WONDER WHEEL

WONDER WHEEL is no BLUE JASMINE, but it's still far better than the mediocre rote films that we've come to expect from late era Woody Allen, elevated by a superb performance by Kate Winslet, in one of her now trademark performances as a disappointed weary middle-aged woman. She plays Ginny, wife of the man (Jim Belushi) who runs the Coney Island ferris or wonder wheel.  She has a mid-life crisis affair with a younger aspiring playwright and lifeguard called Mickey played by Justin Timberlake. This allows her to indulge her nostalgia for her aspirations to being an actress in her youth - but also self-consciously to act.  She rehearses telling him that she's older and married.  She claims that her real life as a waitress is performative. The meta-layers of performance - of being alienated from reality - are heart-breaking.  

The heart-break is compounded because we know that the affair means far less to Mickey than to Ginny, as is evident when he starts seeing Ginny's stepdaughter Carolina - a fragile and vulnerable girl played by a superb and much under-rated Juno Temple. Its here that the movie suffers - with the Pygmalion attempt at education of Carolina by the pretentious Mickey and the usual Allen moral lassitude for men who go with their dicks lead them.  But the film recovers remarkably in its final act - reminiscent of CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS - featuring a tour de force scene from a drunk and delusional Ginny as she is confronted by Mickey and then her husband. 

This film is worth watching for Vittorio Storaro's candy coloured, sunlit orange photography and the period costumes alone. Woody Allen's crowded claustrophobic Coney Island and the wonder wheel become oppressive despite their beauty.  Altogether there's something almost Sirkian and expressionist about the way this film is shot that matches Ginny's conception of herself as being in a melodrama. 

WONDER WHEEL is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 101 minutes. The film is on global release. 

CAFE SOCIETY

Woody Allen's latest offering is a gorgeously filmed love story mixed in with a rather anonymous gangster side plot.  The film is just about still worth seeing for Vittorio Storaro's sun-kissed vintage Los Angeles, but there are longueurs.

The central love triangle is between Kristen Stewart's "Vonny" - a young secretary in a relationship with a married powerful Hollywood agent, played by Steve Carell.  He struggles with leaving his wife and kids for her - but eventually does. Only by this point, Vonny has also fallen in love with the agent's nephew Bobby, played by Jesse Eisenberg. Together, these kids have gently mocked the superficiality and rapaciousness of Hollywood, reflecting Allen's own antipathy to Tinseltown.  He is, then, shocked when she opts for the life of a rich Hollywood wife.  The story is then one of two people whose lives are destined to intersect, who love each other, but aren't with each other, and the profound loneliness that this choice brings. It's very well acted and touching.

BLUE JASMINE

Woody Allen's latest movie, BLUE JASMINE, isn't better than ANNIE HALL or MANHATTAN, as some over-sugared critics have claimed. But it is the best of his late films, featuring as it does a superlative performance by Cate Blanchett in the title role.  She plays the spoiled, self-deluding wife of a hugely rich financier (Alec Baldwin), who we discover was actually a Bernie Madoff character.  He swindled his clients, including Jasmine's earnest sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), gets taken by the Feds, and leaves Jasmine crushed, shocked, a borderline alcoholic with severe mental problems.

This is how we meet Jasmine - talking to herself on a plane to San Francisco, fashioning a narrative of her life that is elegant and graceful - where she is the victim.  This seems to be her only way of coping.  By struggling through courses to become computer literate she can kid herself that she'll become an interior designer, and resume her place in society as something "substantial". When she lies to her wealthy diplomat suitor (Peter Sarsgaard, thankfully not in a sleazebag role), it isn't so much that she's wilfully lying to him, but that my projecting an image of elegant accomplishment, she can reclaim herself.  It's a survival strategy.

The darker side of this vulnerability manifests itself in how far Jasmine was complicit in her downfall - how much did she really know about her husband's affairs and criminality?  Her stepson certainly judges her harshly, and part of the journey of this film is to get to the root of that problem.  Jasmine also proves to be a hugely disruptive influence on her sister, who under Jasmine's criticism of her current squeeze Chilli (Bobby Cannavale) reaches for something apparently better in Louis C.K.'s romantic sound engineer.   Ginger plays, in a minor key, the same theme as Jasmine - with her issues of self-invention and self-delusion.

The movie is dominated by Blanchett, and rightly so. She alternates between serene confidence and broken vulnerability and everything in between.  But there are other, surprising, moments of brilliance. For instance, seeing Andrew Dice Clay - a figure of menacing fun in Entourage - play a wise, angry ex-husband.  Or Louis C.K. play a soft, romantic.  Or Bobby Cannavale as a loveable rogue.  But the real praise has to go to Woody Allen who, after years of being the most environmentally sustainable of screenwriters, has done something genuinely new and genuinely brilliant.  Many people have tried to put the story of the financial crisis on screen,  but this sideways look at the psychological and emotional fall-out is perhaps the best depiction of its real impact, away from Wall Street.  And one would be hard-pressed to find such a rounded, nuanced and sympathetic middle-aged female character in cinema. 

A podcast review of this film is available here:

BLUE JASMINE has a running time of 98 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent strong language & moderate references to sex & suicide.

BLUE JASMINE opened in August in the USA, Slovakia, Canada, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Greece, Hungary, Finland and Romania. It is currently on release in Australia, Portugal, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, France, South Korea, Russia, Ireland, Turkey and the UK. It opens on October 10th in Argentina and Singapore; on October 17th in Hong Kong; on November 7th in Germany and on December 5th in Italy. 

TO ROME WITH LOVE

TO ROME WITH LOVE is a rather mediocre, derivative, Woody Allen movie - a portmanteau of four stories, neither of which is especially interesting, well-acted or well-developed.  The only real link is that they all take place in Rome - there isn't a link between them - either through the characters or thematically, as far as I can tell. 

The most ill-fitting of the four stories, by virtue of the fact that it's in Italian and also because it isn't romantic but whimsical-philosophical, centres on an ordinary Joe (Roberto Benigni) who suddenly becomes famous for no reason he can see. It's kind of an inverse Josef K situation - and a wry comment on the fatuousness of modern celebrity culture - and reminded  me of early Woody Allen movies where a fantastical idea was worked out to it's ludicrous extreme. The problem is that the story makes a rather simplistic point, and doesn't really take it anywhere.

The story I found simultaneously the best and worst features Woody Allen himself back in an acting role, as a cynical retired impresario who puts his daughter's Italian father-in-law on the stage. Problem is, this simple mortician can only sing when he's in the shower. It's meant to be fantastic and funny but fell rather flat for me. The only redeeming feature was Judy Davis, cast once again as Woody Allen's wife.  She gets the only really funny one-liners of the whole film.

Next up, we have Jesse Eisenberg playing a young Woody Allen character - an unsatisfied cynic who cheats on his earnest girlfriend (Greta Gerwig) with her flighty, flirty best friend (Ellen Page). I really hated this segment, mainly because the romantic triangle is well-worn in Woody Allen; second, because I thought Ellen Page was woefully miscast as the femme fatale; and third, the conceit of having Alec Baldwin play a devil on the shoulder of Jesse Eisenberg's character also just fell flat.

Finally, we have the weakest story of the bunch.  A young Italian couple lose each other - she flirts with an elderly actor and he gets entangled with the cliché Woody Allen brassy whore (Penelope Cruz.) No laughs, no insights, no point.

All in all, after his recent good run, this is an utterly worthless and mirthless movie.  We've seen all this done before - and better. Most of all, it's disappointing to see Jesse Eisenberg wasted on such poor material.  He's an actor who seems to have been playing Woody Allen all his life.

TO ROME WITH LOVE opened earlier this year in Italy, the USA, Argentina, Brazil, Norway, Uruguay, Belgium, France, Israel, Russia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Iceland, Mexico, Denmark, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Greece and India. It opens this weekend in the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It opens next weekend in Portugal, Singapore, Estonia and Spain. It opens on September 28th in Taiwan and Turkey; on November 9th in Bulgaria; and on December 20th in New Zealand.

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER

It has become fashionable for critics to patronise Woody Allen, a director who, apart from the odd freak hit such as VICKY, CHRISTINA, BARCELONA, hasn't produced a run of sustained hits since the late 1980s. He has been accused of cannibalising his back catalogue; producing dramas of diminishing quality; and for focusing his attention on an idea of the upper middle-class intellectual elite that is both anachronistic and irrelevant to modern life. Woody Allen has thus been condemned as a parody of himself. An old man who should do his reputation a favour and just retire. This view seems to be shared by the distributors. Outside of the Woody Allen-loving Parisians (and let's face it - they thought Jerry Lewis was a genius) most Woody Allen films receive a limited theatrical release or just go straight to video.

Still, for those of us who obsessively watched, loved and were provoked by his back catalogue, particularly the greats from the late 70s and 80s, a new Woody Allen film is hard to pass up. And when you get a movie based in your home town, starring actors of the calibre of Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and the criminally under-used Lucy Punch, expectations are higher than the critics would allow.

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is about the things that Woody Allen films are always about - the big questions of modern life. How far are we willing to delude ourselves into believing in love? How far are we willing to compromise our morals to achieve success? How crazy will we become to avoid admitting our mortality? If the first question was best explored in ANNIE HALL, and the second and third in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANOURS, what does YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER add?

Precious little. The mood is perhaps even more cynical and nihilistic. The location different. But the material is undoubtedly rehashed not to mention the use of characters such as brassy hookers (DECONSTRUCTING HARRY, MIGHT APHRODITE) and men who are willing to murder and steal to get ahead (CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, MATCH POINT) let alone the idea of justice hanging on the throw of a dice or the fall of a coin (MATCH POINT). Humanity is portrayed as fickle, callow, self-serving and self-obsessed - life is a pathetic game of self-delusion - a desperate bid to outrun the inevitable. Woody Allen's characters may live in beautiful houses but they are rarely happy, and if they are, he mocks them for being idiots.

Having said all that, I still thoroughly enjoyed YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER for the simple pleasure of watching those familiar themes refracted through a new set of characters and a new set of actors. Because I didn't have to concentrate on surprises in the plot or thematic material - because I knew how the relationships would pan out from the start - I could simply luxuriate in the wonderful performances and three or four superb dramatic set-pieces that hold their own against any of Woody Allen's finer movies.

The first of those scenes is wonderful tragicomedy. Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) is an old man who doesn't want to admit that his life is nearing its end. He dumps his wife Helena (Gemma Jones) and bankrupts himself dating a money-grabbing hooker (Lucy Punch). Woody Allen skewers Alfie's vanity in a marvellous scene in which they sit in a sterile penthouse flat. She is draped on a fur coat she has just extorted for him, and he is waiting for his viagra to kick in, "Three more minutes..." Pathetic, beautifully observed, hilarious!

The second scene features Alfie's ex-wife Helena and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts). Sally has married a failed author (Josh Brolin) and desperately needs her mother's money to start a new art gallery, but her mother has been wasting it on seeing a psychic who tells her she will meet a Tall Dark Stranger, and even worse, advises Helena not to give Sally money. The scene is wonderful because, as in life, you have two people who are related but who are in such different emotional and intellectual places that they simply cannot communicate. Helena comes across as smug, deluded and selfish in her manufactured happiness. Sally comes across as justifiably frustrated but also entitled and spoiled. It's beautifully acted and also tragic that this mother and daughter are unable to understand each other's needs.

The third scene features the wonderful Josh Brolin, schlubbed up as the failed writer Roy, so pissed off at his wife Sally's constant nagging for a baby that he has an affair with a pretty young woman (Freida Pinto) and so desperate for success that he steals an unpublished novel. There is a marvellous scene where he realises that he may well be busted and that look on his face - simply that - is worth the price of admission alone!

So, what can I say? YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER doesn't tell you anything you didn't know about Woody Allen's misanthropic world-view.  I don't need to see another brash hooker, and Freida Pinto certainly cannot hold her own among this cast-list. But, for all that, I enjoyed almost every minute, and certain scenes will stay with me as much as anything in Woody Allen's earlier work.

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER played Cannes and Toronto 2010 and opened last year in Spain, the USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Israel, Greece, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Estonia and Uruguay. It opened earlier this year in Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Argentina, Kazakhstan and Russia. It is currently on release in Poland and the UK.

Random DVD Round-Up - WHATEVER WORKS

WHATEVER WORKS is Woody Allen decoupage. You watch a bunch of his film and cut out and assemble the familiar characters and themes. First, you take a Woody Allen cipher, played in his younger days by Allen, and now by Larry "Curb Your Enthusiasm" David. Second, you have that character be cynical about life, and to talk about his cynicism incessantly to his friends, random strangers and, breaking the fourth wall, to the audience. Third, you have the Allen character meet and, rather improbably, have a sexual relationship with, a nubile young girl. It started with Mariel Hemingway in MANHATTAN but we now get a surprisingly charismatic and fascinating Evan Rachel Wood. Fourth, you have all the characters fall in and out of love and talk about charmingly in a series of rather lovely autumnal New York scenes. Finally, you have the cynical old know-it-all realise that the young flibbertigibbet was really on to something when she said, "you gotta have a little faith in people". The End. The only real difference in WHATEVER WORKS is that the old lech and the young idiot actually get married in an implausible turn of events that seems like a desperate plea for understanding by a writer-director who's marriage to his much younger adopted daughter has been ill-received.

Larry David is just about watchable even when he's trying to shoe-horn his schtick into the Woody Allen straitjacket. As I said, Evan Rachel Wood acts just about everyone off the screen. Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Junior are just fine as the parents who come to get their daughter back, but end up being transformed by the magical mystery powers of New York. Henry Cavill is rather flat and anonymous as the younger man. All's well that end's well, I suppose, but the whole film feels rather warmed over and re-hashed - like a Muzack cover of a Greatest Hit.

Where's the provocation of CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS? Where's the genuine heartbreak of ANNIE HALL? Where's the fizzy subversion of VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA?

Eventual tags: woody allen, comedy, evan rachel wood, larry david, harris savides, patricia clarkson, henry cavill, ed begley jr, conleth hill, michael mckean

WHATEVER WORKS was released earlier this year in the USA, Canada, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong, and Finland. It is currently on release in Brazil and Estonia. It opens on November 27th in Iceland. It opens in Germany on December 3rd and in Russia on December 31st. It does not have a UK release date but is available on Region 1 DVD.

London Film Festival Day 11 - VICKY, CRISTINA, BARCELONA

VICKY, CRISTINA, BARCELONA is a superficial film about superficial people. It has the surface polish of all Woody Allen films - sun-dappled, beautiful people in beautiful houses - but none of the moral bite or emotional imsight of a MANHATTAN or CRIMES and MISDEMEANORS. It slips down easily thanks to the pretty faces and the witty dialogue, but frankly there is no reason for this movie to exist nor for you to waste ninety minutes on it.

The movie opens with two classic Woody Allen tony yanks arriving in Barcelona for the summer. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is Sense and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) is Sensibility. Both are propositioned for a weekend of culture and casual sex by free-thinking painter Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). They accept - Vicky reluctantly, Cristina happil - but of course its sensible, engaged Vicky who ends up in the sack. Back in Barcelona, Cristina moves in with Juan Antonio and enters into a menage a trois with him and his dramatic ex-wife Maria-Elena (Penelope Cruz). As the summer ends, serially dissatisfied Cristina writes it all off as a phase and leaves, along with Vicky who condemns herself to a life of boring marriage to a safe investment banker.

Have we learned anything? Woody Allen is down on love. Sensible girls end up with the safe life and the cash. Flighty girls end up being disatisfied. Sexual bombshells are a complete fucking nightmare. Everyone is self-involved - everyone ends up unhappy. The fact that this is all set in beautiful, sunny Barcelona should not fool you as to the deeply nihilistic message at the core.

As to the quality of the production, certainly the film and the actors look beautiful, and even when Woody Allen isn't saying anything new or interesting, he still says it with some style. The big problem is that Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz act Scarlett Johansson off the screen. The even bigger problem is that Allen never really explores or gets under the skin of the emotional and sexual dynamics of the menage-a-trois as Christophe Honore did in LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR.

VICKY, CRISTINA, BARCELONA played Cannes and London 2008. It was released earlier this year in the US, Norway, Spain, Singapore, France, Taiwan, Italy, Israel, Belgium and Finland. It opens in December in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Russia and Australia. It opens in Argentina on February 5th.

CASSANDRA'S DREAM - I see disaster! I see catastrophe! Worse, I see lawyers!

Contemporary London. Two working class brothers need cash desperately. Their successful Uncle Howard offers them a Faustian bargain. If they murder the man who is about to snitch on him, he will give them all the money they need. He couches his request in terms of family loyalty. One of the brothers, Ian, thinks he can pull it off, forget about it and enjoy the cash. The other brother, Terry, is troubled. What if he too turns snitch?

This makes for a promising intellectual thriller. How far would you go to get want you want? Could you really be a cold-blooded killer or would your conscience be troubled? But Woody Allen has nothing interesting or clever to say about these issues. His ethical discussion is trite - and he barely makes his invocation of the greek myth of Cassandra work. Contrast Allen's fatuous moral posturing with the moral profundity of Lumet's BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUR DEAD.

CASSANDRA'S DREAM fails, then, as a moral treatise. It also fails as entertainment. Where is the bleak, cruel comedy of IN BRUGES? Or Allen's own CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?

CASSANDRA'S DREAM also fails as a technical exercise. Philip Glass' orchestral score seems tailored to a different film - a costume melodrama perhaps? Vilmos Zsigmond's photography is pedestrian. Ewan McGregor's cockney accent seems like a pastiche of Frank Spencer in British cult comedy SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM. Colin Farrell's superb performance is marred by the fact that his thick Irish accent keeps breaking through his Cockney accent. Sally Hawkins - again a brilliant actress - seems to be doing a watered down Poppy from HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. Hayley Atwell and Phil Davies are wasted in smaller roles, although Tom Wilkinson does get a cool cameo as the Machiavellian Uncle Howard. In short, barring Wilkinson, it's all pretty uninspiring.

I'm just a random amateur movie blogger. Woody Allen's a writer-director who has made films that are in the pantheon. So it seems a little arrogant to have written such an excoriating review. One can only hope that the rave reviews of his latest film restore our confidence in him.

CASSANDRA'S DREAM played Venice and Toronto 2007 and was released in 2007 in Spain, France, Greece, Finland, Turkey, Sweden, Belgium and Russsia. It was released earlier in 2008 in the US, Hungary, Denmark, Portugal, Norway, Canada, Italy, Estonia, Israel, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, the Netherlands and Poland. It is currently on release in Brazil and the UK. It opens in Argentina and Germany on June 5th.

MANHATTAN - that rare thing, a truly, incontrovertibly 'great' movie

I am soft on MANHATTAN. It's one of my all-time favourite Woody Allen films (I've seen every one more than a couple of times) if not one of the best films of all time period. It's one of those rare films where you wouldn't change a single thing. One of those films that you name, alongside DR STRANGELOVE and AMADEUS, when you play the game, "which movie would you have wanted to direct?"

Why do I love MANHATTAN? First and foremost, the handsome cinematography. The movie is shot in black and white in proper anamorphic widescreen. Woody Allen and Gordon Willis (who also shot THE GODFATHER) reinvented the iconic imagery of Manhatten in wide-screen wide-angled shots, edited by Susan E Morse and choreographed to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The beauty, grandeur and energy of Manhattan is not just captured: it is re-defined on screen.

But MANHATTAN is no mawkish Richard-Curtis-like romanticised plastic image of a famous city. Rather, the radical and subversive message of MANHATTAN is that, while the city looks glamourous and the people in it are cosmpolitan, literary and sensitive to the arts, they are also amoral and narcissistic. The Woody Allen character is a 42 year old man who has been through an acrimonious divorce and feels bitter that the woman (Meryl Streep) who told him she was bisexual eventually left him for another woman. He then casually dates a 17 year old girl played by Mariel Hemingway, before jilting her for a self-involved writer played by Diane Keaton. Oh, did I mention that the Woody Allen character stole the Keaton character from his best friend, Yale, who was cheating on his wife with her, and then steals her back?!

In one sense, MANHATTAN is a deeply bleak film. Behind the glamour of MANHATTAN lies a pool of shallow, cultivated cynics. But while you're watching these unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to each other, you can't help but luxuriate in the wonderful conversation, the beautiful cinematography and the soundtrack full of Gershwin. And in the final scene, we are asked to still "have a little faith in people" - a whimsical note on which to end a movie that would be lost in later Woody Allen movies like CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS. For that reason, MANHATTAN will always be one of my favourite Woody Allen movies.

MANHATTAN was originally released in 1979. It is currently on limited re-release in the UK.

MANHATTAN is also my favourite case study for why the Academy Awards are never a good guide to great cinema, despite marketers splashing "Oscar winner" across everything. In 1980, KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER swept the board. For sure, this divorce drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep had its finger on the cultural pulse and was well acted, but that it should trump APOCALYPSE NOW?! Well, at least APOCALYPSE NOW was nominated. MANHATTAN was fobbed off with a few minor noms but it didn't get nom'ed from Best Film, Director or, shockingly enough, Cinematrography. One can only assume that the Academy was throwing its toys out of the pram in retaliation for Woody Allen not turning up when ANNIE HALL was nominated.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE - if Wes Anderson and Woody Allen made a movie...

I really like THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. Despite the somewhat hammy ending, to my mind, writer/director Noah Baumbach has delivered a charming, often hillarious, often painful movie. Despite the similarity in feel to a Wes Anderson or even certain types of Woody Allen movie, the subject matter of the film feels really fresh and interesting. There have been films about flawed people with fractious relationships before, but rarely one that explores with such honesty, authenticty and good humour the impact of divorce on young kids, and how learning that our parents can be wrong is the first step in growing up. Every member of the cast turns in a great performance, from Jeff Daniels as the narcissistic, judgmental academic father to Owen Kline as the absurdly cool, cute but messed up kid brother. Anna Paquin is always fantastic, but I also liked Hailey Feiffer as the elder son's girlfriend. When he says something cruel to her, you can feel her teenage heart breaking. All in all, this film wears its indie heart on its sleeve, but, with the exception of the final few minutes, is never pretentious or manipulative. And as an added bonus, the movie is set in the mid-80s so there is plenty of opportunity to get nostalgic about Jimmy Connors, skinny black jeans and Short Circuit. I still have a smile on my face thinking about it and I can't ask for more than that.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE premiered at Sundance 2005 where Noah Baumbach won the Best Director and Best Screenplay awards. It opens in the UK on April 7th 2006, in Germany on May 11th and in France on May 31st.

MATCH POINT - a return to form for Woody Allen

I love Woody Allen films, but let's be clear about what we mean by that. I reckon that, crudely speaking, there are 3 types of Allen movie. First, we have the early slapstick movies such as Bananas, and Take the Money and Run. They're hsyterical. Second, we have the terse relationship comedies. By and large, these are the ones that won the Oscars and made his name - movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan. Finally, we have Woody Allen's dark moral investigations - self-absorbed people doing horrible, unforgiveable things. These, I feel are his best movies. So when you decide whether to see MATCH POINT, you have to be clear on what you are getting. This is not a cute 1970s romantic comedy. It is a dark, nasty little film - a film far more in the tradition of searing emotional dramas like Hannah and her Sisters, Husbands and Wives and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Indeed some people have gone so far as to say that it is even better than C&D which is, in my opinion, going too far. (C&D is in my movie pantheon.) Nonetheless, I think that this is a fantastic movie.

MATCH POINT is the first of the three Woody Allen movies set in London. It tells the tale of a poor tennis coach who becomes intimate with an upper-class family, eventually marrying the daughter while bedding the son's actress girlfriend. It tells of his struggle to reconcile his comfortable married life with his passion for the actress. Finally it is a discussion about how justice is or is not afforded to us in real life.

The movie is a complete success in terms of character and plot. So often we hear of movies marketed on the strength of their "surprise ending". Well, here is a final twist that doesn't feel false and makes for compelling viewing. The acting is superlative. The soundtrack is also worthy of note. For once, Woody has moved away from using jazz standards to excerpts from Verdi and Bizet with great effect.

Some critics have complained that Woody presents us with a picture-postcard view of London - all red buses, Houses of Parliament and champagne at the tennis club. I would argue that far from falling into Notting Hill and Love, Actually-style cliche, Woody Allen is deliberately making a contrast between the enviable, almost picture-perfect, lifestyle of the upper class family and the sordid, petty reality. This is exactly what he did in Manhattan. We had Gordon Wills stunning black and white photography of New York, with Gershwin's beautiful score, and in counter-point, lots of neurotic, self-absorbed characters being pathetic.

Should you go see MATCH POINT? Yes. But remember, this is not a quirky date movie. If you just want to see Scarlett Johansen get her kit off, you can rent The Island instead.

Alternatively, for a negative review of this flick, replete with plot spoilers, check out my mate, Nik's review.

MATCH POINT went on release in France in October. It goes on limited release in the US and on general release in Germany and Austria on the 29th December . It goes on general release in the UK on the 6th January and in the US on the 20th January 2006.