Radio Days (1987)

Title: Radio Days
Release Date: 30 January 1987
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Seth Green, Julie Kavner, Dianne Wiest
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093818/
My Rating: (7/10) ★★★★★★★✩✩✩

(note william h. macy)

Woody Allen narrates and a young Seth Green stars in this love poem to radio programming. The tale centers around Joe, whose childhood is influenced, shaped and directed by whats happening on the radio. The radio is a source for community. It is simultaneously entertainment, news and romance. It brings families together (a touching vignette about a girl falling down a well hits rather unexpectedly and quite poignantly) and tears people asunder (Mia Farrow plays Sally, a woman who's about to get her big radio break the moment they announce Pearl Harbor). In all, a funny and quick film. Nothing about this film packs too heavy a punch, but it is notable for the simple fact that Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton appear together for the only time. Additionally, the pacing is quick and the dialogue will be familiar to anyone who grew up with a large family.

Manhattan (1979)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Manhattan
Release Date: 25 April 1979
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Meryl Streep
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079522/
My Rating: (7/10) ★★★★★★★✩✩✩


Thought this film was delightful and appreciated the true mature sensibility present in Woody's acting. Here he plays Isaac, a 42 year old man dating a 17 year old (played by Mariel Hemingway). At first, I thought Mariel Hemingway was dreadful but she soon grew on me as the youngest person in Isaac's circle and the only voice of reason. Diane Keaton shines again, as does Meryl Streep who plays a lesbian, over-the-shoulder-hair enthusiast. Obviously a love poem about NYC, perhaps it did not pack quite the emotional punch I was expecting post-Interiors and Annie Hall. Delightful, but ultimately not one of my favorites. 

Interiors (1978)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Interiors
Release Date: 2 August 1978
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt, Kristin Griffith, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077742/
My Rating: (9/10) ★★★★★★★★★✩

This film touched me on a profoundly deep level. Woody Allen's first foray into drama is the startling story of three sisters coping with their emotionally unstable mother after their father walks out on her. Diane Keaton as the older sister is reserved and nuanced, yet reveals a world of emotion boiling just beneath the surface. Mary Beth Hurt as the younger sister left with the day-to-day burden of caring for their mother gives an incredibly honest performance while Geraldine Page as the matriarch is beautifully imperfect and gives a performance always rooted in her profound love for her husband, never in the cliches of mental anxiety.

Heavily influenced by the films of Bergman, this film consists of beautifully composed shots full of symbols and double meanings. It's a quiet film, where the soundtrack to the film really helps tell the story--I'm talking the ambient noise here. There are startling moments in the sound design that really support the powerful images and story. My favorite Woody Allen film yet!

Woody Speaking about Interiors

Annie Hall (1977)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Annie Hall
Release Date: 20 April 1977
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Paul Simon, Christopher Walken
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075686/
My Rating: (9/10) ★★★★★★★★★✩

"You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's so difficult in life"

Originally titled Anhedonia, or the inability to find pleasure from normally pleasurable events, this movie follows Alvy Singer (Allen) in his failed relationship with Annie Hall. Diane Keaton turns in a strong performance but, for me,  this movie belongs to Woody Allen. For the first time in his body of work I saw a mature, deeply complex protagonist. His character as a complex, multi-faceted everyman. As me. Someone who has a tendency to sabotage their own happiness, yet lacks the true self awareness to see that he is clearly the cause of his own displeasure. Annie says to Alvy late in the film "You're incapable of enjoying life. You're like NYC, you're like this person, you're like this island unto yourself..." and then tells him "You know how wonderful you are...you're the reason that I got out of my room, that I was able to sing, get more in touch with my feelings..." This succinct summation of a person's ability to encourage happiness in others while prohibiting their own is a profound revelation to me. It's lovely how it is mirrored in Alvy's suggesting of an analyst, college courses, and certain books to Annie and then being left behind by her enlightenment in these areas. 

Technically, the long shots are beautifully and creatively composed and help the audience to get lost in the story. I only counted one instance that made me want to stab my eyes out (about fifteen minutes into the film Tony Roberts and Woody have a lengthy dialogue which begins with them so unidentifiably in the background of a wide shot. This shot holds as it takes them at least 45 seconds to come into frame. They slowly travel to camera but just trying to read the shot for the first half of the scene pulled me out of the film).

The stories are true! This film marks the beginning of a more mature era of filmmaking for Woody Allen. Deeply complex, boldly personal, and quite touching on many levels. 

Love and Death (1975)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Love and Death
Release Date: 10 June 1975
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, James Tolkan
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073312/
My Rating: (5/10) ★★★★★✩✩✩✩✩

"I was walking through the woods thinking about Christ. If he was a carpenter I wonder what he charged for bookshelves..." Woody Allen is a neurotic soldier in Czarist Russia, a pacifist, and haplessly in love with his 2nd cousin (twice removed). Together they formulate a plot to kill Napoleon but the true story lies in the courtship of Sonja by Woody Allen's nervous Boris Grushenko. Together, these cousins philosophize as sport and challenge each other's world views. It's no wonder Boris falls for his cousin.

In the chronology of Woody Allen films, this holds a bizarre place. His next film, hailed as the first film from a more mature filmmaker, will win the academy award while his last five films were all jam-packed-with-as-many-jokes-as-they-can-handle comedies. Love and Death perhaps shows a softer side of Allen, content not to lay it on so thick. He actually speaks directly to the camera in several moments of the film and it seems in these sequences Woody himself is struggling to exhibit the meaning in his film. Showing the audience that there is a deeper level here, not just the comic but also the tragic. That they are connected, do not exist without each other. And while this film doesn't quite work for me (though some of my favorite lines are here), in the context of the greater whole this dissatisfaction with making light, comic films devoid of "meaning" will lead to much greater things.

Sleeper (1973)

(Traveling through the films of Woody Allen)

Title: Sleeper
Release Date: 17 December 1973
Directed by: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070707/
My Rating: (8/10) ★★★★★★★★✩✩


Woody Allen directs Diane Keaton for the first time. She turns in a kooky, high energy performance and, surprisingly, I'd never realized she was such a beauty in her younger years. [Side note, film is a playground for any fantasy you can dream up so why NOT dream up a world in which the lovable loser wins the pretty girl in the end. It's the dream we all have of getting what we want that we feel we miss out on.] I must say I am enjoying this journey through Woody Allen's early films because more than anything it contextualizes his neurotic side. I find him endearing in his younger days, embodying the inept social nitwit that we all must feel is hiding inside of us. I enjoyed this film in particular because as a director he continues to play--doing what he does so well but unafraid to let it live and breathe in a variety of different genres. Here, science fiction.  You have to be a confident director to spoof such a unique genre and nail it masterfully. And knowing that his confident mastery is hidden behind his neurotic persona makes it all a bit more meaningful. I know his films mature in the next few years, and I'm eager to see the growth, but with such a large body of work it's good to know there are at least half a dozen films where all he seemed to care about was making an audience laugh. 

*It's also interesting to note that Joel Schumacher designed the costumes for this film.