You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Director: Woody Allen
With: Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones, Frieda Pinto, Antonio Banderas, Pauline Collins, Lucy Punch
The once-great Woody has resurrected his career by filming in England and Europe. He gets the kind of inspiration from those locales that he used to get in Manhattan.
He has left behind the outright comedies and the pseudo-Bergman art films for an examination of life’s ironies, and this film is a seething cauldron of conflicting ironies. It is funny in a sophisticated way, and punishes those who transgress, including an old man who lusts after younger women. Hmmm...
The plot is too complicated to relate, and might spoil the experience, but Roy (Brolin) is married to Sally (Watts), and is a failed novelist and philanderer. Sally is an ambitious art dealer who begins to resent her husband’s funk, and becomes attracted to the gallery owner (Banderas). Roy, meanwhile, is a peeping Tom who falls in love with the woman in the next apartment, Dia (Pinto). He is also an opportunist and a thief.
Alfie (Hopkins) is Sally’s father, recently divorced from Sally’s mother, Helena (Jones). He lusts after younger women, and finds Charmaine (Punch), a dumb hooker with expensive habits. Helena has retreated into a world of psychics and fortune tellers, especially Cristal (Collins), a fraud who has found a cash cow.
Everyone behaves in the most despicable or stupid manner, or both. Everyone gets what is coming to them, one way or another. Alfie is just pathetic, but Roy is evil, so the wages of sin are distributed in an equitable manner. No one is spared.
Wonderful actors speaking witty and sardonic lines, in a moral fable written by a man who knows what it is to screw up. A mature story and a good example of Woody in the autumn of his years. See it.
A-
Red
Director: Robert Schwentke
With: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Karl Urban, Rebecca Pidgeon
I’m stuck here trying to decide whether this is a waste of a good cast, or just a hoot with great actors having fun. It is a bit of both. If you are aware of Bruce Willis’ persona, this movie reflects it, tongue-in-cheek, macho and gooey at the core.
Frank Moses (Willis) is a retired CIA agent who has established a telephone relationship with Sarah Ross (Parker), a low-level bureaucrat in Kansas City. When someone tries to kill Moses, he escapes and goes to KC to meet and flee with Ross. She feels kidnaped, but eventually goes along with him as her life is put in danger as well.
Moses relies on other RED (retired, extremely dangerous) CIA types. Joe (Freeman) has stage-4 liver cancer, and an information network within the agency. Marvin (Malkovich) is an off-the-grid loony with weapons and tactics savvy. Victoria (Mirren) is a sweet aging lady who takes the occasional assassination contract just to keep busy. Ivan (Cox) is an ex-KGB agent who knows these people and misses the old days. He has a romantic history with Victoria.
So, the movie is an extended action/chase film with violent, but cartoonish, set pieces. The funniest thing is watching Mirren handle a variety of automatic weapons, including a powerful machine gun, like she was dicing onions.
The whole thing is fun, but very slight. I must say that I enjoyed it while I was watching it, and my reservations occurred to me only later. What the hell? No nutrition, but candy for the mind.
C+