CAFÉ SOCIETY Review

Café Society is a movie I wanted to like more and more as the film played on, but as it did so I actually liked it less and less. Beginning with the standard narration from writer/director Woody Allen that drops us into this tale of a young man looking for a place where the grass might be greener things are promising enough. We are introduced to a cadre of family members around our protagonist, Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg), who will inevitably inform where this current inclination to leave his father's failing jewelry business and move across the country to Los Angeles will actually take him. It is 1930's Los Angeles no less and so Bobby is struck by the great seduction of movie stars, movie star parties, and the most beautiful of people to allure him to the city. It is a place considered mythic to the otherwise unrefined Bobby who has been stuck in Manhattan his entire life. The promise of new beginnings, though somewhat stalled by the disregard of his Uncle Phil (Steve Carell), and the downright gorgeous cinematography of Vittorio Storaro that bathes all of golden age Hollywood in gold lends Café Society this vibrant and crisp feeling that resonates strongly with the modern audience hoping to catch a glimpse of the glitz and glamour of 1930's Hollywood that is well-documented, but too rarely brought to life. This fascination can only last so long though, when it becomes clear Allen's latest isn't necessarily about the introspection of this period in history or even a story that compliments the time period in lending insight to the names and faces we all know, but would like to know better. Instead, Café Society becomes a story solely about the romantic plight of Bobby, an Allen surrogate that Eisenberg again plays tremendously without the burden of having the actual Allen co-star alongside him as he did in 2012's To Rome With Love, but as with that film Café Society ends up offering little more than Allen's insecure yet intellectual quips on love, life, and religion among other things. Unfortunately, at this point such musings without an exceptional story on which to convey them simply feel like little more than standard meditations. It is unfortunate there isn't more imagination and wonder behind this latest excursion of Allen's for Café Society's potential initially feels as fresh and crisp as Bobby's outlook upon arriving in Los Angeles.

International Trailer for Woody Allen's CAFE SOCIETY

For the last month or so I've been listening to a podcast called You Must Remember This which chronicles the "The secret and/or forgotten history of Hollywood's first century." More specifically I've just completed last fall's series about MGM that gave fifteen episodes worth of stories about the heyday of the most famous studio that more or less created the studio system the golden age of Hollywood is known for. Throughout those episodes there were plenty of insights I wasn't previously aware of and of course facets of the industry that were beyond fascinating, but I bring this up only because it informs how excited I am about the latest film from auteur Woody Allen. Led by the appealing pairing of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart Café Society follows a young man who arrives in Hollywood during the 1930's with the hope of working in the film industry. Upon arrival, he falls in love and finds himself swept up in the society that defined the spirit of the age. More than anything else about this trailer it is the visual vibrancy that stands out. Allen's films tend to always have a certain small or confined feel to them as if the director is constantly creating within his own, small world, but there is some actual scope to this trailer with the luscious costume design and cinematography only adding to the sense of time and place. I wasn't a huge fan of last years Irrational Man, but I enjoyed Magic in the Moonlight well enough with its period setting and of course Midnight in Paris is one of Allen's best works in his distinguished career and with this looking very much in line with those if not exactly exploring the same ideas I can't wait to see what the full film holds. Café Society also stars Corey Stoll, Steve Carell, Parker Posey, Jeannie Berlin, Blake Lively, Ken Scott, and is set to open the 69th Annual Cannes Film Festival.

IRRATIONAL MAN Review

In Woody Allen's annual mid-year release we have a typical, late-era Woody Allen film that is more shrug-worthy than anything since the two forgettable cushions on either side of 2011's Midnight in Paris. Every few years the insanely consistent writer/director will deliver something more substantial, something truly affecting, but more times than not we get something akin to what we have this year in Irrational Man. Since becoming rather invested in the art of watching films I have returned to the essential Allen in order to be hip to my craft (Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters), but I've probably been reading about Allen's films since Small Time Crooks (2000) and seeing them in theaters since Paris (2011). Since I've been catching them on a regular basis in their theatrical run though, I've only purchased two that I felt were worth revisiting those being Paris and 2013's Blue Jasmine. It's hard to find much motivation to return to Allen's films because they each more or less offer the same things. There is some philosophizing about a certain area of life under a certain set of character induced circumstances that typically ends up dealing with existentialism in one way or another. This type of conversation and discussion can certainly be interesting, but because of these tendencies Allen's films themselves are more interesting to talk about than they are to actually experience. It's hard to even call Allen's films an experience as they are more lectures than anything else, but every once in a while you actually take something away from them. With Irrational Man though, the only things I took away were that Emma Stone is in fact Allen's latest muse and that Joaquin Phoenix is trying really hard to let us know he put on a pot belly for this role (admittedly among other, deeper things). Whether the point of Phoenix's character being a philosophy professor signals Allen is getting one step closer to just sitting down and filming himself talk for an hour and half on a certain subject, we'll have to wait and see, but more than any time over the last four years I felt like time and age were beginning to catch up the auteur.

First Trailer for Woody Allen's IRRATIONAL MAN

While I still have much catching up to do when it comes to Woody Allen's filmography I have enjoyed taking a trip to the movies over the last four years in order to see what the prolific writer/director has in store for us. Beginning with Midnight in Paris it has been a hit then miss type of pattern as I next saw To Rome With Love, then Blue Jasmine and of course last year was Magic in the Moonlight featuring what looks to be the beginning of another string of collaborations with a talented young actress as Emma Stone returns in Allen's feature this year after starring alongside Colin Firth in Moonlight. This time though, Stone will star in a more contemporary tale centered around an alcoholic, melancholy philosophy professor (Joaquin Phoenix) who strikes up a unique friendship with one of his students played by Stone. While this might be seen as a storyline many viewers will be able to separate from Allen's real life experiences the first trailer makes things seem as if the relationship that develops between Phoenix and Stone's characters might not be purely romantic, but instead hold a strangely unique aspect to it. In fact, the inclusion of Parker Posey and the seeming dynamic between her character and Phoenix's make this film all the more intriguing. Both Phoenix and Stone have been on something of a role as of late, choosing roles that truly challenge them and I'm hoping these roles were taken for the same reasons and not only for the opportunity of working with Allen. We shall see when Irrational Man opens on July 17th.