I liked it. I'm actually fairly surprised it didn't get more Oscar love, as it was certainly better than
Crash, and certainly in the same ballpark as
Brokeback.
Despite a good script, some of the actors strained with the material in parts, especially Scarlett Johansson, whose portrayal I found fairly excruciating in the first half of the movie. (She was better in the second.) The intertext with such things as opera and Greek tragedy and
Crime and Punishment was quite nice, however, and the movie throws you some nice curveballs here and there (though it borrows perhaps a bit too heavily from an earlier Allen picture,
Crimes and Misdemeanors).
Overall, it's a perfectly cromulent Woody Allen movie. Go ahead and see it.
# posted by
Gerry Canavan @ 10:02 PM
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