Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

Horizontally, I love it. The vaudeville structure prevents boredom from settling in as it moves from direct address to animation to Celine and Julie Go Boating-inspired interactions with the past. Vertically, it's the same old problem - the Woody Allenness becomes stifling. Alvy Singer, the de facto Woody Allen character played by Woody Allen, longs for control of every aspect of his life, to trot out le mot juste so as to devastate his intellectual opponent or to bring his romantic conquests in line. His spiritual descendant is Nathan Fielder in The Rehearsal, the meta-to-the-metal HBO Max series about Nathan Fielder rehearsing life to plan for any kind of contingency, of which Allen would say, "Boy, if life were only like this" as he does here when he trots out the actual Marshall McLuhan to win an argument. But the unintended irony is that Woody Allen the writer, director, and star is in control of every frame of this film. He already has what he wants so the staircase wit comes off as arch, the longing for control petulant, and each camera placement arbitrary. 

And while Allen makes a great deal of Singer/Allen's arty, inquisitive nature, he wasn't so curious as to figure out what Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, 1973) was before writing it off in his own film. On a drive down La Cienega Blvd. in Los Angeles, he encounters the Tail o' the Pup hot dog stand and a 24-hour restaurant called Fatburger before passing a theatre marquee hawking Messiah of Evil along with Mario Bava's House of Exorcism. Christmas music chirps on the soundtrack in explicit contrast to the sunny climate. Nothing is natural here, Allen is telling us, in one of his many digs at the City of Angels, including films that exist on the same level as fast-food product (never mind that you could see such films in Times Square for decades). I'll let someone else defend Bava but unfortunately for Allen's argument, Messiah of Evil just so happens to be one of the most singular psychotronic films of the 1970s, a fresher, more inventive film than Annie Hall. So to Allen, I'll reverse my usual advice on student essays: back up your examples with specific assertions. 

Still, a much better film than Star Wars.

Grade: B+