Manhattan (1979)

Having seen this four or five times now since I was a kid, I can definitively say this is the best Woody Allen introduction for newcomers. Visually it's his best work (for those who don't know, the cinematographer Gordon Willis did The Godfather Parts 1 & 2 earlier the same decade, so it's no surprise). Not as insightful or engrossing as Hannah or Misdemeanors, but the writing's up there. Mariel Hemingway's a crown jewel and tears me apart. If you're a newbie and can watch this before Annie Hall I highly recommend it. It's aged much better and is _the_ Woody Allen litmus test...

**In the shadow of “Annie Hall”.**

I decided to watch this film last week, after the visit that Woody Allen himself made to my country, with his jazz band and an interesting lecture at the National Cinematheque for invitations only. Despite having seen several of the director's films and not even considering him bad, he always seemed overvalued to me. He won the Oscar for Best Director and was nominated for the award a few times, but after “Annie Hall” he seems to have made several films using the same premise and based, exclusively, on couples with problems.

After seeing “Annie Hall”, I found it difficult to watch this film without feeling that Allen was plagiarizing himself and using the same formula to try to achieve the same success. For the intended purpose, it was a...

Well guess what? It's Woody Allen as "Isaac" - a man facing a series of mid-life crises whilst trying to write a book. He's not the only one. Ex-wife turned lesbian "Jill" (Meryl Streep) is planning on writing her own kiss-and-tell (or more likely a punch-and-tell) whilst still getting her alimony and her attitude isn't gonna change when he starts dating a woman less than half of his age. She is the impressionable "Tracy" (Mariel Hemingway) who is enamoured of her perception of this older man but whom we can quickly establish is going to end up disappointed. That might be because he sees little future in a relationship with a schoolgirl, and so turns his attentions to the journalist "Mary" (Diane Keaton) who just happens to be dallying with his married best pal "Yale" (Michael Murphy). She...