Word: allene
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...been a while since a Woody Allen film evoked anything like raw emotion. His 1996 movie musical Everyone Says I Love You had its characters spinning in a delightful tizzy reminiscent of golden age Hollywood, but there wasnt a believable human relationship in it. His last two films, Celebrity and Deconstructing Harry, launched some dead-on potshots at the empty hysteria of modern life, but they ultimately amounted to very good one-line jokes, prompting unfair reflection that Allen had become too bitter and insular for his own good...
...directors latest, the fanciful Sweet and Lowdown, is in most respects a minor work of art, though it is pleasant and interesting. But enthusiasts should note that it represents something of a breakthrough for Allen, in that the main character, fictional 30s jazz guitarist Emmet Ray (Sean Penn), is a brooding, inarticulate, freewheeling figure motivated by moody emotions. Sure, hes neurotic as hell, but not in the style of nebbishy self-analysis that has informed so many Allen protagonists. Emmets comic/pathetic exploits are governed by the cadences of jazz, which has always been a background presence in Allens movies...
When British actress Samantha Morton got "the Call" from Woody Allen about a possible role, she knew enough to be excited, but not enough to be intimidated. In fact, she hadn't seen any of his movies. And though Morton is--so far--virtually unknown in the U.S., she believed that the audition cut both ways. "I have to decide whether a person is right to direct me," she explains. She knew nothing of the legendary Allen secretiveness: how, for example, he won't let actors see his scripts, just the scenes in which they appear. Morton simply...
...York premiere, it is clear that Morton is not some frail newcomer. As she likes to remind interviewers, she has racked up many television and film credits over the past decade, doing the obligatory bbc costume dramas and a handful of little-seen films. She came to Allen's attention for her raw, uninhibited portrayal of Iris in Carine Adler's 1997 Under the Skin, about a girl who goes into a promiscuous spiral after her mother dies. Next spring she will also be seen as a heroin addict in Jesus' Son, with Billy Crudup...
...past few Woody Allen films have flirted, in a provocatively meanspirited way, with the public aspects of his personality. Deconstructing Harry focused on Woody the selfish lover, Celebrity on Woody the capricious star. The new one has reverbs of Woody's Monday-night gigs in a classical jazz ensemble. Sweet and Lowdown is about one sour fellow, but it's another character who gives this minor movie a surprising lilt and afterglow...