You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (Woody Allen, 2010)

[Markson]

Match Point was rated R

Ah, you're right. It's relative popularity and––to my memory––only lightly explicit sex and violence had me convinced that it was only a PG-13. Figured his last R-ratings were back during what Woody-hater Marion Meade, in her The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (a vicious, almost comically shambolic "biography"), called his Hooker/Blowjob trilogy.

[Dylan]

Lovely?

[FerdinandGriffon]

Lovely

It looks like the background to some Barbie packaging. Insipid, and doesn't seem to fit the film at all from the trailer I've seen.

[Matt]

It looks like royalty-free clip art.

[kaujot]

Hey, Woody's got a budget to meet.

[AWA]

Agreed - this looks like a fan poster. They downloaded Windsor Elongated font and made up a pretend poster overtop of clip art and posted it online.

The Euro one is not bad. Oddly enough, the only Woody film posters I continously like are the ones from Europe and/or Asia.

For instance, this Japanese poster for "Anything Else" kicks the crap out of the crap that passed for a poster in North America:

ETA: I can't get it to show up here, so just go to this person's blog and see both.

[FerdinandGriffon]

I take it back. The You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger poster is beautiful in a world in which the American Anything Else poster exists.

[Markson]

The new poster was here, but the link got canned. Here it is.

[tavernier]

Interview with NY Times

[AWA]

Here is the extended version of the NY Times interview, with more interesting comments on his filmmaking

[tavernier]

Missing comma means crappy movie

[Murdoch]

And here I thought What's New Pussycat? was just trying to find out what New Pussycat was.

[Markson]

Caught this tonight. Huge fan, etc. I've learned to go into new Allen films with lowered expectations, but I was delighted to find this a bit better than I'd hoped. There is no new thematic territory trod here. Rather, it seems almost a "greatest hits" of Allen's preoccupations: the necessity of delusion/escape from the horrors of reality; the mysteries of the heart; luck; characters with much to express, but not the talent required to do so; unfulfilled potential, etc. He seems to be working in a kind of "classic" mode that he hasn't shown in some time and, indeed, it's probably his best larger ensemble film in a while, and one that admirably switches between light and darkness. The camerawork was agile, the colors rich. The film is tightly written and plotted. I love his ability to immediately establish character tensions and to keep ratcheting them up in ways that are always inevitable, but not predictable (well, not always predictable). The cast is good all-around, but I was particularly struck by two scenes between Banderas and Watts––one in a car, and the other their final moment together. And, whether the cause be intentional nuance or phoning it in, the lately-hammy Hopkins gives his subtlest performance in years.

[domino harvey]

It's fun to come to a film like this from an auteurist standpoint, because there's not a lot else here for anyone else. I enjoyed how Allen spends the entire film surrounding the mother character with people ridiculing her absurd beliefs and then has her be the only one of the four main characters to find happiness at the end. I was also surprised he allowed the Brolin plotline to get as far as it got-- given his proclivity for letting characters get away with things, I predicted an easy coast for Brolin, and while it's cautiously ambiguous, Allen plants enough there for the unhappy conclusion to be pretty clear. Speaking of that storyline, how beautiful is Freida Pinto in this pic? Allen has absolutely nothing for her to do, but he gets the most out of her anyways. I actually thought the best scene in the film was the long take with both sides of the marrying family reacting to the wedding news in disparate fashions-- nice to see some reverberations on adultery within what is still the Woody Allen-norm for acceptance of the act. Naomi Watts only really shines in that pathetic last scene with Banderas, but her wardrobe is amazing, and ultimately Anthony Hopkins and Lucy Punch's implants' contribution to their quarter of the film is pretty negligible. So, overall, eh plus.

[AWA]

I finally saw this on a trip to NYC which included an encounter with the man himself the day before. I had hopes that this film would be a definite return to more of the urban love drama / comedy that Woody's best work has been born out of. And while there was definite potential, nothing in the film suggested anything - character, plot, situations, conversations - were completely realized.

Brolin and Watts are the highlights, working and getting the most out of their characters as they can. Pinto is eye candy and exists only to be beautiful, which she happens to be quite good at. The cinematography too is (thankfully) a lot darker than the trailers let on (which is another new depth to which trailer edits are sinking - colour correcting images to make them more brighter and gentrified?), which was comforting. Again, as in VCB and some of Woody's more recent films, a lot of close ups, many of which are used for emphasis (in the conventional shoulder cuttting way). Most of the camera work was interesting but some of it seemed unnecessary.

With some of the better moments, it made it seem as though this were merely a first draft. An entire film could have come out of

Spoiler

Brolin's book theft and the man in the coma, plus his marriage breaking up and settling in with Pinto. That would've been a better film... the scene at the hospital bed as they were trying to talk the man out of the coma and seeing Brolin's character squirm was in line with one of the air-tight suspense elements Woody has used increasingly since first working with it in Manhattan Murder Mystery... one of the few instances where Woody has added to and improved in his artistic arsenal in the past 5-10 years.

I would have also loved to see an entire film on the Hopkins character dealing with his age... of course, I'd like to see Woody deal more with that period, and thankfully it looks as though there are signs of that in the last two films...

Spoiler

although the Hopkins/Punch storyline ended on a pretty flat note. He should've died or at least become wheelchair bound after that fight and some heart attack or something. Anything would've been better than just demanding that Punch will get a DNA test on the baby and leaving it at that.

Some of the writing definitely screamed for a re-write at times... and the whole supposed intended double entendre of the title of the film never really amounted to that much other than a passing flat joke (repeated for no real reason other than to fill time?) by Brolin. More could have definitely come from that.

Despite these short comings, it still had it's moments, as Woody films often do of late, that still made it enjoyable. Certain scenes more than others but despite finally getting back to some material that he once dealt with to great success, overall it left you wanting more.

Woody and the band cooked at the Carlyle when I saw them. I think it was telling of how far Woody has sunk into the Manhattan intelligentsia he so despised and skewered by being the insider's outsider for several decades when old friend / bodygaurd / handler John Doumanian grumpily pulled Woody out of the Cafe as soon as he was done, and rushed him through the waiting fans to Woody's bewilderment as they were late for some birthday party and Woody was supposed to have cut out early to get there on time... but instead played longer because the band was really on and even did additional songs in the encore. That said more to me than anything about where he's at these days, aged 75.

Midnight In Paris is next, and it seems to be the first high concept film Woody has done in 14 years since Deconstructing Harry (not to mention his first period piece, or at least large parts of it apparently, in 10 years). Hopefully some of the stronger points found in this film and the last few films will be put to good use for his second of the big MediaPro films.

[JMULL222]

I gotta say I disagree, I thought this was a total return to form for Allen and it was mainly becuase it was deviod of the melodramatic turns you suggest within the spoiler box. I felt the ambiguous notes were so confident, and perfectly famed, that it brought the film above anything Allen has done in damn near 20 years.

[AWA]

I gotta say I disagree, I thought this was a total return to form for Allen and it was mainly becuase it was deviod of the melodramatic turns you suggest within the spoiler box. I felt the ambiguous notes were so confident, and perfectly famed, that it brought the film above anything Allen has done in damn near 20 years.

The script was thin and the characters had nothing to say at crucial points in the film, they just repeated themselves. While it is a nice return to some familar territory, he showed some major rust - all they could do was repeat themselves saying very little (both from scene to scene and from line to line within the scene... eg where Brolin says the title of the film - paper thin one-liner, repeated for no reason and adds nothing to the film, despite it getting to become the title of the whole damn picture?).

Woody compared this film to Husbands & Wives, yet that film sparked with an intensity, an urgency, that came both from the actors and the script itself. They always had something to say and their motivations were believable because they were passionate characters with ambitious desires in life. In TDS the characters have very little to say and rarely seem all that engaged. Woody skips Brolin and Watts breakup all together and leaves it to a line for the narrator. We don't fear the marriage breaking up because it's inconsequential to the film itself, to the point where there isn't much of an attempt at all to make it any kind of struggle. Husbands & Wives deals with that with great skill - btw, a film which Woody has made in the "past 20 years" that is leagues better than this. Some "melodrama" would've at least spurned something on and raised the stakes a bit, plus, as I mentioned, Woody would've been better off using it as it is one of the few things he's doing consistently well in film these days (or, at least, in certain moments / scenes).

Missing comma means crappy movie

Also, someone might be able to correct me on this, but I do believe the actual screen title in the film is "You will meet a tall, dark Stranger". Not sure on the caps but I do recall a coma.

[swo17]

After a bit of a shaky start, I rather liked this once I realized what Allen was doing--gleefully playing God over the world of these characters, punishing them all by giving them exactly what they want. In a way, I thought the film played like a less caustic Your Friends & Neighbors, in that each character showed the courage (not sure that's the right word) to follow their desires instead of social norms but were then promptly struck down for it. Even Watts' character, who is probably the most sympathetic, and who only attempts to stray outside of the norm when this option seems the most socially acceptable one left to her, gets her dreams stomped like a cockroach for the seemingly minor offense of letting her mother believe a fortune teller for too long. As for the mother getting a happy ending, well, she may think she's happy, but in reality, the relationship with her family is severely broken and she is under the control of a charlatan.

I also really liked small touches like having the fortune teller do readings from a regular pack of playing cards, and the line (I'll probably screw this up but)

Spoiler

"He was kissing me so much, I couldn't scream."