It\’s true it was made for TV, but it\’s a proper Woody Allen feature film in every respect. He wrote, directed and stars in it. It has the signature white-on-black titles, everything.

Great cast, and some of my favorite Allen one-liners.

It is the 2000\’s that hurt his rep a bit. Match Point is superb as is the aforementioned Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Scoop is utterly enjoyable and I am still perplexed on the reception by critics to that one. Whatever Works does contain one of the most underrated comic performances of the last decade by Evan Rachel Wood while You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger has several good performances. Small Time Crooks is funny. The rest, having not seen Midnight In Paris, is very weak. Still I look forward to this guy\’s films. Because coming out of the winners, such as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, just makes one feel they are seeing a genius at work.

The only films here of much value are
– Shadows and Fog
– Husbands and Wives (which i would grade as an A)
– Bullets Over Broadway
– Mighty Aphrodite (slight, but still enjoyable)
– Sweet and Lowdown (A)
– Everyone Says I Love You

and for less, hey, this ain\’t so bad for late Woody, Match Point and Vicky Cristina.

Many of these, i personally find awful or completely forgettable like Whatever Works.

But again, subjective.

When I was reviewing Hitchcock’s career, and reached his final film, Family Plot, I registered disappointment that it wasn\’t a “summation” that it didn’t gather together his old motifs, underscore what he was trying to do with film. What I’d failed to notice was that he already had with North By Northwest with its wrong man plot, insignificant mcguffins and Cary Grant; everything after that was atypical.

Rewatching Melinda and Melinda, his final New York film before visiting Europe, I had the same vibe; at the end of a five picture deal with Dreamworks, it’s almost as though he’d assumed he might not be making another film in New York and so he’d decided to underline everything he’d done before, like a story arc reaching its emotional crescendo.

Which is why everything seems so familiar – it’s deliberately so. I thought that tragic Melinda –- hereafter known as Melinda-T — reminded me of Judy Davis (on reflection eerily so) – she’s being written that way. In that story, Chloe Sevigny is playing the Mia role with Johnny Lee Miller filling in for the likes of Gene Hackman or Sam Waterson. Comedy Melinda – hereafter known as Melinda-C — is playing the Mia role in that story, with Will Ferrell as Woody, Amanda Peet as Diane Keaton and the role of the dentist would clearly have been picked up by Tony Roberts. Woody’s conjuring the ghosts of his past, but he’s a good enough scriptwriter to be able to evoke this without having to give too much direction.

But there are also structural and visual repetitions. The comedy/tragedy two-story aspect appears in countless of his films, some I realise now more subtly than others. It’s in both Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives, though the levels are far closer and more subtle than in Crimes and Misdemeanours. Melinda and Melinda is the first to name and make them specific. Melinda-T even talks about the kind of premeditated murder perpetrated in Crimes. Melinda-C is lured out to the Hampton’s as happens in Annie Hall. Woody has also had specific geographic locations in mind when doing comedy and drama as though it depends on which side of his little speck of New York you live on as to how you’re life is likely to unfold.

He also makes plain his tendency to use jazz for comedy, classical for drama even to the point up including the switcheroo over the opening and closing titles. And almost all of the music either on track or at least composer level has appeared in one of his previous films, with Duke Ellington as his signature composer. He even seems to homage When Harry Met Sally by employing Ellington’s version of Don’t Get Around Much Anymore which featured so prominently in Reiner’s film (with an added note that when that scene on the side walk happened I had a lump in my throat). Now it’s easy to suggest that this is simply Woody running out of ideas, going over old ground. But they’re too pronounced for them to be simple recycling or coincidence; even after the fumbling Hollywood Ending he’s clearly too engaged with the process for all of these decision not to be deliberate signs.

In my book, Allen has only made one truly bad film. And that\’s Scoop. Awful film. He even described it as a \”kleenex of a film.\”

Best Actress in a Supporting Role (for 1992)
WINNER
Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny)
NOMINEES
Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives)
Joan Plowright (Enchanted April)
Vanessa Redgrave (Howards End)
Miranda Richardson (Damage)

VCB is definitely A-, and is not an overrated film by any means. Great script full of twists, and spectacular performances by Cruz and Hall. One of his best latter-day films.