The Tree of Life (2011)

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” asks God of Job, as Terrence Malick’s newest film begins.

Two and a half hours later, when it came to a close and the screen faded to black, I found it hard to move. It wasn’t out of being overwhelmed by the experience – not that I wasn’t – it was more simply my fear of breaking the stream of ideas that had, over the last two and a half hours, permeated my consciousness. At multiple points during the film, I got the sense of coming close to the brink of some grand revelation, only to have Malick decide he didn’t want to make it that easy for me, and snap away. With the black screen in front of me then, all I wanted was to hold those different frames of thought and force them all together.

It didn’t happen then – and now, more than a week since I’ve seen the film, it hasn’t happened yet. I have one kind of understanding of what it’s all supposed to mean, but I am certain that it remains my understanding alone. The Tree of Life displays a resolute unwillingness to push you into connecting its beautifully composed frames, and the end result I would imagine, is a composite of different interpretations for different viewers, as its grand abstractions veer into some narrow personal alley of nostalgia.

Like any great work of art, don’t you think?

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?”

Twenty minutes in, we pull away from stolen moments of suburban life, to the creation of life itself. In images that evoke quiet wonder, we follow the journey of a molten rock that becomes the Earth, right through to the birth of consciousness on the planet.

Malick pays off this narrative gambit with another series of quick sequences that are equally extraordinary: another birth of consciousness, this time of one particular life itself. We move from birth to perception to triumph to jealousy to ennui. At one level, the images that precede might be telling us about the insignificance of human life in the grander scheme of things – but no, I think Malick is going for something more generous here. He’s equating the two miracles instead – the grand triumph that is every single life lived, with the grand triumph that resulted in a speck of consciousness arising in some far corner of the universe.

Large segments of the movie are whispered to us – different characters take up the narrative, all hushed seemingly in prayer. The way of grace and the way of nature are the choices laid down before our protagonist – his mother represents the former, and the sequences with Jessica Chastain are segues of controlled rapture. The way of nature is represented in all its nasty, brutish and short glory by Brad Pitt, and his scenes crackle with misplaced menace. Hunter McCracken is the son who has to chose either path , and in an astonishingly assured performance, he conveys the mix of anger, frustration and guilt largely without speaking.

Prior to The Tree of Lifes’s Palm D’Or win at Cannes, the first screening was met by a balance of jeers and cheers. It’s easy to see how this could be a deeply polarizing movie – all you need to despise it is a healthy dose of cynicism and a lack of faith in Malick’s overall vision.

No, The Tree of Life isn’t for everyone, but then as Roger Ebert would have you know – a movie that’s made for everyone, isn’t particularly for anyone at all.

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011)

Making a prequel to one of the most iconic films, and a franchise so firmly embedded in popular culture that it’s practically an emblem of geekdom? They might as well have worn a placard around their necks saying, “PAN ME.”

Planet of the Apes (1968) begins with Charlton Heston and his fellow astronauts waking up from suspended animation which lasted for two millennia. They land on an alien planet populated by wild, mute humans and intelligent, civilized, talking apes who are the dominant species on the planet. The apes are surprised to find intelligent humans and feel threatened by them. Heston finally escapes to a region which contains evidence of an older, now-extinct civilization. There he realises that he was on Earth all this time. Humanity had utterly destroyed itself, and a new species stepped up to take their place. It’s a devastating, bleak ending and easily one of the greatest moments in cinema.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes has a lot of difficult questions to answer: what happened during the time the astronauts were in suspended animation? How did 6 billion people, skyscrapers and other human paraphernalia disappear? And more importantly, how did the apes get so damned smart? I’ll give them this much: they did attempt to address these questions. And yes, they employed oodles of Movie Science, which is perfectly acceptable, to a limit. But when handy, spray-on versions of super-intelligence virus/drugs appear, you know they’ve gone too far.

James Franco plays a brilliant young scientist who is conducting animal trials for an Alzheimer’s disease cure by employing the same plot device as the scientists in Deep Blue Sea: injecting Science into an animal (chimpanzees in this movie) to make it smart. Due to an accident, the project is terminated and all the chimps are killed, except for one. Franco takes the baby chimp, Caesar, home and brings him up as a child. As Caesar grows up to be something of a genius, he realises that he’s an oddity and there’s no place in the world for him. It is when he breaks out of his comfortable family circle that the dominant-subservient relationship between humans and animals is revealed to him.

If the entire movie had been about Caesar’s attempt to understand and reconcile himself with the world, it would’ve been an instant sci-fi classic. Caesar’s character was clearly modelled on Charlton Heston’s character and the original Caesar from the franchise. The confusion, alienation from one’s own species, the inability to be understood despite being able to communicate all provided so much potential for a great film, but were given short shrift in order to concentrate on monkey fight sequences. What started off as a sensitive portrayal of Caesar’s relationship with humanity, became a frenzy of idiotic scenes, each trying to top the other in WTF-ness. At one point, all the apes in an animal rescue shelter began to take on prison movie personalities: the Newbie, the Morgan Freeman, the Silent Giant from Minority Community, the Sadist and the Sullen Ex-Leader. And this wasn’t even close to being the silliest part of the film.

Hollywood screenwriters, you cannot squeeze 2000 years into a movie, unless you are Stanley Kubrick. Just because evolution is achingly slow and not the stuff the average movie-goer wants to see, doesn’t mean you should squeeze it into 15 minutes either. Even Movie Science will not stretch that far.

As for the actors, all of them ranged between passable to meh, mostly because their roles did not ask for more. Tom Felton and Freida Pinto had very, uh… “flexible” accents, Franco was competent and John Lithgow was (predictably) one of the brighter spots in this stupidfest of a film.

And I cannot stress on this point enough: there were far far FAR too many references to the movie franchise. Easter eggs are fun for all ages but peppering each page of the script with “tributes” got annoying and took away from the serious atmosphere they tried to create. The first one you spot is cute, but after that, the sheer number of references spirals into good-lord-not-another territory.

Like this, except every three minutes.

Unexplained questions are the hallmark of a good film. Inception was insanely awesome, because it left enough space for rabid fans to spin conspiracy theories but otherwise covered its tracks well, plot-wise. Gigantic plot holes on the other hand, are the consequence of too little research and too much cocaine. Understandably, science fiction calls for a lot of audience imagination. We do not yet have the science to create credible futuristic technology, and I’m more than willing to look beyond that. Previously, films were happy to leave such technology as mere plot devices, and use the two hours to ponder on the consequences and ethics of such technology. These days, it feels like our infatuation with technology, our capabilities and CGI is the reason why science fiction films are just not working any more. They are too keen to provide answers for irrelevant questions that nobody is asking.

However, this film does leave you with that timeless question: Why don’t movie scientists believe in titanium/carbon nanotube reinforced cages?

Just for funsies.

COWBOYS & ALIENS: THE ABRIDGED SCRIPT

Another alien invasion flick, another disappointment. Although, to be fair, C&A started off extremely promisingly. The idea of an alien invasion set in the late 1800s is a great concept because common awareness of the universe and the possibility of life on other planets came much later. If aliens did invade in those times, it's more likely that such attacks would've been ascribed to demons or Satan. But this is where C&A failed, for me. It's true, they do call the invading aliens as "demons", but not one of them showed that fear of the supernatural or turned to god, the bible or even a priest for assistance. They just picked up their guns and went to shoot the aliens down, like they were invading mountain lions.

Taking inspiration from one of my favourite websites, The Editing Room, where Rod Hilton writes brilliant and witty abridged scripts for movies as he sees them, I thought that instead of a review, this film deserved an abridged script.

Daniel Craig is not thrilled with his Queer Eye makeover.

FADE IN:

EXT. ARIZONA DESERT

(DANIEL CRAIG wakes up in a desert with amnesia and a futuristic metal bracelet on his wrist)

AUDIENCE:
Daniel Craig looks freakishly plasticky
and has creepy eyes. Obviously he's the alien.

DANIEL CRAIG:
Actually, I'm the cowboy. Instead of losing my
shit at the sight of this incredibly alien piece
of technology that is at least 200 years ahead
of my time, I'm going to treat it as a slightly
irritating accessory and ninja-murder some extras
for fun.

Hmm, it says here on my Western Movie Checklist
that I've got to head over to the nearest tavern,
drink shots of whiskey through gritted teeth and
pick a fight in the town square with the local
asshole.


(He does so).


INT. TAVERN

DANIEL CRAIG:
Whoa fuck! Olivia you crazy creep, have you been
staring at me for the last ten minutes?

OLIVIA WILDE:
Yes. Both of us are looking for something.

DANIEL CRAIG:
Wow, that was deep. You should start a tarot
reading business.


EXT. TOWN SQUARE
(After more than half an hour into the film)

DIRECTOR JON FAVREAU:
(checks title of the film)
It appears that the movie title is Cowboys AND aliens.
Okay time for some explosions and alien ships that look
like trilobites, which will blow up the town and lasso
them a bunch of people! Woo!

(The town sheriff, the bookish innkeeper's wife and Harrison Ford's son (who looks suspiciously like Shia LeBeouf. COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT) aka local asshole are all kidnapped by the aliens. Daniel's bracelet decides to wake up and shoots lasers at the ships).

TOWNSPEOPLE:
Nice bracelet you have there, Daniel! Despite
this being a back of beyond rural hamlet, we
wont suspect it to be a government conspiracy
or witchcraft. Carry on, good sir!

HARRISON FORD:
Standard issue legendary bad guy who likes torturing
people reportin' for duty. Graar, I encourage nepotism!
Rip that other man in half while we're at it!

DANIEL CRAIG:
Say Harrison, why is it that the coolly evil, sinister
and intelligent villains always end up raising dumbasses
for sons?

HARRISON FORD:
You whelp! At least I wasn't a pretend-bad guy in that shitfest,
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

YOUNG ORPHAN WHO WILL BE REPEATEDLY RESCUED DURING
THE COURSE OF THIS FILM:
Mr. Ford sir, did you not read the title of the film?
Cowboys are the traditional heroes which makes aliens
the bad guys so you tone it down and be Daniel Craig's
Sean Connery and a father figure to me.

(Harrison, Daniel, Olivia, Orphan and a Motley Crew of Townspeople whose relatives have been kidnapped set out on a mission to find these aliens that are using technology completely beyond their comprehension, and presumably wing it after finding them).


INT. INSIDE AN OVERTURNED RIVERBOAT

(Lone alien wanders around their camp and finds the young orphan. Instead of ripping him to pieces like it did to all the other people it encountered, the alien chooses to gently stroke the orphan's face. No, seriously).

ORPHAN:
HOLD ON A SECOND. ARE YOU A MOTHERFUCKING SPIELBERG
ALIEN? HOLY SHIT THIS MOVIE MIGHT ACTUALLY NOT SUCK
THAT MUCH!

ALIEN:
What? No, don't be stupid. I'm just passing time by
caressing your face till your rescuers arrive.
Okey dokey here they are, toodaloo kid!


(Meanwhile, the innkeeper is learning to use a gun).

PREACHER:
Dude, you must be the only innkeeper in the entire
goddamn west to not know how to use a gun. I'm a PRIEST
and I can shoot like an ace, for fuck's sake. When you
opened the tavern, did you expect to receive patronage
solely from society marms?

INNKEEPER:
Psh, whatever grandpa. You just made a heartwarming,
sagely speech. You know what that means right?
You just Samuel L. Jackson'd yourself.

(Alien shows up and kills the Preacher).


EXT. ARIZONA DESERT
(The aliens attack and the motley crew uselessly shoot at them with their shitty old timey guns).

MOTLEY CREW:
Hey Daniel, by all means continue to ride around
and admire the fucking scenery and NOT USE THE ONLY
GODDAMN THING THAT CAN DESTROY THE MOTHERFUCKING ALIENS,
YOU GORMLESS GARGOYLE.

(Daniel does so).

OLIVIA WILDE:
Oh, and Daniel, it'd be great if you and I could take
a break from this alien invasion thing and lovingly stare
into each others' eyes. It would be better if we could do it
in the vicinity of that alien that is definitely not dead.

ALIEN:
Yup. not dead.

(kills Olivia Wilde).

DANIEL CRAIG:
Nooooo! Not Olivia!

Wait a second, something's missing. Let me go through
my Checklist again: brooding gunslinger... check, gun-toting
female... check, small orphan... check, gang of outlaws
... check, Sam Elliot look-alike... check. Aha, I have it!
Apaches! Let's go find some.

(find some apaches)

Hey Apaches, we have dead Olivia Wilde with us and don't
quite know what to do with her.

APACHES:
Let's burn her and see what happens.

(Olivia Wilde comes back to life).

OLIVIA WILDE:
I have come from a place above the stars. My planet was
destroyed by these aliens who are looking for gold.
GET IT? GOLD RUSH? Anyhoo, these aliens are kidnapping
people to study human weaknesses. I know every thing
about the aliens and what that bracelet of your does and...

DANIEL CRAIG:
Wait a second, you raging twat. You KNEW exactly what
the aliens were up to and how to use my alien bracelet
as a weapon and you chose to shut your mouth all this
time when people are getting killed and abducted and
whatnot. WHAT THE FUCK?

OLIVIA WILDE:
I wasn't sure if you would've believed me.

DANIEL CRAIG:
Bitch I have a laser shooting bracelet on my hand, and
flying machines with demons in it blew up the whole town.
My disbelief got suspended 3 minutes into the movie.

Oh, also I still have amnesia and more that half the movie
is over. How can we fix it and fill in the backstory?

APACHES:
Native American medicine got that shit covered, brah.

DANIEL CRAIG:
I got my memory back. I just remembered how I got
my alien bracelet. Apparently I was in an alien
ship and tripped and my arm fell onto it. Thank god
aliens are total asshats who leave weapons lying around.


EXT. OUTSIDE THE ALIEN SHIP

MOTLEY CREW:
Yeehaw! Die aliens, die! Humans rule!

ALIENS:
Are you seriously killing us with spears and wooden
arrows when 50 bullets didn't seem to be able to do
the trick earlier?

HARRISON FORD:
Hey, Rule #1 of Invading Earth (Hollywood-Style).
Aliens are only invincible in the first half of the
movie. By the climax, they're worse than Stormtroopers
at surviving.

Besides, we're the Ewoks of this movie so you're doomed.

ALIENS:
Hmm, you're right. Besides, we don't know why we equipped
each of our crewmembers with weapon-bracelets powerful
enough to shoot down our own ships. And why the fuck did we
invent weapons when we have no way of centrally monitoring
them or shutting them down?

DANIEL CRAIG:
Rule #2, sonny jim. Only the absolute fuckwits of the
universe ever invade Earth.

The aliens realise the depth of their breathtaking stupidity and obligingly die.

END

Ranking Potter: #7 – Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

The Chamber of Secrets has reopened. Enemies of the heir, beware.

Something’s trying to keep Harry away from Hogwarts in his second year – and when he finally does make it back, we find out why. The Hogwarts equivalent of an urban legend, the chamber of secrets is back in play, and whatever its unleashed, is preying on the students – and other inhabitants of the school. At the same time, Harry finds a diary that opens into a world 50 years in the past, but while he unearths secrets about some of his closest allies, the narrator himself might be an unreliable one.

Chamber of Secrets was the slasher-killer book of the Harry Potter series. The whole premise of characters being picked off one by one was transported from the Scream series into the Hogwarts setting with wonderfully chilling results. There’s a constant sense of dread that the book maintains ever so well right – amplified by that scene where the History of Magic class is shaken out of its stupor by a Chamber of Secrets question.

While the Potter movies have often failed on some level to accurately recapture that intangible sense of wonder that permeated the books, this was the movie that made this fact the most glaringly obvious. This was the chance for Chris Columbus to set right some of the mistakes he’d made with the first installment - namely the drudging faithfulness to the text and the unwillingness to take artistic risks. Instead, so lost is he with recreating the minor details, making sure that as little is left possible on the editing table, that we pretty much miss the forest for the trees. With more commitment to keeping the plot chugging along like clockwork, the ominous atmosphere is replaced by simple forward momentum. This isn’t necessarily fatal for the movie – just disappointing considering what could have been.

But our concerns must lie with what we have, and here Columbus’ instincts do give us the joys of Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Gilderoy Lockhart, of a majestically created Chamber of Secrets, and the painstakingly crafted visuals that bring Hogwarts to life. Whatever Columbus may be criticized for, he succesfully created the visual palette that future directors would use as a platform to ascend greater creative heights.

So Long, Mr. Potter

It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times.

The release of the final Harry Potter film is upon us. In less than 3 weeks, it really will be over. I know for many of us it all ended with the release of Book 7 – but the Harry Potter movies have been worthy enough translations to merit atleast a fraction of the respect, and thus a fraction of the elegiac response that the books met with at their culmination. Eight movies, four directors, each with their unique vision, be it Alfonso Cuaron’s poetic whimsy or Christopher Columbus’ slavish textual faithfulness. The cream of the British acting crop – and a trio of younger performers that started out wooden, and grew before our eyes (grew with us) steadily maturing as actors.

If the legacy of the books was the resurgence of a love of reading amongst a generation that was steadily weaning itself away from the written word, the legacy of the movies will be their meticulous attention to detail, the protective nature of their craft – a protectiveness some would argue stifled the larger artistic vision of the directors. Yes, a portion of the magic of the books doesn’t make its way to the screen, but isn’t that the general lament for book to movie translations? And yes, the Lord of the Rings made for a more successful translation – but, well, Eragon, The Golden Compass, Inkheart (to name a few fantasy adaptations) were famous disasters. The Harry potter movies didn’t always soar, but they never failed at what they set out to do. Film by film, director by director, they realized the wildest figments of our collective imagination, and maintained an unwavering level of quality. Even before Deathly Hallows Part 2 releases, the Potter movie franchise will have gone down in history as the most successful movie franchise of all time, with a combined gross of $4.47 billion.

Starting this week, I’ll bid farewell to the movie series in the run up to the July 15 release by doing a retrospective of the Potter films. We won’t go in chronological order though – I’ll rank them, starting from my least favourite right up to, well, Prisoner of Azkaban (obviously). I’m hoping to have atleast some level of disagreement with my choices here – do pitch in with where you think the movies place. And let’s all hope that on July 15, Cuaron is finally displaced once and for all, from the top of the list.

Till then, I leave you with Dumbledore’s profound words -

Nitwit. Blubber. Oddment. Tweak.

LARRY CROWNE (2011)

Jon Stewart is right: no matter what Tom Hanks does, he'll never stop being adorable. Even in mediocre, boring movies with a hackneyed plot where he is simply not giving a fuck.

The eponymous Larry Crowne (played by Tom Hanks) is one of those annoyingly cheerful chaps working in the lower echelons of a movie-Walmart, always telling people what to do and generally bustling around the place. Except, he loses his job because he does not have a college degree. So he decides to go to college and there he rides a scooter, changes his wardrobe which automatically makes him cool and his financial woes are magically solved. Or something.

My first problem with this movie is that it's a boring-ass, utterly forgettable movie with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Seriously, I watched it two weeks ago and I am having a hard time remembering even the major plot points. Second, why would anybody in their right senses attempt a back-to-college-with-quirky-classmates film after the TV show, Community pretty much redefined the genre?

And needless to say, the plot is largely irrelevant and somewhere around the 40 minute mark, dies a sad, lonely death (probably in a Dickensian poorhouse). So this film is about Larry Crowne who is like a major loser because he's like, totally straitlaced and buttons up his shirts and everything, and then he heads to college for an economics course (taught by Prof. Hirohito Comic Relief) and a public speaking course (taught by Prof. Julia Love Interest), because these courses will now magically throw open the gates of employment for him.

While in college he meets a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who has no concept of personal space or privacy and rides around with a group of "bikers" i.e. people on scooters. Larry's wardrobe is changed, his furniture moved around a little, his trash taken out and voilà! Larry Crowne v0.2 reporting for duty!

You're probably going to say, "You're shitting me. That's IT? That's all the movie is about?" Okay, to be fair they do spend five minutes on that bit where Larry is totez diligent and doesn't let all that scooter riding distract him from academics and then he aces the courses and the professors' eyes well up with tears as they proclaim him king of the college, etc.

Oh and there's also that "romance" between him and Julia Roberts. After watching this movie, my respect for JR has shot through the roof. She carefully chose this role because, not only did she phone it in, but the character required her to phone it in. Seriously. She plays a middle-aged, somewhat drunk, mostly disinterested professor who shows up to class, mumbles some words in the direction of her students and is back home before the ice in her cocktail has melted. There's also a bad husband tucked in somewhere, but really, at this point nobody was giving a shit and they ran out of film, so Tom Hanks and Julia kissed and proceeded to collect their cheques.

Somebody please get me a bottle of whatever Julia was drinking through the film.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)

Who hasn’t dreamed of walking along the Canal Saint-Martin with a charming companion, sometime during the 40s? Obviously, it will be raining and a lone busker will be playing an appropriate tune on his accordion. The charming companion (who is a secret agent working to bring down the Vichy Regime) will then take off his smart jacket and drape it on my shoulders and then whisp… er, ahem… what was I talking about? Ah yes, nostalgia.

We are all guilty of wishing we lived in a different era, often because they are imagined to be a simpler or better time (for me, it’s a toss-up between candy-stripers and flappers). But it is only because we are fairly confident that we cannot actually be transported back to that time. Deep down, all of us escapists and romantics know that our nostalgia is nothing but a fear of the vague uncertainty of the future. Let’s face it: reality can be awfully depressing and the present is always the worst time to be born, but indoor plumbing, antibiotics, equal rights and the internet make life sweet.

However, it takes a special kind of artist and fellow romantic like Woody Allen to desist from being cynical about such nostalgia-seekers. Only he would think to remind us that even the greatest minds of history were dissatisfied with their times and that it is okay to dream of a better yesterday.

Owen Wilson plays a self-avowed Hollywood hack trying his hand at writing a real piece of literature: a novel about a man who works in a nostalgia shop. He visits Paris with his fiancee, Rachel McAdams and her staunchly Republican family and he is swept away by the small cafes where, presumably, intellectuals hold forth over bottles of cheap wine, romantic garrets where tormented artists ought to live and gramophone records with a story. His fiancee on the other hand, is all set to settle down in a swanky Malibu condo and thinks that rain is something that gets you wet and miserable and destroys those gorgeous pumps. After a small disagreement with her, he ends up walking along a cobbled street, when the clock strikes twelve and a 1920s era Rolls Royce pulls up and the passengers invite him to a party. It isn’t any old party: it’s a party for Jean Cocteau and the guests are Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Audacious? Absolutely. Silly? Not even for a second.

At some point in the movie, Gertrude Stein says that writers cannot be defeatist. It is their job to lift the reader from the crushing depression of reality and Woody does this marvellously: this film encapsulates all the virtues from his greatest works. The whimsy of The Purple Rose of Cairo, the wit of Manhattan, the cheekiness of Mighty Aphrodite and the overwhelming joy of Everyone Says I Love You (which, coincidentally(?), happen to be all my favourite works of his).

If Woody Allen stopped making movies tomorrow, this film would be a fitting epilogue to his oeuvre. Owen Wilson is just a young, less neurotic Woody circa Manhattan, with a soupcon of the wistfulness of Mia Farrow circa The Purple Rose of Cairo.

There is a joy and a passion in devotional works that are beyond compare. “Love” seems like such a shallow emotion in comparison. And what can one revere more than a city? Books and works of art simply cannot hope to compete with a city; even a mere street or alleyway is bursting with so much life, Woody says. And right there is the mantra to every Woody Allen movie ever made: he never has the arrogance to compete with or even simplify a city to a formula. He just makes devotional works to sing a city’s praise and meld with its cultural ethos. That’s what any artist worth his or her salt did: be it Vermeer’s view of Delft, Edith Piaf singing about the skies of Paris or Billy Joel’s state of mind. Cities are more than just a personality; they are deities. Which is why we worship them, curse them when it rains, curse them when it doesn’t rain, defend them strenuously when foreigners dare to curse them and we are haplessly bound to them.

Thanks to Woody, I know I’m going to be terribly disappointed when I visit New York and hear no jazz background number to accompany my stroll down a street in Manhattan.

Bottom line? You wont be able to hate this movie. I encourage you to try, but you will fail. You may not love it as much as I did, but that’s only because I suspect Woody peeked into my secret journal (which totally does not exist) where I’ve specifically stated that the world needs more movies like The Purple Rose of Cairo and that if I had a time machine, I’d head straight to the 20s. You may dismiss this film as a confection: delightful, but not satiating. I disagree. The sparkling wit and humour that one has come to expect from a Woody Allen film never took away from the depth of the dialogue. It gave every single cameo relevance, rather than rendering them into mere crowd-pleasers. Despite having a rather bold story that takes suspension of disbelief to a completely different level, he masterfully weaved the many themes together to create a very realistic fantasy. Add to that the fact that the cast was perfectly chosen and that even the most dislikable characters brought substance to the film (as opposed to existing solely as foils to the protagonist), that what you have here is a film that is wise and will remain ever-watchable.

After a long line of forgettable films, the inimitable Woody Allen is back.