A Second Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (17 October 2011)

I remember leaving the theater the night I saw Annie Hall. In that movie, everything had come together. To me, Woody Allen had done something akin to Bob Beamon's long jump at the Mexico City Summer Olympics: a leap so much further than anyone had ever jumped before that the technique could not be comprehended; the act could only astonish. I gave up hoping Allen would make another movie as good as Annie Hall about 10 years later. That's when he started his homages to other film makers. It got worse. He started his existential preaching phase. To be fair, there were some good movies he would film periodically (e.g. Bullets Over Broadway; Manhattan Murder Mystery; Small Time Crooks). But I'd lost hope he would ever deliver on his talent. But he did. For me, this is a second masterpiece. Midnight in Paris is a comedy, a fantasy, and a love story. A clever plot device allows Owen Wilson's restless Hollywood screenwriter to be transported to the "Lost Generation" of the '20s and later to La Belle Epoche of the 1890s from what he considers the pedestrian "present." The movie includes a Parisian "girl" from the present that Owen Wilson meets that every man in the audience will fall in love with. The performances are uniformly excellent. Special credit to Adrien Brody. I've rated this 9 of 10. But under my "system," no movie can be rated "10" until at least 10 years have passed since my first viewing. (Chinatown rose to "10" only 3 ears ago.) So In 10 years, I will revisit my rating here - I expect leaning very favorably to an upgrade.