Top Woody Allen films

and Sleeper cause I'm a futuristic fascist police state movie fanatic.

Funny, it's been probably 15 years since I've seen Annie Hall and Manhattan - that was before I had even been in a relationship. They didn't make too big of an impact on me then, but maybe they'll resonate with me if I see them again, now.

For pure comedy, I don't think you can beat Sleeper. But the mad scientist episode in Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex is one of the funniest things ever: the man having sex with a giant loaf of rye bread, Woody being pursued by a gargantuan, lactating breast, etc.

As you can see I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to Woody films I like. With the exception of Shadows and Fog. If Annie Hall was called ANDie Hall it would possibly top the list.

but in the really great films manhattan, annie hall, radio days, stardust memories and zelig the rest of the film overwhelms this sense of neediness.

i think he should give up now though; he's diluting his genius. he's been through his radical phase and he's been through his twee phase and now he should go through his putting his feet up phase.

is it generally agreed that deconstructing harry is his best film of the 90's?

Jesus, no, it is not. I mean, the endless recursiveness is entertaining and it has one of the best visual gags in cinema, but there is too much whiney self-justification about the whole thing. Maybe when I'm a sleazy old guy I will have more time for it, but at the moment it just seems too much like he's trying to justify his seedy life by claiming that being an artist makes it alright.

Of course the irony is that I don't care about his seedy life if he just makes good films, but if he is going to go on about it I will be bored.

good Woody Allen films of the 1990s - Crimes & Misdemeanours, I liked that one.

I can't even remember what the Woody Allen storyline in C&D is about... eh, the usual?

never trust digital video.

Sweet & Lowdown is an enjoyable film. I remember at the time thinking it was a bit slight, but I like it more in retropsect.

pretty much in order for me:
stardust memories... the crown jewel.
purple rose of cairo... the absurdist heartbreaker.
annie hall... the pinnacle of neurosis.
manhattan... the love letter.
husbands and wives... the mature relationship dossier (and for my money, his best of the 90's, without hesitation)

of the "earlier, funnier work" i pick play it again, sam - although not directed by him, he wrote and starred in it and it's completely enjoyable slapstick measured by careful scenework and smart dialogue.

Sean Penn is great in that movie and I shall never forget how he always takes his girlfriends shooting rats.

Jan

That's about it.
Most of them make me urp. He always picks cool women to star in his flicks. Mira S. and Tia Leone, the latter of which who looks impossibly good in slacks...and who looks visibly sickened when she has to kiss WA in "Hollywood Ending."

"Deconstructing Harry" is simply one of the most odious films I've ever tried to watch, a truly nasty piece of work. So awful I cursed that fucking film the whole time I tried to fathom why he even bothered.

I'm also in the minority in that I find his earlier "funnier" works desperately unfunny.

"Sweet and " isn't bad; Elaine May in "Small Time Crooks" is perhaps the sexiest and most adorable of all Allen's wimmen.

He should have stopped after "Danny Rose." It's like a bad New Yorker story that won't quit. Altho Spike Lee is a far superior filmmaker, and quite interesting in his way, I get the same feeling, New York chauvinism run amok in a fantasy world that never quite conceals the ugly reality of its creator's neuroses.

Annie Hall
Zelig
Sleeper
Manhattan
Love and Death
Hannah and Her Sisters
Radio Days
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Broadway Danny Rose
Deconstructing Harry

Zelig
Manhattan
Purple Rose of Cairo

I haven't seen a few of the other ones, but those three are all completely great. Before Annie Hall, they're all pretty painful; I don't know yet when he started pumping out the not very good stuff, but so far Celebrity is the only post-Annie Hall one I've seen that I really completely tanked. (But I haven't seen all of them.)

You hate fun!

*brain explodes*

After that...

Annie Hall
Crimes & Misdemeanours
Manhattan
and loads more...

Hannah is my favourite movie. Crimes & Mis, Zelig, Annie Hall and Brodway Danny Rose are great too. Bullets over Broadway and Everyone Says I Love You are great amongst the 90s stuff.

Did everyone love his speech at the Oscars a few years back? "Thanks, makes up for the strip search", haha what a legend.

Match Point, welcome to the club! Goddamn that was good movieing.

haven't seen a ton of them

Watching this tonight for the first time in like 14 years. I never caught that Howard Cosell is wearing his full standard ABC Sports blazer w/ official emblem & everything:

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7069/134115bananaslut5.jpg

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/3950/bananas1rd4.jpg

the worst allen film?

hollywood endings. ugh.

In Love & Death, Diane Keaton loses her russian accent about 30 seconds into her first scene.

Woody lost his before the first scene.

http://www.citizencaine.org/filler/hannah-and-her-sisters.jpg

That's my favorite, easily.

Hannah, that is.