Midnight In Paris

I can't really think of a way to write about Woody Allen's new film, Midnight in Paris, except to say that it's just fun. I thoroughly enjoyed because it's just plain delightful. Allen deals with issues such as the fear of death, love, and the folly of nostalgia without getting serious or heavy. He keeps it light and fun.

Gil, a screenwriter who is trying to write a novel, is visiting Paris with his fiancee, Inez, while her father conducts a business deal. Gil is captivated by the city, but longs to be in the city during the 1920s, when it was a hotspot for artists and writers. He views that time and place as a sort of golden age. This tendency of people will become a theme throughout the film.

After a night out with Inez and a couple of her friends who happen to be visiting Paris as well, and some wine, Gil decides to walk back to the hotel rather than join them dancing. He gets lost, of course, and takes a rest as the bells chime midnight. A strange, antique car drives up, stops and the people inside beckon him to join them. He at first resists, but, come on, a bunch of French people offer you wine and continue to insist you join them, you go.

And go, they do (spoilers ahead). To a party. For Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And Cole Porter's there, playing the piano. The Fitzgerald's take Gil to meet Ernest Hemingway. After a conversation with Hemingway, Gil asks him to read his manuscript. Hemingway declines ('I hate it.' 'You haven't read it.' 'If it's bad, I'll hate it because it's bad. If it's good, I'll be envious.') but tells Gil he'll give it to Gertrude Stein, whom is the only person he trusts to read his work. Gil leaves to grab the manuscript from his hotel, but once he leaves he's back to modern time.

Over the course of the next few nights he goes back to the 1920s. He meets Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Picasso's mistress Adriana (whom Gil is immediately smitten with). As he goes back more, and spends more time with her, his feelings for her and Inez become complicated. Does he really want to get married to Inez, whom he doesn't seem to have much in common with? If he's falling in love with a girl from the 1920s, how can that work? In a very humorous scene, he meets Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and Man Ray and explains to them that he is from the year 2010 and in love with a girl from the 1920s. They see no problem with this, however, because, well, they're surrealists.

Gil spends a night with Adriana. She's always wished to live in Paris in the 1880s. When he confesses his love to her, a carriage approaches and beckons them inside and they're transported to the 1880s, where they meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, and Degas. When Gil finds out that they wish the live in the Renaissance, he realizes that people are always nostalgic for a time past and you just have to accept the time you're in. After getting offered a chance to design costumes in the 1880s, Adriana chooses to stay, but Gil goes back to 2010. He ends the relationship with Inez and chooses to stay in Paris rather than go back to California.

I don't know what I can say, it's just fun. Gil is the typical Woody Allen character, but Owen Wilson doesn't try to be Woody Allen or play the Woody Allen persona, and he's good and works really well. I enjoyed the scenes with Hemingway. I can't think of anything that I didn't especially like. Inez was maybe a little two-dimensional (odd given the way Allen's female characters are generally very strong), but given the needs of the story and how little she really featured, I don't know how that could be changed without effectively changing everything else. It's intellectual without being condescending. It feels fresh and light but meaningful. It's an excellent film. That's it.

4 1/2 out of 5

Super 8

Writer/director J.J. Abrams has been pretty open about Super 8 being an homage to the early films of Steven Spielberg (who produced the film through his Amblin Entertainment production company), and to be honest, I feel that it does the film a disservice. That puts into my mind images like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, E.T. - movies that really capture your imagination, not to mention their status as classics. So it sets you up to walk into the theater with this expectation, but it's not that kind of movie.

Not that that's a bad thing. There are definitely elements and influences at play in this film (it's sort of like mixing the child protagonists of E.T. with the mystery and government secrets of Close Encounters of the Third Kind plus the monster scares of Jaws), but they work together to make something clearly Abrams' own. And, for the most part, it works really, really well.

What works the most is the kids. They're fun and unique of each other. You care about them. Their relationships with each other are believable. It's so much fun watching these kids try to make a movie. And the jealousy that comes up when two friends are interested in the same girl and, of course, she only likes one of them (especially at that young age, when it's so new to them and they don't quite know how to deal with it). And this is, perhaps, the most Spielberg-ian aspect of the film – the child protagonists - which only furthers the expectation of a Spielberg type movie at the start.

Where it stops to work as well is when it tries to become a monster movie (in Spielberg terms, this is the Jaws component). It doesn't work, as well, because it just doesn't quite mesh with the tone of portions of the film with the kids and their families. It's two distinctly different feelings. The kids, their families, and the mystery of what the Air Force is doing in town go together very well. And a very fine movie could be made using just that. But Abrams has to go one step further and have a monster that starts snatching people.

Plus, when it becomes the monster movie, it starts to get a bit confusing. The Air Force has been holding the monster captive for the past twenty years. For what purpose? I'm not sure. The monster smashes things and takes people (more on this to come), but I think that we're supposed to sympathize with it and want it freed. And the taking people...apparently when it touches someone they're able to understand it. When the kids find where the monster's hiding, they also find all the people it has taken, who we previously presumed dead, hanging from the ceiling of the cave. The people say that the monster was hungry, thus why it took the people. But, if it's hungry, why are all the people still alive? Was the monster saving them for a snack? What was the point? It didn't make sense. It draws you out of the movie a bit.

But still, it's an extremely enjoyable, well made movie. The kids are fun. The family drama is engaging and well done. It's not a Steven Spielberg movie and that's fine. Don't expect that, it's poor judgment on their part to push that so heavily. I walked out of the theater satisfied, happy, and glad to see something like this.

4 out of 5