, Tina (Mia Farrow). Why? The Mafia, I guess. So Rose does that, ends up having the Mafia come after him, ends up falling in love with Tina, and so on.  This is all being told, by the way, by a group of guys, OG comedians, I guess, who are trying to tell their best Danny Rose stories? I'm not sure I get the framing technique here, or why it...

Zelig starts with a cute idea. Imagine a guy, Zelig (Woody Allen), who was famous in his time, but who is now almost completely forgotten. What made Zelig so popular? He was a human "chameleon." Just put him next to anyone else -- black, Chinese, Orthodox Jew, Native American, and he would start to take on their look, physical traits, dress.  Interestingly, I guess, he didn't have the ability to change gender. That would be a bridge too far.  But put him in a cockpit, and he could become a very bad pilot. Or, put him in a hospital, and he could become a very bad surgeon.  Anyway, the movie uses a documentary form, and the way that it captures the real look of 1920s-1940s footage is very well done. I never question if it's "real footage." I'm sure a lot is, but anything altered or created new for the film is seamlessly done. Bravo. The problem is: The human chameleon gimmick isn't enough, really, to sustain a complete film. If you think of other mocku...

Miles (Woody Allen) went to sleep in 1973 and woke up in 2173.  Until you start watching (or re-watching) the entire Woody Allen canon of films, you don't stop to think about how many of his movies have a fantasy element. Even the more "serious" of his films usually include some sort of "discussion" between science, religion, philosophy, and pseudo-science.  Sometimes the Allen "fantasy" element works for me, and sometimes it doesn't. I do, however, almost always enjoy the "discussion" element. I'm writing this down here because I'm about 16 films into my Allen re-watch, and I'm still debating if I like his work as a whole, or if I just like his "best stuff" -- his best stuff generally being "discussion" not "fantasy" (the one exception being Midnight in Paris).  Sleeper, to me, isn't one of his better films, but at least it's a film that I can watch without finding myself zoning out. I ha...

Knull is played by Andy Serkis, the director of the previous Venom movie. I like that. My problem with Knull is that I wish he had been introduced as a character in the earlier Venom movies. He just sort of appears out nowhere, as does the plot point for the third movie. We always kind of knew a lot more of Venom and his kind were out there, ready to invade Earth. But you think that over the year Venom and Eddie (Tom Hardy) have been partners, Venom would have told Eddie what was out there.  The second problem with Knull is: All he needs is the Codex, and the Codex -- the key -- is too simple -- it's just the full-bond of man and symbiote. When Knull has that, he can send a tracker to retrieve the Codex, which then ends the universe. Big threat, too simple.  Even if you can overlook the simplicity of the plot, the writing is pretty lazy in parts -- just telling us what we need to know rather than taking the time to let it develop more naturally. This movie treats its viewers l...

While the first Venom received mixed reviews, I ended up liking it. Was it deep? No, but I liked the humor, and it the pacing was good. The weird thing I noticed was that the run time was 107 minutes, but by 90 minutes, the film was running credits. Then it had a sneak-peak scene for the sequel. Then it played the full credits. And THEN it played a Spiderman multiverse clip. Yes, I know that Marvel movies do this "show a clip after the credits" business, but this somehow felt excessive.  Anyway, I wondered if the sequel, which also received mixed reviews, would be able to sustain my enthusiasm. Tom Hardy is back as Eddie and Venom, and he also received a co-writer credit. No doubt he loves this film series. And the way this film is approached is interesting. For lack of a better term, Eddie and Venom are a "couple," and in some respects, the film comes off like not just a bromance, but a full-blown romance. Eddie and Venom "break up" and then, just like in...

So the Venom reviewer on Ebert.com called this a "minor entrant" in the Marvel Universe, for people who only care about Venom because they care about Spiderman, and Venom is a Spiderman villain.  Venom in this movie, of course, is not a Spiderman villain, and, in fact, he seems like a pretty cool symbiote. "Cool" in the sense that he becomes "friends" with Eddie (Tom Hardy). He wouldn't have to be friends with Eddie, but he for some reason says he has grown to like him, and in the end, Eddie must like him too -- "We are Venom." Other symbiotes completely take over their human host. They don't "share" the space, and they don't seem to care about who they eat or what happens to the host when they decide to move on to someone else.  I'm interested, then, in this relationship. I'm interested in this Venom and its willingness to fight the symbiote who has taken over Carlton (Riz Ahmed). Lots of these symbiotes are out the...

Not all of his movies end at 90 minutes, but I've noticed that many of Woody Allen's films end just about at 90 minutes. Maybe a bit less. I wonder if he thought 90 minutes was the perfect length for a film, that he never wanted to be accused of overstaying his welcome.  In this one (run time just 88 minutes), three couple end up sharing a country home together on a vacation. They don't all know each other, really.  Andrew (Allen) and Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) are married, but their marriage is kind of hit a sexual draught.  Maxwell (Tony Roberts), a doctor, is a sort of Cassanova who doesn't believe in marriage -- "Marriage is the end of hope." He asks one woman to go away with him on this trip, but when she declines, he immediately moves on to his nurse, Dulcy (Julie Hagerty), who says yes, and agrees that sharing one room will be just fine.  Ariel (Mia Farrow) and Leopold (Jose Ferrer) are the third couple. They are about to be married. He's a professor...

Much of Allen's work on DVD is available in boxsets. This is a film that didn't make any of the boxsets, and so I left it unviewed for a long time. It's also the film that Allen and Mia Farrow were working on when they separated and Allen started dating his current wife. I was curious to finally track down a copy and watch it, not only because I wanted to see it, but because I was curious how Allen and Farrow would "act" while the drama of their personal life was also playing itself out in the background. To be honest, if anything "bled over" from their personal lives, I couldn't tell. They act just as much like they always do in previous movies. Not every Woody Allen movie needs to be funny, but I did feel like this one lacked the humor of some of his better films. The thematic material is the standard choice: Is it better to suffer through a bad marriage, or is the grass greener on the other side? And the related idea: People are "happier...

Woody Allen would later do Midnight in Paris (2011), another fantasy film where Gil (Owen Wilson), in a way never explained, transports back to the Hemingway period of Paris that he finds most ideal.  In The Purple Rose of Cairo, we have a couple of "transports" happening. First, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) leaves his film to join "the real world." Later, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) will join Tom in the film world. This is a little bit different from Midnight in Paris, because these transports are actually happening, whereas in Midnight, I guess it's at least arguable that the fantasy is only happening inside Gil's mind.  I like the exploration of concept here. Tom is a film character. He follows a script and "does" only what his character is supposed to do. The way it's laid out, every time the film plays, the characters come to life, but they cannot ever change or adapt. They do the same thing in the same way every time. As I was watching, I thought a...

Storytelling technique always stands out to me for some reason, and in Woody Allen films, especially, since he tends to change approaches from film to film.  In this one, the narrator is Joe (Woody Allen -- Seth Green as the child in the film). This is okay, except he ends up telling us things that he, as a child, wouldn't have any first-hand (and sometimes, probably not even second-hand) knowledge of. I know if you just accept the conceit of the storytelling device, it's not a big deal, but little stuff like that is hard for me to ignore. The fix? Make the narrator omniscient.  Other than the characters, the real star of the film is the music. Now, this is 1940s music, so big band stuff, mainly. It plays throughout the movie. It's the soundtrack of Joe's childhood. I know if the movie was set in the 1970s or 1980s, or even the 1990s, I would appreciate the music a lot more. As is, I hear it, but it doesn't register the same way for me as it does to Joe or someone w...

I started re-watching this movie, and for some reason I had it in my mind that it was called "The Other Woman," which is what Marion (Gena Rowlands) was. But she has just turned 50, and maybe that's why this movie is called "Another Woman," because 50 has hit her as no other decade age -- 30, 40 -- has. Or maybe Hope (Mia Farrow) is another woman? Hope is the vague presence. She's mainly the woman Marion overhears through the wall when Hope is visiting her psychiatrist. Why does Marion listen in on Hope's sessions, specifically, and not anyone else's? Is Hope supposed to be a younger version of Marion? Does Marion take an interest in her because she's invested in her choices? I'm not really sure. I'm not sure how much different the movie would be if somehow Hope's entire character was cut from the final edit. I'm sure Hope is important and adds something to the film, but it's difficult to say exactly just what. One complaint I...

 Woody Allen's 21st film "There's nothing here." -- Roger Ebert An ensemble cast is pretty cool, as long as each member has time (and something) to contribute to the story. I'm not sure that's the case with this film, Often times, I simply found myself thinking, "Oh, there's Madonna," or "Oh, there's Kathy Bates," or "Hm, I wonder when Shawn Wallace will finally make an appearance?" (Gene Siskel apparently had the same reaction.) Woody Allen tries new stuff in every film, and so it's not surprising that some films will dud. This one is not necessarily a dud, but it definitely has received mixed reviews. Many suggest that the film lacks coherence and has a flop ending. I belong to that school of reviewers. Others are excited by the use of black and white, as well as Allen's paying homage, well, to whatever he's paying homage to.  Unfortunately, this is a film that never clicks for me. Kleinman (Allen) is involve...

Maybe Mia Farrow works better in small doses for me. I just have a hard time seeing her as a lead in any movie, and she's definitely in this movie almost from beginning to end. That's somewhat annoying.  She's not a horrible actor, nor does she have a big hairy mole on her chin. And the reason I don't rate this movie higher has more to do with the writing, probably, than her as the lead. If Woody Allen wants to turn Alice (Farrow) invisible or to have her love potion accidentally get into the party drink, so that all of the men there fall madly in love with her, I'm okay with that. But this isn't "magical realism" to me. It's just hokey.  Alice is that unfulfilled women who wants something more out of life but can't quite put her finger on what she can to get it. She's rich and has kids. Her husband isn't mean to her, but he never takes her too seriously, and he has his own life -- and affairs. He's supportive to a point, and then h...

My daughter loves this movie, and a few years ago on a Greenland cruise, we must have watched it a dozen times. In fact, this might very well be the movie that I've re-watched the most out of every other movie ever made. Weird thought.  Although I'm not going to try to convince you that it's a perfect 5-star movie, I will argue that it's really good for a comedy. Really good. The reason has a lot to do with the Anne Hathaway/Rebel Wilson pairing. They just play off of each other so well. They work together visually, too. Just something about them reminds me of Laurel and Hardy... well, maybe not, but still, I like this pairing. You would never expect Anne Hathaway to be funny, but she is perfect in this comedic role. Sometimes all she has to do is react to Wilson's over-the-top physical comedy. One facial expression from Hathaway says it all.  Josephine (Hathaway) and Penny (Wilson) are complete opposites. One is sophisticated, the other is raunchy. One is a master ...

(Cuba Gooding, Jr.) has a father. Granted, Furious (Laurence Fishburne) was 17 when he had him, but Furious made up his mind to be a father his son could look up to. He's tried to teach him how to get ahead in life. How to stay out of trouble -- both on the streets and in the bedroom, and it's Tre who ends up successfully leaving the neighborhood. Both he and his girlfriend, we're told at the end, make it to HBCUs in Atlanta.  Ricky (Morris Chestnut) is not that lucky. He plays football and has been recruited to college, but he's not really equipped for the academic requirements. At 17, he's already a father, and he didn't have a father to help guide him.  It's funny that Ricky only needs a 700 on the SAT to qualify for his football scholarship. That's a score that anyone with a pulse could get, but he dies before learning if he met the score he needed. In fact, the letter came, but he keeps on walking to the store. He never bothered to open the envelope...

Am I watching something real? That was really my question as I watched this movie. What do I mean by that? Simply, are there real people like these characters? When I watch Boyz in the Hood, for example, I could think, yes, this is more or less real.  But is Baby Boy meant to be real, or is it meant to be simply, I don't know... some sort of fable, loosely speaking? In his review, Roger Ebert really liked the film, calling it "bold social criticism." I can see that. I can also say that I thought the acting was great -- from Tyrese Gibson to Omar Gooding to Ving Rhames to Snoop Dogg.  But then I find myself wondering about the practical stuff. I guess I shouldn't, but if the men don't have jobs and don't contribute to the bills, then how does Joseph's (Gibson) mom afford her house? We see that his baby mamas have jobs and some sort of family support system, but these neighborhoods are pretty nice looking. I just think about how expensive it is to live in Lo...

Tupac. I've heard of him, as I'm sure everyone has, but I've never listened to his stuff, and I've never watched any film he's starred in. Turns out, he was a pretty good actor. Janet Jackson is an okay actor, too, but I can understand why she hasn't done a lot of film work.  It's neat to see Maya Angelou make an appearance as one of the Aunts at a random family reunion. And let's talk about this: The film somehow morphs into a road trip picture, with Lucky (and his partner) plus Justice (Jackson) and another woman driving from L.A. to Oakland. Keep in mind, they are in a post office truck -- a medium size one -- and I assume they are doing a mail delivery, which means they would be on the clock. Nevertheless, they end up stopping, as I mentioned, at a random family reunion, as well as some sort of African carnival in the middle of nowhere. They're seemingly somewhere in central or even west-central California before they end up taking the costal sce...

School Daze (1988) and Higher Learning (1995). Both are about life on an American college campus. Daze uses the HBCU setting, and Learning uses a traditional "state school" sort of campus.  The link between the two films is Laurence Fishburne. In Daze, he plays a student activist named Dap. This character wants the university to devest from South Africa. In Learning, he plays Professor Phipps, a seemingly humorless Political Science teacher who is eager to teach his students harsh life lessons.  Fishburne plays Phipps with an accent, but we never learn anything about this character. Where's he from? Where did he go to school? Why is he always on campus during crucial moments? The guy doesn't seem to have any sort of life or existence off campus. And although the two films are only seven years apart, Professor Phipps doesn't come across as especially young. (Fishburne would have be 34 during filming, which would be a little on the young side for a full professor. A...

I try to write a review immediately after watching a film, but for this one, I wanted to wait a few days. We got to the theater the second week of its release, and I had managed to stay ignorant of how everything in the movie would play out. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by who showed up in this film. I certainly wouldn't have predicted it.  Okay, so there's a 5-year window between this and the last movie, but Aunt May's (Marisa Tormei) gravestone listed 2024 as her year of death. That means Peter (Tom Holland) has been keeping the secret of his identity from MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) for less than 2 years -- which still feels like a crazy amount of time.  Going back to the last movie: Why does Peter not tell Zendaya who he is when he entered the coffeeshop? Is he trying to protect her, which is probably what he would say he's doing, or is he afraid that he will be rejected -- that she will tell him that the MJ he loved is not the MJ she is now? W...

If Far From Home missed a step, then No Way Home tried to overwhelm us with three franchises and a glimpse into the multiverse.  No, this movie isn't perfect. It would be easy to pick on this or that different plot point. But I'm not going to do that here. Topping all that is just how cool it was to see old friends from the earlier Spider-Mans. I wasn't expecting it, and I'm not sure if anything quite like that's ever been done before. Just imagine a bunch of James Bonds standing around together. Wouldn't that be cool? I noticed that a lot of reviewers in my friend group have watched this film multiple times. It always interests me to see that, because not every film gets that wide-ranging repeat viewing treatment. Star Wars, sure, but even the reviewers offering criticism on this one found some reason to keep re-watching it again and again.  This is one of those films that I don't remember watching when it was originally released in theaters. It's possi...