You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

The passions, ambitions, and obsessions of two couples-Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones) , and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin)-bring nothing but trouble and madness. Thus, when Alfie abandons Helene in search of his lost youth, she abandons sanity and succumbs to the bizarre advice of a deceitful fortune teller (Pauline Collins). Alfie undergoes a mid-life crisis and impulsively weds an escort named Charmaine (Lucy Punch) . Meantime, Sally, unhappy in her marriage, begins to fall in love with Greg (Antonio Banderas), the attractive gallery owner with whom she works. While, failed writer Roy falls head over heels for his neighbor Dia (Freida Pinto), a mysterious young woman who sparks his attraction from the window across the hall from his apartment.

This is a choral film dealing with a group of bourgeois characters living in London, including their crushes, ambitions, and anxieties that lead them into trouble and out of their minds. Woody Allen directs and writes this ensemble comedy and loving drama with a superb cast of a large international cast that moves like a fish in water through the London streets where the action takes place. This is a light-hearted, saucy and fun romp around conflicting ideas of what a good relationship must be and most of the humour is situational. After his successful Manhattan comedies, Woody Allen moved London where he made more serious (Match point, Scoop, Cassandra dream) than previous ones and later on, France (Midnight in Paris, Magic in the Moonlight), Barcelona (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) and Rome (To Rome with love) where he went on making amusing comedies.

The motion picture was well directed by Woody Allen, although it is excessively talky, and not showing too much of Allen's peculiar personal world. In the beginning Woody made usually hilarious films with hardly any personal comments about his own life in which he used to act, such as : ¨What's Up, Tiger Lily?¨, ¨Take the money and run¨, ¨Pussycat, Pussycat I Love You¨, ¨Sleeper¨, ¨Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask¨, among others . Subsequently he made several masterpieces. Including a series of movies in which he provided nice direction, investing care enough, wit and warmth, such as : ¨Crimes and misdemeanors¨, ¨New York stories¨, ¨September¨, ¨Radio Days¨, ¨Hanna and her sisters¨, ¨Broadway Danny Rose¨, ¨Zelig¨, ¨Stardust memories¨, ¨A midsummer Night's Sex Comedy¨, ¨Interiors¨, ¨Purple rose of Cairo¨, ¨Manhattan¨,¨Melinda Melinda¨and many others . His best movie is ¨Annie Hall¨, Allen's most awarded, the Oscars voters were impressed and awarded various statuettes, winner among many other awards, of the Oscar for Best film, Direction, Script and Lead Actress. Rating 'You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger' (2010): 6/10 . Better than average. The movie will appeal to Woody Allen entusiasts and fans of the leading quartet: Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin and Antonio Banderas.

Anthony Hopkins is always a joy to behold on screen. If you're further into things British and your "Masterpiece Theater" memory is long, you will recognize wife #1 as the incredible "Duchess Of Duke Street" Gemma Jones, making a rare appearance on America's big screen. Like Allen's more recent films, save for the British accents, you could be in any city of urban sophisticates and wannabes. The London settings ultimately don't give the film a deep sense of any place in particular. But as Anglophiles have not been well-served of late Stateside, this release will have to do until some grand historic costume epic sweeps us back into a dark theater. All new Woody Allen comedies are also for those who don't dwell on the director's personal life and still enjoy him as a film-maker of thoughtful,lighter fare. Sure, his earliest films were more ground-breaking and side-splitting, but we've accepted that for eons now. Not an obvious Oscar contender as a whole, many of its performances are indeed worthy of consideration. Sony Pictures Classics' marketing is a good fit for American audiences who see the imprint of a studio's "for select audiences" arm as a modern-day film lovers' "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval -- proclaiming here is a work of cinema, several cuts above the mindless teen romp, action-adventure or horror rampage. Film comedy choices for 40-somethings on up have been bleak of late. As the Oscar race moves into its final quarter lap, a visit with this "Stranger" will brighten things up a bit. My 6 rating is relative to the quality of 2010's domestic crop. It could just as well have been a 5 if there had been more comedies worth $14 since January. But especially for Allen devotees, all is relative, in that sense at least.

The goofy comedian has always been a pessimist. True love has never existed in his films and his couples rarely find happiness together. Despite of this, his films has never been as scary as this.

What started as comedic twists and a taste of the bittersweet life has slowly evolved into a harsh, but tragically honest depiction of life. With You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger the evolution seems to have been perfected.

The goofiness is basically gone and what's left plays like a drama with darkly humorous undertones. But it might just as well play as an horror film. Tragic, raw and beautiful. It's not his best, god knows he has done a lot of great work, but it's by far his most "pure" work to date.

Is delusions the only plays you can find happiness? Is the ideas of love and friendship simply a charade we hide behind? Do we simply get bored of each other? You know there's at least some truth here, but though I'm not ready to accept it all the very thought of it gives me chills.

Conveyed with such fabulous performances, particularly from Gemma Jones, and as is often the case with Allen, one heck of a script, Allen creates the perfect atmosphere. To put it in the simplest way possible - this is pretty close to being the perfect feel bad movie.

An odd film for Allen, neither an overt comedy or one of his dark serious films (e.g. 'Crimes and Misdemeanors'). This is a 'light' drama, something he hasn't done much. While far from Allen's best work, I felt more warmly towards it than most of the press, especially after a second viewing. Some of the criticisms are valid; the voice over narration feels out of tone with the film, and at times tells us too literally what we already know. Yet, in the current American cinema, how many film-makers are getting to even and try and address the complex subtle questions of grown-up relationships, aging and the fear of death, and the lies we tell ourselves to get through it all? Or deal with the paradox that humans seem to need something to believe in, and yet that same belief can also lead us astray? Or give great older actors like Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones really meaty roles? As long as Allen keeps asking questions, he'll remain a voice worth listening to.

Allegedly the plot was born to prove that believing in anything, no matter how silly and incongruous, makes people happier.

It's been proved many times that people find consolation in anything that gives them hope and in this story we start with the most hopeless case of Helena, a middle-aged, wealthy housewife abandoned by her husband, Alfie.

Helena is not smart and starts seeing Cristal, a clairvoyant, for comfort. At first, Helena desperately wants Alfie back, but slowly, Cristal convinces her that she can do better.

Helena's daughter, Sally is going through the final stages of her marriage with Roy, a nasty piece of work, who having got lucky with his first book, decided to pursue a writing career, which is proving disastrous.

Their fragile balance is shatter respectively by Sally's new boss, a sexy Banderas as Greg and by female neighbour Dia.

A final wheel is set in motion when Alfie, after much grief in the dating world, hooks up with a call girl and decides to marry her. Like way too many before him, Alfie's in for some nasty surprises.

Things don't go much better for Roy and Sally, with the exception of Helena. Having started as the most unhappy and unlikely to straighten her life, thanks to Cristal's bad advice, but most of all, to her own "faith" in Cristal, Helena ends up as the sole winner of some sort.

To prove once more that life is unfair and chance is more important than intelligence. Good movie, albeit depressing.