Friday, September 29, 2006

Movie Review - Manhattan

Manhattan (1979)
directed by Woody Allen
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from JL

Woody Allen, for better or worse, was a big influence on me, and as much as I've tried in recent years to think of his work less subjectively - to shrug at the self-absorbed Upper East Side fantasist - few films let their protagonists bungle things so totally in the end as Isaac Davis does here. Few films put the girl on the pedestal so far out of reach. If anything, it's a by-the-numbers playbook like Match Point that's diminished by "Manhattan," and whether or not the jokey asides and neurotic interruptions are to your taste, the romance is how it looks and the lesson that great chasm between what people strive for and who they really are.