Cafe Society marked Woody Allen's first foray into digital filming and became, at $30 million, his most expensive film to date. There are times when the freedom of the digital medium, using a Sony CineAlta F65 camera, really aids his direction, the colour palette particularly well considered. It's decently cast, with Jesse Eisenberg one of the better Allen analogues of recent times, and yet it's just... okay.
Woody Allen making movies that are "just okay" is something to get used to of late. In recent times he'd developed a more extreme stance, whereby one good movie would be followed by a stinker, and he could never seem to put together two decent projects in a row. Since his last good, arguably even great, movie, 2013's Blue Jasmine, Woody has put together three "decent" movies, nearly all of them forgettable, which does suggest that he's settling into even more of a comfort zone.
2016's other big project was his first "television" series, the Amazon Prime six-parter "Crisis In Six Scenes". Allen himself admitted in interviews that he didn't know what he was doing and had regretted taking on the project. Had the series been put together as a film then it would have been his longest movie at around 135 minutes and would have been perhaps not as bad as they say, just, with a kind eye...... "okay".
Cafe Society has occasional new territory, such as Eisenberg remarking on how his former beau (Kirsten Stewart) married his uncle, making her his aunt... a rare discussion of the complications of relations through marriage, something not unlike Ronan Farrow's quips on Twitter suggesting he calls Father's Day "Brother-In-Law Day". There are some flaws, such as Allen's use of voice-over narration... a nostalgic and touching addition to Radio Days, but here intrusive, and often just explaining the plot. The overriding feeling is that the script wasn't quite completed, and he felt the need to bridge the gaps, at one stage even giving us a scene without any audible dialogue.
Ken Stott is an unlikely choice as a Jewish father, and Steve Carrell seems unable to breathe three-dimensionality into an underwritten part as the third cog in a love triangle. This can be excused, given that Carrell was cast on 28th August, 2015, sometime after the filming commenced on 17th August, a time when original actor Bruce Willis had had to leave, officially due to scheduling conflicts. Rather than a below-par performance by his own standards, Carrell can be looked on at helping to save the film at the last minute.
Lastly, amongst all the traditional Allen fixations and conversations that have become incredibly, almost wearyingly familiar over the previous 40+ movies, there's the obsession with jazz. It's a fine line to walk, where the beauty of the music can add class to a film that warrants it, or make a dud seem pretentious. It's also unfortunate that Woody seems obsessed not with its bluesier underside or more experimental areas, but with Dixieland jazz, which is arguably the most trite of its forms.
Woody Allen making movies that are "just okay" is something to get used to of late. In recent times he'd developed a more extreme stance, whereby one good movie would be followed by a stinker, and he could never seem to put together two decent projects in a row. Since his last good, arguably even great, movie, 2013's Blue Jasmine, Woody has put together three "decent" movies, nearly all of them forgettable, which does suggest that he's settling into even more of a comfort zone.
2016's other big project was his first "television" series, the Amazon Prime six-parter "Crisis In Six Scenes". Allen himself admitted in interviews that he didn't know what he was doing and had regretted taking on the project. Had the series been put together as a film then it would have been his longest movie at around 135 minutes and would have been perhaps not as bad as they say, just, with a kind eye...... "okay".
Cafe Society has occasional new territory, such as Eisenberg remarking on how his former beau (Kirsten Stewart) married his uncle, making her his aunt... a rare discussion of the complications of relations through marriage, something not unlike Ronan Farrow's quips on Twitter suggesting he calls Father's Day "Brother-In-Law Day". There are some flaws, such as Allen's use of voice-over narration... a nostalgic and touching addition to Radio Days, but here intrusive, and often just explaining the plot. The overriding feeling is that the script wasn't quite completed, and he felt the need to bridge the gaps, at one stage even giving us a scene without any audible dialogue.
Ken Stott is an unlikely choice as a Jewish father, and Steve Carrell seems unable to breathe three-dimensionality into an underwritten part as the third cog in a love triangle. This can be excused, given that Carrell was cast on 28th August, 2015, sometime after the filming commenced on 17th August, a time when original actor Bruce Willis had had to leave, officially due to scheduling conflicts. Rather than a below-par performance by his own standards, Carrell can be looked on at helping to save the film at the last minute.
Lastly, amongst all the traditional Allen fixations and conversations that have become incredibly, almost wearyingly familiar over the previous 40+ movies, there's the obsession with jazz. It's a fine line to walk, where the beauty of the music can add class to a film that warrants it, or make a dud seem pretentious. It's also unfortunate that Woody seems obsessed not with its bluesier underside or more experimental areas, but with Dixieland jazz, which is arguably the most trite of its forms.