And sometimes a bad movie gets a great poster.
Well, in Japan, at least.
Soft-focus, simple, cinematic…
I love this shot of Selena Gomez and Timothy Chalomet kissing in the rain from the end of A Rainy Day In New York. (Great title, too)
Unfortunately, the actual film it was selling is one of Woody Allen’s most strained and cringe-worthy late-career attempts to impose his 80-something sensibility on a contemporary story with characters in their 20’s. None of it rings true or is in any way amusing and it may have finally been a film too far for even his most stalwart defenders.
For what it’s worth, I think Woody has been treated very unfairly for the last decade – it disgusts me the way the general public has presumed him guilty because of one accusation from a bitter Ex- that is completely unsupported by facts or common sense. A great career has been tarnished with a kind of mob mentality and idiotic group-think that makes me sick.
However, there is no avoiding the harsh truth: in that same decade, his movies have only gotten worse and worse. The last two I remember enjoying – and I seem to be in the minority, according to Rotten Tomatoes – were Whatever Works (2009) with Larry David, and Magic In The Moonlight (2014) with Colin Firth and Emma Stone. I thought both were slight but fun diversions. In between them came his last financial and critical successes, Midnight In Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013), which I thought were good but overrated.
Ever since I have had an increasingly hard time just sitting through the entirety of one of his films. His dialogue was always a little stylized and stiff, but it was also brilliantly witty; now it just feels clumsy, amateurish even.
He has a new film debuting soon at the Venice Film Festival. It is entirely in French. He is in exile not just from his country, but his own language! What are the chances the translated dialogue is any less stilted?
But hey, who knows?
It may be an amazing return to form – hope springs eternal…
Who doesn’t want one more great Woody?
And I also know no matter what happens now – or who objects, wants him canceled out of existence – his legacy as a filmmaker is secure.
I just find it sad that in this case his movie did not come close to fulfilling the grandly romantic promise of the above poster.
It might as well read: This movie is never coming to a theater near you.