A Movie You Might Have Missed #92 — Broadway Danny Rose

This is part of our mini-festival showing my mother our favorite Woody Allen movies. As with most of this list, hardly anyone has ever seen it so I'm giving you a heads up!

Danny Rose (Woody Allen), a hopeless New York talent agent, is a tireless workhorse for his eccentric, unimpressive acts. When Rose signs has-been lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), he knows he has to go to great lengths to keep his new client, which means escorting Canova's mistress, Tina (Mia Farrow), to the singer's shows. The only problem is that her ex-boyfriend is a jealous gangster who thinks Rose is her new man and wants revenge.

We saw this screwball comedy when it came out and upon rewatching I had only the vaguest memory of the stereotypical characters. What I forgot, or hadn't noticed the first time around, was the sheer humanity exhibited by Woody Allen and Mia Farrow at the end as their characters reach crisis and must deal with it. That raised it up a star in my estimation.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #87: Manhattan Murder Mystery

It's been 12 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

The man in the apartment down the hallway is so awfully nice. He has one of those deep, expansive voices, and a face that breaks naturally into a smile, and the kind of big, disorganized body that's somehow reassuring. Therefore, obviously, he must be hiding something. And when his wife dies of a heart attack, it cannot be as simple as that. There must be more to it. Something deep, dark and ominous.

This is the way Carol's mind works. She can't help it; she was probably raised on Nancy Drew. She drives her husband nuts. He wants her to shut up and go to sleep, but all night and all day her mind is at work, threading together facts and possibilities into an obsessive theory: This nice guy has killed his wife, and unless she does something about it, he'll get away with murder.

Roger Ebert

What follows is a screwball murder mystery investigation, Woody Allen style. It stars Allen and Diane Keaton which tells you a lot about their dynamic if you ever saw Annie Hall. They work very well as a married couple.

I haven't seen this for about 10 or 15 years. It really holds up both as a tightly-plotted mystery and an examination of comfortable, middle aged marriage. I've always liked it but this time I was laughing out loud. In fact, I laughed out loud so many times that it got kind of embarrassing.

My mother hadn't ever seen a Woody Allen film. She liked this one a lot, which led to a minor Woody Allen festival of our favorites — most of which, it turns out, are movies practically everyone missed. I have featured many of them in the Movies You Might Have Missed series already right here.

The Golden Age in the City of Lights: Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris

This review ran in 2011 when we originally saw the movie. This is part of our mini-festival showing my mother our favorite Woody Allen movies. So I thought I'd share the review again.

Owen Wilson plays a dreamer who has made a fortune writing screenplays but longs to find a sympathetic soul to read his first novel. His fiancee and her family seem wrong for him in every way but he doesn't notice because he's so busy longing for the Golden Age of 1920's Paris when the American writers and artists mingled. One evening, lost in a dark side street, sitting forlornly on the steps, he hears midnight chime and a very old yellow taxi pulls up. The merry group inside beckon him in and he joins them only to find himself literally swept away to meet his idols.

Midnight in Paris has a surprisingly straight-forward story and moral, albeit one told with a romantic eye to the artists in 1920s Paris and those who yearn nostalgically for the past. This is a love letter to Paris, a nod to comedy, a commentary on modern Americans in Paris, and above all a reminder that now is all the time we have and we may be living in a golden age in the present. Sweet, charming, and funny. A winner all 'round.

I give it four stars out of five because there were a few details which didn't work with the logic of the story quite right, and which we all noticed. They don't make that much of a difference but catching them would have gotten a bit closer to perfection.

UPDATE
My favorite people were Hemingway and Dali but I must also add that I've never understood people who say that Marion Cotillard is beautiful. Until now. She is luminous in this film. Kathy Bates was also perfectly cast as Gertrude Stein. All were just a joy to behold in this film.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #37 — Everyone Says I Love You

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.   

If you've even heard of this movie, I tip my hat to you. It is a rare one. 

This hasn't been available for a while so when I saw the dvd at Amazon I grabbed it. Why had I been on the lookout for it? Because this is one of my favorites of Woody Allen's movies. Few people know that he wrote and directed a musical and for those few who do know it, no one is neutral. We really liked it and, upon viewing it last night I was surprised that it didn't seem to have aged. The only tell that this movie is 17 years old is how extremely young some of the actors seem.

This is Woody Allen's love letter to musicals, Hollywood love stories, and New York, this is the tale of a wealthy family's year. It is told as a musical, with the large cast of well known actors all doing their own vocals. The songs are classic, fit into unexpected situations, and occasionally accompany dance routines. The actors don't come off as professional singers or dancers, but have just enough awkwardness to lend everything a sincere, realistic feel. As with many musicals from earlier times, the plot is a simple vehicle to move everything along and much of the pleasure is in seeing the movie unfold.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #22 — Radio Days

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

 

Before the internet, video games, and television, there was radio which captivated its audience just as thoroughly as modern storytelling venues do today. 

This movie is Woody Allen's love letter to the medium he grew up with. He narrates as we watch a young boy's view of his ordinary family and the way that different radio shows influenced their lives. Several generations of his family live in their New York house during World War II and the always-playing radio provides the backdrop to the small daily dramas that make up their lives. The stories go from humorous to dramatic as we see the family stories interspersed with those of the radio stars of the day and Sally the cigarette girl who is struggling to begin a radio career. 

At the heart is a love of family that shines through all the everyday ordinary scenarios and the nostalgic look at the past. Thoroughly captivating and a movie I have watched countless times.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #13: Bullets Over Broadway

It's been 10 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

13. Bullets Over Broadway

A struggling playwright (John Cusak) is forced to cast a gangster's moll in the star part of his play in order to get it produced in the Roaring 20's New York. The moll is talentless and the playwright soon discovers that one of her assigned bodyguards has more writing talent than he does. Cusak's character soon falls for an aging diva whose attentions just add to the confusion.

A light, slapstick piece, this is one of Woody Allen's best films, perhaps because he isn't in it. It also raises good questions about the artist's debt to the creative muse and the price one pays to create.