items tagged with Annie Hall

BEOWULF

In 1977's Annie Hall, there's a scene between Woody Allen's Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton's Annie in which the title character mulls over her adult-education options:

ANNIE: Does this sound like a good course - "Modern American Poetry"? Or, let's see now ... maybe I should take "Introduction to the Novel."

ALVY: Just don't take any course where they make you read Beowulf.

Thirty years later, I'm not sure I'd want to take a course where they make you see it, either.

BECAUSE I SAID SO

I adore Diane Keaton, but after sitting through her torturously affected performance in Michael Lehmann's Because I Said So, I'd be hard-pressed to explain why. Playing the meddling, overbearing mother of Mandy Moore's chatterbox caterer - a single woman for whom Mom is desperately acting as matchmaker - Keaton has the unenviable task of playing an abjectly hateful character, a woman so hell-bent on micro-managing her daughter's life that she makes everyone around her miserable.

DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO

Some comedies are so colossally, ridiculously unfunny that you’re left with no choice but to stare at them in abject bewilderment. To the surprise of probably no one, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is such a comedy. Yet the movie – and I hesitate to call it one – is actually far more intriguing than “colossally, ridiculously unfunny” would indicate.

ANYTHING ELSE

As a lifelong fan of Woody Allen’s cinematic oeuvre, the last five years have been rather painful. Sure, Small Time Crooks was a lot of fun and Sean Penn delivered a truly inspired performance in Sweet & Lowdown, but The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, though intermittently amusing, felt pretty stale, and Celebrity and last year’s Hollywood Ending were just plain awful. (Part of being a true fan includes admitting when your heroes fail, and feeling somewhat heartbroken when they do.)