Sergio's Fall Movie Countdown--#8

UNIVERSAL REMOTE

In a continuing series, Sergio reveals the ten films he is most looking forward to this fall.

8. Match Point
directed by Woody Allen
opens 12/25

Woody Allen is back. I know he makes a movie every year so he never really left but his work has been so sub-par lately (by anyone's standards) that it's good to know a master has returned to form. Everyone who has seen Match Point says its a knockout. It played to ovations at Cannes and Roger Ebert called it one of Allen's best films, right up there with Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors. High praise indeed.

It is the first movie Allen has set in London. It concerns a young, poor tennis pro (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) who marries into a rich upper-crust family and then proceeds to have an lustful affair with an American actress played by Scarlett Johannson. Cue the lying and deceit. Eventually, shotguns come into play. It also is said to have a devastating twist ending. (From what I can tell, it's not a Sixth Sense, Pull-The-Rug-Out-From-Under-You twist, but rather of the You-Are-Screwed-And-You-Never-Saw-It-Coming variety. We'll find out.) This is definitely a different kind of Woody Allen movie. Roger Ebert has called it:

"...a literate Hitchcock story. Tension coils tightly under the surface as the pleasant young man becomes a liar, an adulterer, a betrayer of trust, and finally a man who thinks it might be convenient to commit murder. Allen toys with the audience in scenes where Chris seems about to be discovered, exposed, trapped or disgraced."

Woody Allen has now made 36 movies. Almost all of them are good, and a few are exceptional. (My personal favorites are Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Everyone Says I Love You, in that order.) Crimes is probably the closest thing Allen has come to making a thriller. (That film was more about the guilt associated with commiting a crime rather than the fear of getting caught. In the end, all thrillers are about fear.) I know Woody Allen is a particular taste and many people simply do not like him nor his sense of humor. It would be a mistake to use that as an excuse to skip this one. (He is not in it nor is it a comedy.) Too bad the trailer is so lame.

Match Point should be a welcome change of pace for one of the most distinctive voices in American cinema.

MONDAY: My girlfriend starts acting funny.