The AV Club looks at the lengthy career of Woody Allen. And Nathan Rabin and Scott Tobias list their Top 5 Woody Allen movies:
The Essentials
1. Annie Hall (1977)
In this great evolutionary step forward, Allen moved beyond the vaudevillian shtick of his early films to a new dramatic and emotional richness while diligently preserving the funny. It's a valentine to Diane Keaton at her most irresistible, a jaundiced New Yorker's take on the vast intellectual wasteland that is Los Angeles, and a playfully postmodern comedy with a big, vital heart.
2. Purple Rose Of Cairo (1985)
Like 1980's shamefully underrated Pennies From Heaven,Allen's 1984 masterpiece eked bottomless pathos and surprising humor out of the unbridgeable gulf between the dizzy, sophisticated movies of the Depression and the ever-suffering dreamers in the audience.
3. Hannah And Her Sisters (1986)
Perfectly integrating a serious take on familial and romantic relationships with deft comedic business, Allen's comedy-drama orchestrates a complicated series of loves and betrayals with clarity and sophistication.
4. Bananas (1972)
Allen paid homage to the wiseass, anarchic spirit of his heroes the Marx brothers, specifically Duck Soup (which also appears in a key scene in Hannah And Her Sisters), in this zany 1971 political satire.
5. Husbands And Wives (1992)
The public collapse of Allen's marriage to Mia Farrow brought an unvarnished immediacy to his 1992 drama, which unloads so much emotional baggage that he spent subsequent years fleeing to inconsequential comedies.
My Top 5 is as follows:
I like your top 5, Pat, especially your inclusion of Manhattan Murder Mystery (it wouldn't be in my top 5, but I like the choice nonetheless). However, I have rewatched Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors in the last year, and I must say that I would emphatically change the order, putting C and M alone at the top of the list.
Still, both movies are all timers. In fact, I show a clip from Hannah and Her Sisters in my film class: the one where Woody tries and fails to kill himself, then goes to a Marx brothers movie and realizes life is worth living. I show it on the first day.
Posted by: Eric | August 19, 2008 at 03:59 PM
Yeah, I couldn't really settle on a 5th, I was weaned on the earlier comedies like Bananas, Take The Money And Run, Sleeper, Love And Death, but I haven't seen any of them in years. I can't remember Manhattan at all, I should watch these ones again sometime soon. I think The Purple Rose of Cairo is overrated. I remember being very charmed by Manhattan Murder Mystery--it just stayed in my head for some reason.
Crimes and Misdemeanors was in that class of great summer films in 89' (with Do The Right Thing, Goodfellas, and Miller's Crossing), but Hannah And Her Sisters has two of my favorite Woody Allen lines of all time:
Max von Sydow: "If Jesus were alive and here today and saw all of the things being done in his name he would never stop vomiting."
Woody Allen: (answer his wife's query of why Allen's sister's date tied her up and shit on her) "Why? Why? Is there any reasonable answer to that. I don't know why. Human sexuality is a strange thing."
Posted by: MC | August 20, 2008 at 02:00 PM
"Doooon't speak! Doooon't speak!" Was it good or did it "just" win an Oscar? Maybe it was so bad it was great! BULLETS OVER BROADWAY!
I just looked up Woody on Wiki and was pleased I had seen so many on the list. And of course there's always room for improvement. Did anyone else like, "A Mid-summer Night's Sex Comedy?" Maybe I'm embarrassing myself. I'll have to watch that again.
Shout out to the guys (!) who rate, "Hannah and Her Sisters," so highly. I thought it was a chick flick. Maybe all WA films are chick flicks, though, with the emphasis on the feeeelings. Films both genders can love!
Cousin Kris
Posted by: Cousin Kris | August 24, 2008 at 01:52 AM
Not sure what Woody Allen movies have to do with unrealistic, silly, formulatic comedies for women. After all, Woody is a dude, albeit a nebbish one.
Bullets Over Broadway was good, but not one of his best in my opinion.
Even middling stuff like "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" can be entertaining.
Posted by: MC | August 25, 2008 at 10:13 PM