BEFORE: It's that kind of day where everything seems to go wrong - our house got invaded by ants, which sometimes happens in the spring, so we've got to set up a network of bait traps in every room where we've seen them. Then my wife woke me up at 5:30 am to tell me the refrigerator wasn't working, so we had to fill a cooler with ice and try to save as many meats and frozen foods as we could, while performing triage and risking all the dairy products and eggs in the refrigerator. It was also a very rainy morning, and I feel like if one more thing had gone wrong, like water coming in the basement, all together this would have been some sign that we're supposed to sell the house or something and go live in a cabin in the woods, or move upstate or something. But no flooding, and thankfully it was just a part on the fridge that needed to be replaced, and now we just have to win the battle against the invading ants. I guess we're not ready to give up on city life just yet.
This is it, the last Woody Allen film - maybe. This one was released in 2017, not long after I'd watched "Café Society", so it seemed like as soon as I caught up, there was still one more to go. And there was NO Woody Allen movie released in 2018, though theoretically he could still have one coming out this year, but there's no set release date for it, so who knows. He signed one of those big-money deals with Amazon Studios, so information on his next film "A Rainy Day in New York" is not available. The guy is 83, so he probably works at his own pace. It took me two years to link to his next film, but for the moment at least, I've cleared the board.
You might be thinking - wait, what happened to "Pitch Perfect 3"? With Anna Kendrick appearing in two films, why not make it a three-peat? Ah, but I need that film in a couple of days to make another connection between two specific films, so I will get there, I just found a way to squeeze in two more films before I circle back. So instead I'm following the other track, with Justin Timberlake carrying over from "Trolls".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Café Society" (Movie #2,579)
THE PLOT: In Coney Island in the 1950's, a lifeguard tells the story of a middle-aged carousel operator, his beleaguered wife, and the visitor who turns their lives upside-down.
AFTER: It's not just that Woody Allen has started to repeat himself, because really, he's ALWAYS done that - perhaps it's just the fact that I watched most of his filmography from end to end that I became hyper-aware that I was seeing the same themes over and over, and similar characters also. It's just that this has become a sort of plot shorthand for him, and he's started to skip the necessary steps in between that are supposed to get us from Plot Point A to Plot Point Z - you can't just leave out Points B through Y!
So this is obviously set back in the 1940s or 1950s - people make references to serving in the war, so it can't be the 1930's And there's a kid growing up in the shadow of the roller coaster near Coney Island (NOTE to IMDB - nobody says "ON Coney Island", because it's not really an island...). We've seen kids like this before, in "Radio Days" and I think one other film. And there's a woman who used to be an actress, but now works as a waitress - that feels right out of "Hannah and Her Sisters" or "Broadway Danny Rose". And there are a couple of gangsters trying to find her husband's daughter, this feels like something from "Bullets Over Broadway", right? And then there are a couple cases of infidelity, which is, well, just about every Woody Allen film, right? What is it about this particular time-frame and location that makes him keep coming back to re-visit it, when he's already set a number of stories there?
I kind of miss Woody's films from 2005 to 2012, when he started setting things in Europe, it felt kind of like a fresh start, new locales for someone who had set most of his films in NYC - it seemed like he was really stretching and challenging himself by setting films in the U.K. or Paris or Rome, and now he's reverted to his old ways again, and it just feels stale to me, like this ground has been covered before, and better, by the same director earlier in his career.
Plus, I've never seen a Brooklyn apartment that looked more like a set - from what I know about Coney Island I don't see how any apartment could possibly be located THERE with such a great view of the ferris wheel and the Boardwalk. Not today, and not back in the 1940's either. Plus there are windows everywhere, who would live like that in NYC where privacy would be absolutely impossible? Next it seems like they overdid it with the cinematography, because every important event in these characters' lives seems to take place during the "magic hour", which is just around sunrise or sunset, when you get this great orange light that slowly fades away. Sure, it's symbolic, but once you notice that it's there again and again, it's impossible to NOT notice it, and surely these people must have important conversations in mid-afternoon sometimes too, right?
(EDIT - Yep, my hunch was right. The apartment scenes were shot at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, so that means the backgrounds were probably either a matte shot or were added later digitally. But to my surprise, there IS a Chinese Garden on Staten Island, as stated. I was willing to bet those scenes couldn't possibly have been shot in NY. So I stand corrected.)
Still, I feel like Woody employed too many narrative shortcuts here - by making one of the characters a writer, that gives free rein for him to discuss himself in terms of his own "character flaws" or other people get defined by their "fatal weaknesses". These are not things that are supposed to be stated, these should be parts of characters that we, the audience, pick up on, and telegraphing them like this is very lazy indeed.
Later in the film, people managed to know things they're not supposed to know, and then just said, "Well, I figured it out." BUT HOW? Again, this seems very lazy to just explain away with a line or two of dialogue how somebody learned valuable information, and I maintain that this is like a math problem, you can't just come up with the right answer, you have to show your work to explain how they got there.
The kid in the family is a pyromaniac, he keeps getting into trouble for starting fires - but again, WHY does he do this? It's put forward as a thing that exists, and then never really explained or properly dealt with. It can't just be that way because it is that way, there should be a reason for this existing, and then there should be some consequence or resolution from it. The same goes for a lot of other things here, they just are the way they are, because. Partially this is meant to show people who are stuck in their situations, because much like the carousel or the ferris wheel, they're all going around in circles, without getting anywhere. Maybe that's the point, but it still seems lazy from a storytelling angle.
I lucked out and was finally able to watch this on an Academy screener, but much like "Last Flag Flying", this highlights the problem that I'm having with streaming services - this film is available on Amazon Prime, but not in many other places. OK, so I COULD have watched it on iTunes or YouTube for rental, but when it's produced by Amazon Studios, that means that it's NOT going to be on Netflix for sure, and it's not going to be on premium cable either. So it, and many other movies, are being screened on certain exclusivity deals that prevent some people from being able to see it, which seems sort of against the point. When a studio makes a movie, why don't they want the maximum number of people possible to be able to see it? I can't watch movies on Amazon right now due to a technical issue, so should I be prevented forever from being able to watch it? Same goes for Netflix exclusives, since not everyone has Netflix. And why are shows like "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek: Discovery" good enough to air on CBS All Access, but not on CBS-TV? Are we going to go through this too with Disney's upcoming streaming service? If you want to watch the new "Dumbo" or the new Star Wars TV series, then you MUST join another streaming service and pay another subscription fee - it's a form of entertainment blackmail, and I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.
Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Carnage"), Juno Temple (last seen in "Atonement"), Jim Belushi (last seen in "About Last Night..."), Jack Gore, Tony Sirico (last seen in "Café Society"), Steve Schirripa (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Tommy Nohilly, Thomas Guiry, with cameos from Max Casella (last seen in "Live by Night"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Debi Mazar (last seen in "Lovelace"), Bobby Slayton (last seen in "Get Shorty").
RATING: 5 out of 10 broken plates
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