We open with Wallace Shawn in a psychiatrist’s office. His marriage has been running on fumes, and he suspects his wife of having an affair with another man. Shortly past the five-minute mark, he will be pontificating on “the big questions – what’s it all about? Is this everything that there is, or is there more?” Folks, it’s a Woody Allen movie, with all the Woody Allen stuff – so much so that it would be a fitting (if not exactly happy) swan song. It’s pretty thin soup, but I don’t expect strong work from Allen anymore, and whenever he has a new one I coast through it just trying to enjoy the all-pervading Woodyness.

The plot involves a love…

the latest in late style. woody allen's cinematic reference points have never evolved past the european midcentury masters and orson welles, and this film lays bare the contradictions between those influences and his actual work. in the dream sequences, allen creates farcical versions of citizen kane, jules et jim, the exterminating angel and the like. however, the drama itself never ventures beyond classic woody, extending his relationship neurosis into these criterioncore scenarios.

what is to be said of mort rifkin? i usually detest wallace shawn, but hearing him deliver slow, decrepit versions of the woodyisms that have been said by awful younger actors for the last decade was beautiful. his posture is more turtlish than ever, reminiscient of recent photos…

a new low in the last twenty years of garbage allen movies. some of the most idiotic "homages" since le redoutable. the main character talks about the bastardization of film like one minute in (all while sitting in an incredibly hideous shot), how he used to give classes on "the great european masters", which we all know means the entry level bergman movies that allen never got over, and that are streaming and floating around all over the place anyway, are you seriously saying people ignore them? watching this is nauseating, the best argument on why we maybe need to stop taking the criterion canon seriously. godard made a short film calling this guy a clown and many years later…

I don't know, and frankly I don't think I want to know what it says about me that I had to turn off Malcolm & Marie after 5 minutes, but I watched this from beginning to end. Suppose if I'm going to watch a petty film about cinema I might as well stick with the old masters. Sam Levinson is a bitter, resentful little tyke trying desperately to stake his claim. Woody just coasts by making low budget comedies in relative obscurity. I can imagine this would have made me disproportionately angry had I seen it a few years ago. Woody's tastes in film haven't strayed beyond the 1960s in the nearly 60 years he's been working, and yet his understanding…

“Are you still asking those questions? God, life, death, the meaning of life?”
“Of course, what other questions are worth asking?”

In a way, this exchange summarizes both the themes Allen’s interested in exploring, and the most common criticism of his later films— that they’re all about the same thing. Both statements are undoubtedly true, but they don’t necessarily reflect the value of said films, or the weight of their criticism. After all, every theme and every idea has been explored in one way or another, be it in film, literature, music, art, or theater. For a long time too. What we get is recycled thoughts through a new lens. Or, as Walter Hill would say, “old stories with new…

in Allen's latest, a sexless charmer with a built-in ad for San Sebastian's film festival, the filmmaker's long-ossified style curdles over itself to reveal playful re-enactments of the same European masters his protagonists have admired for the last 50 years.

the re-enactments here are worth juxtaposing with near-identical ones in Stardust Memories, Interiors, Another Woman, etc.. then, there was a sincerity that has now been hollowed out to reveal placeholders - art works that signify something nostalgic for Allen more than his actual interest in how they deal with existentialism. was Allen's work ever about actual existential crises, or have they always been, foremost, about his own ego as someone who deals with these issues and Rifkin's Festival is just…