Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

[Finch]

Have to agree with AWA that the movie at least looks exquisite - if, unlike most other recent Allen pics, it doesn't get bad or indifferent reviews, I may actually go and see this in theaters.

[Roger Ryan]

Woody writes about what inspired MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

I love these tie-ins he's been doing for his last few movies; they remind me of his great short stories he published in books like WITHOUT FEATHERS.

[AWA]

Early reviews are almost entirely positive, with some really glowing ones like this one in Film Comment by Kent Jones .... also linked to that article is an excellent, unusually relaxed, candid and upfront / honest interview with Woody which is a must read - discusses editing decisions in Hannah, working with Khondji on this and the next film in Rome (more reason for optimism!), Lubitsch, Sturges and more.

A Sidney Bechet recording opens the film, playing uninterrupted in it's entirity over top of shots of street scenes in Paris. Something rather daring for Woody to do these days. And that, as a big fan of Bechet myself, is a can't miss prospect.

[Finch]

Slant have (rightly so) thrashed most of Allen's recent output so it's a pleasant surprise to see them joining in the positive reaction to Midnight in Paris with a 3 out of 4 review.

The film is at its finest when the meaning of Gil's frequent retreats into his gilded reveries is left, for audiences, cannily unexplained. In one of the most beautiful scenes from Allen's canon, Gil leaves a café where he's just met Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), to bring back to the writer a copy of a work in progress, a novel about a shop that deals in nostalgia, only to return to the café and find in its place a laundromat. The moment, like Gil's own desperation about his life and future, resonates with more sadness than humor, and his confusion won't be lost on anyone who's ever mourned the turning of, say, a historic club into something as mundane as a mall or dormitory. (...) Midnight in Paris is Allen's strongest movie in at least 10 years, a fantasy about delusion rather than a deluded fantasy itself, but it's no masterwork. It's been longer than a decade since the writer-director has written a role for a woman as rich and complex as the ones he gifted to the likes of Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, and Gena Rowlands, and the ladies of Midnight in Paris are either whores, harpies, or banal innocents, none more obnoxious than McAdams's Inez, a woman whose sheer and utter reprehensibility, her craven class-mongering, is pitched at such a supremely shrill level that it squanders the film's potential greatness. For all his flaws and searching to become a better man, lover, and artist, you never quite believe that Gil would make a mistake as horrible as this obscene caricature of womanhood. (...)
Worse yet is how Allen chooses to elaborate on the film's thesis, condescending to his audience in the same manner Paul, Michael Sheen's "pedantic" art connoisseur, talks down to Gil by calling out his unhealthy fixation on nostalgia as a ritual of denial, a flaw in his romantic view of the world. Even Gil too cleanly articulates the theme of the film when he travels with Picasso's ex-mistress, Adrianna (Marion Cotillard), from the '20s to the time of Toulouse-Lautrec, instructing the woman, when she says she doesn't wish to return to her own time, about how history shouldn't become our obsession. In scenes such as these, Allen writes this review for me. And yet Midnight in Paris survives these missteps, almost entirely because of Wilson's exquisitely confident expression of his character's existentially defeatist outlook on the world.

[ShellOilJunior]

Slant is mean-spirited and trite. I'd rather read a review in the Daily Worker.

[rohmerin]

Top 1 in Spanish box office. More money than Thor and Fast and furious 5. Even reporters from TV news have gone to cinemas and asked audiences why this seems the film of the year, his best film in ages and why everyone says I'm loving it.

Not seen yet because in my town is dubbed !!!

[Cde.]

Slant is mean-spirited and trite. I'd rather read a review in the Daily Worker.

Mean-spirited? How so?
I think they're very valuable to online film criticism.

[knives]

This is the film that the previous two were building up to without a doubt. It's basically the Woody Allen of today making a Woody Allen film of the '90s. Everything about screams that decade and I mean that in the most positive way I can. appropriately this movie shares a lot in common with Alice though I enjoyed this film a great deal more. All of the themes and personal discoveries for the lead are very similar and work to the film's advantage.

Really overall I'd say this is his best film since at least Cassandra's Dream with a beauty of shooting that tops everything in recent memory. There's one shot in particular that's so elegantly done yet at the same instant succeeds in being one of the best not commented upon visual gags his more realistic films have done. Though calling this film realistic is tremendously absurd. While I loved the film you really have to be willing to go along with Allen's intentional childlike naivety for much of the run time. The historical figures and city are clear and deliberate caricatures that deal with the image of these figures more than the figures themselves (Brody's cameo is really where this aspect will make or break you in this aspect as his Dali basically shouts Dali for two minutes).

Jumping back to this being his best throwback yet the humour is spot on with his best attacks on faux intellectualism in the upper class in a long while. The entirety of Sheen's character while really a staple of Allen's work by now is still successful in just how good it is. The comedy in general though is so successful I became ashamed at how hard I was laughing during a coemdy with Sheen's bad translations and speeches full of confidence and clear stupidity. That's not to say he is the only funny bit, but that I'm glad to see this sort of character utilized in an Allen film again. An other great example of comedy is just any time that Wilson is confused. His face shows disbelief in a way that is perfect for the character.

Since I'm leaning on acting mentions anyway I should just throw out there that everyone does a wonderful job with Rachel Mcadams and Kurt Fuller stealing the show in the present day while Allison Pill's Zelda Fitzgerald, who sounds a lot like Holly Hunter here, and Corey Stoll's Hemingway, which is really more of a Lord Flasheart, do the same in the past. In between all of this zaniness though Allen manages to make the relationship between Wilson and Cotillard important and push forward some, if not unique to Allen, interesting themes and characterizations (luckily it seems he understands the lack of specialness these ideas are to his work and even some of the drawbacks to the story and seems intent to make them benefit the film anyways). So in short good time at the movies.

Edit: By the way I just realized I only have one of his film's on DVD. Are any of the classics so badly done transfer wise as to not get or can I just jump where ever I please. Follow up question being are those MGM sets in a regular case or one those stupid snappers?

[mfunk9786]

I was completely caught off guard by this spectacular film. This feels like minor Allen throughout, which is the highest compliment I can pay to a film that is about as major Allen as it gets - the film feels breezy and loose and creatively mossy where a lot of his recent output (and even his best films) can be bogged down in plot detail or sometimes overwhelmingly heady dialogue that doesn't take us anywhere particularly exciting (see: the "you have to buy a gun" sub-subplot in Anything Else or pretty much all of the overrated Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Here we have a love letter to a city that Allen truly cares about, and one feels in their bones the level to which he wants to express it to us. Even though his tongue is planted in his cheek at times when Owen Wilson (who has never been better, by the way) goes on and on about what makes Paris so special, one can feel the honesty, and daresay, innocence of what Allen is trying to convey. It's hard to write about this film, because for a film that has next to zero plot, it can be very easily spoiled by reading too much about its surprises - in fact, reading anything about its plot will likely sap it of a lot of its magic. I can see it being quite polarizing, considering the leap we're asked to make, but through the eyes of Wilson's impish protagonist (who is easily the most appealing and sympathetic in all of Allen's oeuvre), it is not nearly as difficult as I initially expected to make that leap.

The entire cast is stellar here, from Michael Sheen (a performance that is luckily brief, if he were on screen much longer my skin may have fallen off), to Rachel McAdams; and the rest of the supporting cast whose roles I would never dare to spoil in this review. Just go and see it, you know you will eventually. Let the film do its work, and get back to me. To my taste, the film's uniquely wide-eyed approach to its subject matter makes it my favorite Allen comedy, and easily one of my favorite Allen films of all time, if not... well. This is Allen at his best, and I never thought I'd ever get to say that sentence unless I went back and posted in the Manhattan thread, as if anyone needed me to.

[Robert de la Cheyniest]

Thanks for the review Mfunk, you expressed just about exactly what I wanted to say about this wonderful film.

[AttitudeAJM]

It definitely seemed to hit its beats well. I didn't know what to expect when I sat in the theater but I have to say that I was surprised by how it didn't take it self to seriously. The artistic references were very relevant to the plot and were used in a fantastically comedic way. Definitely one of the better Woody Allen comedies of the last several years.

Since he seems to be churning out one after the other, is there anything lined up for him next?

[knives]

I believe the Rome project is next, though the Woody Allen thread probably is the best place to look.

[Tom Hagen]

At this point, he has to be on the EU tourism payroll or something. I don't mean that entirely as a dig; I much prefer this stage of his career to the 1995 - 2005 "New York City apartment porn" phase.

[HistoryProf]

after expressing my guarded lack of confidence earlier in this thread, I have to say I'm excited to see this - haven't been able to say that about Woody for a while. sounds like a lot of fun and not so much a return to form, but a bit of a reinvention of it. I still wish he would get back to NY already, but this is very promising.

[Roger Ryan]

I just wanted to add my appreciation for this new film from Mr. Allen. He treads a lot of the same territory we've seen many times before, but seldom as confidently and enjoyably as he does here. I don't want to go into details at this point (and it's a film you don't want spoiled by too much talk), but I will say that the encounters with Hemingway and Bunuel demonstrate some of the sharpest writing Allen has done in a couple of decades. Owen Wilson now strikes me as the best Allen stand-in yet. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS feels like it should have been the follow-up to PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO and it's a thrill to see such a charming idea so nicely executed during the autumn of Allen's career.

[domino harvey]

So, this was pretty good, not great, but yes, handily his best since Cassandra's Dream. I liked how unabashedly specific the film plays, as Allen has abandoned gearing towards anyone but his core audience, an audience that gets Exterminating Angel jokes without having to stop everything to explain why its funny. The concept is great, and for a lot of us here, I suspect the main idea of nostalgia for another era hits pretty close to home. Owen Wilson is phenomenal in a very funny role-- his wide-eyed reactions, bursting out of his normal unaffected persona, were killing me. Allison Pill too is great fun in her scene-stealing role as Zelda Fitzgerald-- I wish she didn't disappear halfway through the film! The film has a nicely structured studio era romantic narrative, too, with few surprises but much delight in the execution.

[knives]

Took the words right out of my mouth, literally at some points, I think I've fallen for it not so much because it's great which it isn't as much as seeing Allen just spin like a master on the big screen is such a grand experience.

[domino harvey]

Re: Your MGM question, I think the only avoidable discs are Annie Hall (non-anamorphic) and Take the Money and Run (cropped), the rest are fine. The sets are not snappers-- as far as I know, MGM never released anything in that format. Deconstructing Harry was in a snapper, but that's a different studio.

[knives]

Thanks, I can live with letterboxing so I'll just wait for the giant set to go down in price a little.

[Murdoch]

I saw this in a sort of double bill with Chaplin's A Woman in Paris (the theaters were right next to each other and when the Chaplin ended I hurried over to see this), and greatly enjoyed it. I liked how Allen dealt with the golden age nostalgia, where each time period had their own era they longed for and no one was satisfied with the present. I think Corey Stoll was the highlight, his Hemingway was hilarious and each line reading was spot-on. I'm enjoying Allen's overseas films a lot, looking forward to what he does in Rome.

[mfunk9786]

Summing everything up

Spoiler

dentally

made me so happy

[Siddon]

](*,) I was hoping we could talk about spoilers in here. Anyways great film another in a long list of the Woody Allen is back films, which I've been hearing since Everyone Says I love you.

My favorite part of the film had a Criterion slant:

Spoiler

Explaining the plot of The Exterminating Angel to Luis Buñuel is one of the best meta scenes I've seen in a long time. Perhaps it helps that I saw that classic for the first time last month and it's still so fresh in my mind but I was laughing hard at how perfect the tone of the explanation went with the actual film.

[Roger Ryan]

]I was hoping we could talk about spoilers in here. Anyways great film another in a long list of the Woody Allen is back films, which I've been hearing since Everyone Says I love you.

My favorite part of the film had a Criterion slant:

Spoiler

Explaining the plot of The Exterminating Angel to Luis Buñuel is one of the best meta scenes I've seen in a long time. Perhaps it helps that I saw that classic for the first time last month and it's still so fresh in my mind but I was laughing hard at how perfect the tone of the explanation went with the actual film.

Spoiler

It was the perfect choice given that Bunuel would become somewhat fixated on dinner parties gone askew in his later work, which struck me as Allen choosing ideas that would connect with other Buñuel films as well. Gil's closing line "Don't worry, it'll probably hit you one morning when you're shaving" is not only specific to ANGEL but could also be seen as an allusion to the opening scene of Buñuel's first film with Dali. Perhaps unintended, but it points up how certain themes or images appear throughout Buñuel's work.

[Kellen]

Got a chance to watch this last night; I thought it was wonderful.

Spoiler

Adrien Brody was probably my favorite part of the film "Rhinoceros!", I thought the bit when their looking at the Picasso painting and Owen Wilson drops some knowledge on the Paul was great (I'm sure we've all been around those 'know it all' types before.) This was one of my favorite Woody Allen films in the past couple of years. I thought whoever it was that played Ernest Hemingway did a really nice job too. Hopefully when I go see Tree Of Life next week i'll enjoy that just as much!

[hollyharry]

Did anybody else wish for a gag at the end...

Spoiler

...where a guy comes from the future to 2010 and is star-stuck by Gil and Gabrielle? Maybe an easy gag, but I think the Woody Allen of "Love And Death" would have done that joke. I think this film actually is at it's best when it's gag-driven as opposed to character-driven.