Anything Else (2003) / The Front (1976) / Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)
In response to Ian's heartfelt search for a different comedy, I propose Woody Allen films. I've seen three lately, The Front, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Anything Else. To be honest, The Front wasn't an Allen film, because he starred in but didn't direct.
Christina Ricci, co-star in Anything Else, gets me going in that good way. To quote Jason Biggs, Ricci's boyfriend in the film, or maybe it was Biggs' then-girlfriend who said it, she's got an offbeat sexual energy. But her whole aura is offset in this movie pretty quickly by her outright craziness, like a nightmare in Brooklyn kind of torture-your-boyfriend nutiness. She tries to set Biggs's character up with different women, depriving him of sex while encouraging him to sleep around, and lets her mom move into the living room of their apartment. The film's set in Queens or thereabouts, with a bunch of brown stone houses, I think.
Not to be outdone, the crazy girlfriend in Vicky Xtina (Penelope Cruz) wields a gun and rummages through other peoples' luggage. She got the Best Supporting Actress award but doesn't appear in the film until about halfway through. We were misled, hoping for another Volver (my gf is a huge P. and Suri Cruz fan. We own Vanilla Sky). Javier Bardem rules in this film, making out with pretty much everyone worth kissing in the thing, yet still retaining some integrity as an artist.
So what's with Allen and crazy women? Who knows.
No watch checks in either of those films, although I did watch Anything Else on two consecutive nights, about half each time. The dialogue is good, with Biggs doing his best Woody Allen. Allen himself co-stars as a paranoid best buddy/mentor. It made me miss having a crazy mentor like I did at my last job.
So these are different comedies, not gross-out, wittier, perhaps snootier, than the Apatowian stuff. Anything Else gets a little slow or tries a little too hard, with split screens at one point showing the zany action in three different situations at once. It's definitely old style.
The Front, meanwhile, tried way too hard. It was based on the Hollywood blacklist, but set in New York, where some TV was filmed/aired live back in the 50s, evidently. The actors were real blacklisted types, except Allen I guess. I feel like everyone took it a little too seriously to be funny. There is a great Allen moment at the end though, where he sticks it to his WASP-y persecutors. He avoids answering their questions, without taking the 5th, and mumbles his way into an indictment of the communist witchhunt. Take that G-men!
Christina Ricci, co-star in Anything Else, gets me going in that good way. To quote Jason Biggs, Ricci's boyfriend in the film, or maybe it was Biggs' then-girlfriend who said it, she's got an offbeat sexual energy. But her whole aura is offset in this movie pretty quickly by her outright craziness, like a nightmare in Brooklyn kind of torture-your-boyfriend nutiness. She tries to set Biggs's character up with different women, depriving him of sex while encouraging him to sleep around, and lets her mom move into the living room of their apartment. The film's set in Queens or thereabouts, with a bunch of brown stone houses, I think.
Not to be outdone, the crazy girlfriend in Vicky Xtina (Penelope Cruz) wields a gun and rummages through other peoples' luggage. She got the Best Supporting Actress award but doesn't appear in the film until about halfway through. We were misled, hoping for another Volver (my gf is a huge P. and Suri Cruz fan. We own Vanilla Sky). Javier Bardem rules in this film, making out with pretty much everyone worth kissing in the thing, yet still retaining some integrity as an artist.
So what's with Allen and crazy women? Who knows.
No watch checks in either of those films, although I did watch Anything Else on two consecutive nights, about half each time. The dialogue is good, with Biggs doing his best Woody Allen. Allen himself co-stars as a paranoid best buddy/mentor. It made me miss having a crazy mentor like I did at my last job.
So these are different comedies, not gross-out, wittier, perhaps snootier, than the Apatowian stuff. Anything Else gets a little slow or tries a little too hard, with split screens at one point showing the zany action in three different situations at once. It's definitely old style.
The Front, meanwhile, tried way too hard. It was based on the Hollywood blacklist, but set in New York, where some TV was filmed/aired live back in the 50s, evidently. The actors were real blacklisted types, except Allen I guess. I feel like everyone took it a little too seriously to be funny. There is a great Allen moment at the end though, where he sticks it to his WASP-y persecutors. He avoids answering their questions, without taking the 5th, and mumbles his way into an indictment of the communist witchhunt. Take that G-men!
Labels: Lots of Quotable One-Liners, new york city, Schtick, Secret agent men, Wacky antics
posted by Pete @ 1:51 PM
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