Wonder Wheel

First Hit:  Although well-acted, there's too much telling versus showing in this film.

I’m not a fan of longish monologues where the actor is telling their history to another actor as a way to tell the audience the necessary or semi-necessary information about themselves. It can work if kept to a minimum, but here it is incessant.

Much of what was told was unnecessary for the character to be seen more fully. The long monologue of Ginny (Kate Winslet) telling her lover Mickey (Justin Timberlake) as to why she felt like she was a disaster of a woman was totally unnecessary. It didn’t add to the film because Winslet is fully capable of making the audience believe her depth of sadness without all the information.

Additionally, I’m not a big fan of talking to the camera as a way to move the film along and to provide a backstory to what we are seeing and why. But Woody Allen (writer and director) felt it necessary to have Mickey talk to the camera several times and the first offense is at the beginning of the film which took me right out of film from the get go.

What we have is Ginny who is unhappily married to Humpty (Jim Belushi) who is an angry drunk so she keeps him sober. They're raising Ginny’s son Richie (Jack Gore) from a previous relationship. Richie is a handful because he’s a pyromaniac. Ginny feels both trapped and grateful for her current relationship with Humpty.

Humpty’s daughter Carolina (Juno Temple), from a previous marriage, shows up one day because she ratted out her gangster husband to the cops. She’s decides to visit her dad because she’s broke and because her husband won’t look for her at her dad's because of the strained relationship.

One day Ginny meets up and talks with Mickey and they start an affair. Hoping to enjoy love in her life once again, she becomes jealous when Carolina also becomes interested in Mickey.

This is the set-up and as we wade through lots of explanatory dialogue we a story is presented in the Coney Island boardwalk setting.

Winslet is excellent. It is her facial expressions that really shares the story despite all the lines and dialogue she's given. Belushi is perfect in this role. A barely educated guy who is a bit brutish, thinks the world of his wife, likes fishing and loves his daughter. Gore as the pyro son is an odd character in the film but he carries the role well. Timberlake is strong as the affable lifeguard who is honest in his dealings with the women. Temple is fantastic. I enjoyed her scenes and her look fit perfectly with the story. Allen wrote his typical screenplay filled with unnecessary justifying lines for the behavior of his characters. I really liked many of the sets and scenes that he put his characters in. The noise of the boardwalk and the overriding ragtime music set a wonderful tone.

Overall:  This is not one of Allen’s better films because the excessive dialogue got in the way.

Café Society

First Hit:  I was disappointed in this film.

The first thing was I couldn’t get over how quickly Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) spoke his lines with rejoinders coming almost as fast in return.

It just didn’t seem like anyone (Director or Actors) wanted the let the words breathe and have some sense of feeling with them. It is reflective of a poor Woody Allen film. Eisenberg is no Allen (and I like Eisenberg's work) and speaking Allen’s words the way he was directed didn’t work.

Nobody does Allen like Allen (good or bad). With this overriding problem with the film, it seemed hard to get into the story. On a good note, I thought that Kristen Stewart (as Vonnie) was very strong. She was the only main character that seemed to feel her way into her character.

Steve Carell as Phil Stern was OK, but at times it just seemed as though he was straightjacketed as the big time movie producer. I never felt his attraction to either his wife or Vonnie, it all seemed for show. I did like the feel of the 1930’s set with the nightclub being especially embracing.

Eisenberg, either got poor direction or wasn’t right for the role in that his machine gun approach to the lines lacked depth and feeling. Stewart was the best character in the film and she continues to show why she is so much more than the “Twilight” girl. Carell was mediocre as the studio executive, and my sense it was the direction that failed him. Blake Lively was good as Bobby’s wife and the scene of their meeting was one of the better scenes in the film. Corey Stoll as the criminal element of Bobby’s family was also good. Woody Allen, narrated, wrote and directed this film and in all ways it seemed to lack heart and comedy.

Overall:  One film that is easily forgotten.

Magic in the Moonlight

First Hit:  Lighthearted philosophical romp through Woody Allen’s belief structure around magic, God and science.

Stanley (Colin Firth) is a magician named Wei Ling Soo. He’s famous and he’s good. He also has a job of invalidating and unmasking people who claim to be spiritualist, people that can speak to the dead and denote a person’s past.

His best friend, and fellow magician, Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) comes to him with a proposition to unmask a young beautiful woman who claims to be clairvoyant. Sophie (Emma Stone) comes from a working class family and because of her abilities has gotten some wealthy people supporting her and her abilities by leading séances.

As the story unfolds, Stanley starts to believe until he sees the fallacy of what is happening to him. The scenery of this film is great. I loved the cars used to represent the 1920’s and the costumes were really wonderful. Stylistically this film is really good, but Allenistic dialogue just seemed to be pressed at times although the last ½ hour was a lot more interesting and engaging.

Firth is excellent as the sarcastic arrogant English magician. However his rudeness actually bothered me from time to time – probably the intended result. McBurney was good as the conniving jealous friend. Stone was sweet as Sophie but she wasn’t quite believable as a psychic. I did think that this pairing didn’t work well because of the age differences between the two. Allen both wrote and directed this film and as expected we get Woody’s version of the world and here it was a little overhanded.

Overall:  Enjoyable and easy to watch, however not sure if the intellectual challenges Allen wanted were really there.

Blue Jasmine

First Hit:  Wasn’t impressed with overall script but thought Cate Blanchett was amazing to watch.

For some reason the film doesn't delve too much into the cause of everyone's anguish; the defining event being the arrest and prosecution of Hal (Alec Baldwin) for deceiving all his family and friends with investment schemes that ruin their lives.

Therefore, I found it hard to "get" that Hal actually had the smarts to be deceitful. Despite this obvious slight of hand, the prominent focus of this film is the subject of lying and self deceit. His wife, Jasmine (Blanchett), is the cause of his fall from grace because she deceived herself by ignoring until she decided to call him out.

As Blanchett as the vehicle of the story, director and writer Woody Allen hopes you forgive the lack of background and gives you snippets of the past by having Jasmine zone out into an alternate reality to fill in the story. In much of the film, it works well enough, but in other aspects it doesn’t. Jasmine blames Hal for her current life of no money and no friends, while taking no responsibility for any of it herself.

Arriving at her sister Ginger’s (Sally Hawkins) in the semi-downtrodden neighborhood on South Van Ness in San Francisco, she is lost and wants to try to make something out of her life. The story is that she spent time in a mental hospital after being found talking to herself on the streets of New York City. The first lie she tells her sister is that she flew to SF in first class; the scene showing her in her seat we can easily see she wasn’t in the first class section at all. She cannot let go of the life she use to have.

Throughout the film we watch Jasmine fade in and out of past stories and her current reality. In the end we don't really know the truth of whether she was complicit in her husbands story or just didn't want to accept the truth as her reality.

For the most part Blanchett was very good and I also felt she was limited by the script. Baldwin wasn’t very believable as the master manipulator. Hopkins was superb. She was refreshing, alive and well suited to the role. Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s former husband Augie, especially in his first scene, seemed like he was reading script and didn’t embody the character very well. Bobby Cannavale as Chili was very engaged in his character and was fun to watch. Allen wrote and directed this effort. The background was week and made believability of the story weak. He got some strong performances out of Cannavale, Blanchett and Hawkins.

Overall:  Not Allen’s best but not his worst either.

To Rome With Love

First Hit:  Mediocre Allen film with some funny moments.

Over the last few years Woody Allen has created a few wonderful works based in Europe: “Midnight in Paris”, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, and “Match Point”.

Part of what made these films work is that Allen isn’t a character in them. It appears to me that his best work, these days, is when he isn’t a character in his films but when his focus is strong writing and directing.

Here Jerry (Allen) and his wife Phyllis (played by Judy Davis) are in Rome to meet their daughter Hayley’s (played by Alison Pill) fiancé Michelangelo (played by Flavio Parenti). In another story, John (played by Alex Baldwin) is coaching Jack (Jesse Eisenberg) about whether he should or will have sex with his live-in girlfriend Sally’s (played by Greta Gerwig) close friend Monica (Ellen Page) who is visiting them from Hollywood.

In another story, Millie and Antonio (played by Alessandra Mastronardi and Alessandro Tiberi respectively) are on their honeymoon in Rome and she wants to have an affair with an Italian film star while her new husband is attempting to fend off Anna (played by Penelope Cruz) a whore who’s been fully paid for.

Lastly, there is a story about the fleetingness and stupidity of fame with Leopoldo (played by Roberto Benigni) who all of a sudden finds himself the darling of the media until one day it stops, just as it started, suddenly and without reason.

Of the four major stories, the one with Jerry attempting to get Michelangelo’s father Giancarlo (played by Fabio Armiliato) to sing opera on stage after Jerry hears him singing opera in the shower are the funny bits. We discover that Giancarlo can only sing well when he is in a shower, so Jerry stages major operas with every scene with Giancarlo singing on stage in a portable shower.

Allen is mediocre and, for the most part, probably needs to quit being in front of the camera. Davis is good as Allen’s wife who puts up with her husband’s predilections. Pill is OK as Allen and Davis’ daughter. Parenti is a level above as the protective left wing fiancé. Baldwin is nothing interesting except when he says lines which reflect his real world woes. Eisenberg has no wings here and is retrained. Gerwig is OK but doesn’t seem engaged in the role. Page is supposed to be the femme fatale, but I found it hard to see her as described (sexy). Mastronardi and Tiberi are fine as the distracted honeymooners. Cruz came across as overtly trying. Benigni is somewhat mindless in this misplaced character. Armiliato was the best thing in the film. Being able to hold together a shower signing opera man was very good. Allen wrote and directed this very mediocre film.

Overall: This film was mostly lifeless and without a strong story – just a mash of four poorly constructed ones.