Shadows and Fog. Woody Allen. 1991. ⚁

This is it! The final movie of the Woody Allen box set I bought some years back:

This is one movie I don’t recall… I think it’s from after I stopped watching his movies? Let’s see!

[ten minutes pass]

Wow, this is an odd movie. Sure, it’s a pastiche (and possibly a parody?) of expressionist German cinema, but… just… what? Perhaps it’s just a horrible, horrible DVD transfer, but everything is washed out and awful: It looks like it was filmed on colour stock and then the colours were dropped out? But surely that’s not possible?

And the … performances… Yes, I know, it’s meant to be funny, but it’s not. It’s like a parody in search of a subject.

Ah:

Recalling the film’s critical and commercial failure in his 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing, Allen joked that “the filming of Shadows and Fog went off without a hitch except for the movie.”

It really, really bombed.

[ten minutes pass]

It’s got all these famous people… was this movie just an excuse to hob-nob with all these actors?

[the end]

This isn’t a good movie.

Hannah and Her Sisters. Woody Allen. 1986. ⚄

[twenty-five minutes pass]

Wow. Watching Michael Caine playing the Woody character (well, one of them in this movie) is… kinda horrifying? When Allen does the character himself, it’s amusing, but when Caine does it, it’s really, really scary.

Perhaps that’s what they were after?

[the end]

Well! That’s a good ending.

Manhattan. Woody Allen. 1979. ⚃

Man, this is a dark transfer. Is it supposed to look like this? I got a DVD box set… should probably have waited for the 2K box set, but that still hasn’t happened? Oh, there’s two boxes with six movies each? But that project stalled in 2016. Allen isn’t the … most happening thing happening now, I guess.

[fifteen minutes pass]

Oh, right, this is the one that starts off with Allen (44) dating Meriel Hemingway (18).

[the end]

This movie is catnip for people who love Manhattan. All those shots of New York looking so romantic…

Diane Keaton is absolutely amazing in this. And I guess it’s one of Allen’s best performances as an actor? And, you know, Manhattan. And the relationship complications are probably the best plotted of any of his movies? But. I found it kinda hard to really connect with this movie, watching it now. I remember loving it when I’ve seen it before (probably a handful of times in the 80s), but I’m not really loving it now.