Café Society (2016)
Country: US
Technical: col/2:1 96m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively
Synopsis:
A Jewish jeweller's assistant from New York goes to Hollywood to learn from his uncle in the movie business, but falls in love, unwittingly, with his mistress. Returning broken-hearted to New York to work at his hoodlum brother's nightclub, he acquires a new confidence and puts his past romance behind him. Until...
Review:
A story so familiar by now it borders on banality, narrated in avuncular tones by its creator, this love song for the studio era stalls halfway through, as if tired of making movie star references, and returns prodigal son-like to the Big Apple, where Eisenberg's character undergoes an unconvincing transformation into a smooth-talking businessman. The echoes of Bullets over Broadway are all too discernible, but the momentum just isn't there. Clearly Woody's most expensive film in ages, shot by Vittorio Storaro in perpetual magic hour light, it looks a treat, but the Jewish jokes come and go raising the odd laugh, while Carell impresses as the big shot agent from Hollywood, and we squirm and yawn at yet another actor's attempt to be Woody's idea of how he would like to see himself. It has also got some of the laziest writing-directing in some time, even on Woody's terms: a Hollywood cocktail party at which nobody smokes, and it is unlikely they were using the phrase 'heads up', to mean advance warning, in the 1930s. Once again, knowledge of the director's own biography makes the cavalier playing around behind loved-ones' backs sit uncomfortably on the screen, and here at least he has the good taste to leave his hero, Joe Lampton-style, wanting something more.
Country: US
Technical: col/2:1 96m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively
Synopsis:
A Jewish jeweller's assistant from New York goes to Hollywood to learn from his uncle in the movie business, but falls in love, unwittingly, with his mistress. Returning broken-hearted to New York to work at his hoodlum brother's nightclub, he acquires a new confidence and puts his past romance behind him. Until...
Review:
A story so familiar by now it borders on banality, narrated in avuncular tones by its creator, this love song for the studio era stalls halfway through, as if tired of making movie star references, and returns prodigal son-like to the Big Apple, where Eisenberg's character undergoes an unconvincing transformation into a smooth-talking businessman. The echoes of Bullets over Broadway are all too discernible, but the momentum just isn't there. Clearly Woody's most expensive film in ages, shot by Vittorio Storaro in perpetual magic hour light, it looks a treat, but the Jewish jokes come and go raising the odd laugh, while Carell impresses as the big shot agent from Hollywood, and we squirm and yawn at yet another actor's attempt to be Woody's idea of how he would like to see himself. It has also got some of the laziest writing-directing in some time, even on Woody's terms: a Hollywood cocktail party at which nobody smokes, and it is unlikely they were using the phrase 'heads up', to mean advance warning, in the 1930s. Once again, knowledge of the director's own biography makes the cavalier playing around behind loved-ones' backs sit uncomfortably on the screen, and here at least he has the good taste to leave his hero, Joe Lampton-style, wanting something more.
Country: US
Technical: col/2:1 96m
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively
Synopsis:
A Jewish jeweller's assistant from New York goes to Hollywood to learn from his uncle in the movie business, but falls in love, unwittingly, with his mistress. Returning broken-hearted to New York to work at his hoodlum brother's nightclub, he acquires a new confidence and puts his past romance behind him. Until...
Review:
A story so familiar by now it borders on banality, narrated in avuncular tones by its creator, this love song for the studio era stalls halfway through, as if tired of making movie star references, and returns prodigal son-like to the Big Apple, where Eisenberg's character undergoes an unconvincing transformation into a smooth-talking businessman. The echoes of Bullets over Broadway are all too discernible, but the momentum just isn't there. Clearly Woody's most expensive film in ages, shot by Vittorio Storaro in perpetual magic hour light, it looks a treat, but the Jewish jokes come and go raising the odd laugh, while Carell impresses as the big shot agent from Hollywood, and we squirm and yawn at yet another actor's attempt to be Woody's idea of how he would like to see himself. It has also got some of the laziest writing-directing in some time, even on Woody's terms: a Hollywood cocktail party at which nobody smokes, and it is unlikely they were using the phrase 'heads up', to mean advance warning, in the 1930s. Once again, knowledge of the director's own biography makes the cavalier playing around behind loved-ones' backs sit uncomfortably on the screen, and here at least he has the good taste to leave his hero, Joe Lampton-style, wanting something more.