I was one of those who said would never go to see another Woody Allen at theatres. You see, I loved some of his movies. It´s like every year I had a date with his work, one that I never missed. I specially loved "Bullets over Broadway", "Hanna and her sisters", "Manhattan" and "Everyone says I love you", but since "Everyone", I haven´t liked any film of his, and some of them I found absolutely awful (For example, "Hollywood ending", AKA that comedy without a single good laugh).

Every year is the same: critics - at least here in Spain - say the latest Woody is a "return to form" (When did he lose his form for them, then?) and every year I walk home dissappointed. I never saw "Anything else" but I was fooled again into "Melinda & Melinda" which was, IMO, a big waste of time. So I was more than sceptical about "Match point" but decided that hey, what the hell, one last chance, for the good old times...

And I loved it. I sincerely think It´s the best Woody since "Hanna". The hype is true this time, at least for me. This doesn´t feel like a Woody Allen film, and It´s nothing like anything he has done since "Crimes and misdemeanours" - and that his the movie It resembles the most, forget "Fatal atraction" - unless you think of a classier, very high class british version of it, but without a psycho - and "Closer" - nothing to do, except for the London setting and the SPOILERS [spoil]infidelity issue[/spoil]. It feels really mature, but really fresh at the same time. And there is hardly a joke, but I haven´t been this entertained with an Allen movie for ages - even if you have to be a bit patient with the first half, which takes its time to tell the story.

So this is a message for all doubters out there: I was one of you, and I do understand your pain and precaution against the film. But I think It is a film more than worthy of checking out. I´m also sure it´s going to receive a BS nomination and possibly a BD, specially if the opponents are not very strong - think "The new world" bombing, or "Memoirs" getting mixed reviews. One thing I am sure of: It´s going to receive lots of critics awards, It´s one of those movies I can see critics rewarding and feeling good about it - and I can see why, cause It´s really good.

Great review, dar, thanks!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10005366-match_point/

100% fresh with 7 reviews, Average Rating: 8.1/10

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

8.0/10 with 768 votes


Looks great for Woody!

But doesn't this seems closer to a Hitchcock than a Woody Allen movie. Note, I only read the first line.

It certainly doesn´t feel like your typical Woody Allen... And It has some Hitchcock-like elements in the second half that work really, really well. But It´s more of a drama, really, although the suspense moments make it much more enjoyable - and better, IMO.

Still 8.0/10 at IMDB with 861 votes:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

100% at RT with 12 reviews and an Average Rating of 8.4/10.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10005366-match_point/

I'm getting incresingly excited for this movie, which is interesting conidering how I pretty much said I was finished with Allen after Melinda&Melinda. Especially two movies released within one year. Always felt like it would be rush jobs. Nice to see this could be Allen returning to form.

Allen actually shoots a movie per year... It has more to do with release dates of the distribution companies than with his own pace of work, really consistant over the years!

Dar, question, does the leading man have any Woody Allen tics/characteristics?

None whatsoever!

It's still at 8.0/10 at IMDB and that with 1,210 votes now:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Rt Score stands at 82% with 22 reviews in.

Scarlett Johansson got quite a critical beating on the Ebert & Roeper show this weekend - saying she can't act worth a damn, at least compared to the other great actors surrounding her in Match Point. I tend to agree, her roles seemed to have definitely overstepped her talent - she's certainly adequate, but there are far better young actresses out there...

Really? I just saw the trailer and she looked great in it. Is she "the killer"? Wow. looked very intense, and I can't wait to see it.

It was only Roeper who thought she was "unimpressive" though.

I decided to repost my thoughts here:

B


Match Point is a good, but not great effort by Woody Allen? Is he back in form? I am not sure because the last movie I have seen by him is The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Match Point is, indeed, at least better than that one. But is it an Allen masterpiece? No, I certainly wouldn't say so.

My problems mainly lie in the first half of the movie. I rememeber someone asking whether the international trailer for the movie is deceiving as opposed to the domestic one. Well, I would rather say it's the opposite. While the domestic trailer doesn't falsely market the movie by any means (unlike, say, The Family Stone's trailer), it doesn't set the mood of the movie as well as the international trailer. The movie is really not a relationships drama like Closer. Relationships, cheating and consequences of that are not the main theme of the movie and they were never intended to be. Luck is what palys the major role in this movie. Matcxh Point is about the importance of luck in our life, the importance that we fail to notice most of the time. In this aspect the movie really succeeds, but that is mostly in the second part of the movie.

It is the first part that I had my problems with, frankly for the movie not really moving into any direction and coming across as rather tedious and forced at times. Thankfully it improves over its running time, but the first hour still left a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth. This is not to say that there aren#t a couple of brilliant scenes there as well. The small talk between Nola and Chris in that cafe is one of the best staged and best shot dialogues I have seen in a while. Masterfully created scene.

Another real stand-out about the movie is the music. It's the same that plays during the international trailer and it really fits the movie well. The way the music is used towards the end in order to raise suspense is pitch-perfect. Speaking of the end...despite the slow start, the movie's ending really brings the point home and makes the ending one of the most perfect endings I have seen in all 2005.

As far as the acting goes, I would have to say that the praise for Scarlett Johansson is undeserved. She has been better before and the supporting performances of Diane Keaton and Maria Bello (if you call that supporting) have been far superior. Johansson was just okay, I was a bit disappointed. Now Johnathan Rhys-Myers was really good, especially towards the end. Excellent acting by him

The movie also alludes to different popular novels, among others Crime & Punishment and American Tradegy. Those who read them should like the allusions.

The movie is not the best of the year, but it is another good flick by Allen. His strength once again lies in the screenplay which (while not quirky or funny unlike most of his work) is definitely one of the year's very best. Masterfully written dialogues and that ending...wow. If it wasn't for the slow (and somewhat boring) first half that was rather busy with a depiction of London's high society, I would have rated it quite a bit higher.

It stands at 8.1/10 at IMDB now, an excellent rating.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416320/

Saw it last night. I have to say its a return to form for Allen with an absense of what made me love his earlier films. Its like he's too plot driven now. All of his works were character studies. Just how people operate, what they struggled with. Or his comedies were truly off the rocker. Match point is neither of those. First, because its a drama, and secodnly, because we don't harbor any intimacy with any of the characters. They're all flat, and Match Point becomes about what happens rather than who is making it happen.

Its tight, it certainly, is, and Allen's strength in direction comes through in the simple fact I was very engaged, never bored, while watching events unfold. But I won't say Match Point is up there with his creme-dela-creme.

First, I thought it was sold out? You go to a 10:00 show?

Yeah, I'm disagreeing with you. I loved Match Point because I was engaged, and I was engaged because I actually cared about the characters.

Wilton was not a flat character. He's the poor guy trying to climb up the ladder and familiarize himself with the upper-class lifestyle, and the audience wants it to work. When he accidently gets himself into a heap of shit, the audience is right by, hoping he finds a way out...and, consider: The New Yorker, which hates everything (but gave Match Point a slightly favorable review), indirectly commended the character development: "If the ending gives offense, the real reason, I suspect, is not that it's implausible but that it forces us into complicity with a killer..." If Allen got The New Yorker to feel as if they were an accomplice in Chris' game, Allen definitely achieved the development part. The New Yorker rarely admits something like that, even if they can work it into something negative!

With that said, Match Point is just as much a character study as it is a movie about the role of luck (which is really only developed in the very, very end with the police investigating Nola's murder, etc)

Looks like I mostly agree with Dolce, only that I would not say that the direction is one of the movie's strenths, but rather the great screenplay. The way the movie brought its point home at the end is genius.

I usually don't like it when movies shout out their themes at the end, but Allen handled it well. That, my friend, was direction, not the script! Maybe you thought the point was convincing, but Allen made it acceptable by setting it up well (with direction!).

...I think the murder scenes alone warrant a BD nomination for Allen. Even in the thriller genre, I rarely get chills like that.

That's direction to me. He never overtly stated the tennis ball hitting the net and [spoilers] the ring hitting the post as being opposites. What he did was slowly build this tennis analogy so that everyone expected when the ring fell short that it was the "same" as a tennis ball falling short. e.i. A "loss" for the hitter. Then he turns it on his head by making the ring not reaching the river a gain instead. He turned the lucky aspect on its head without ever explicitly stating it. Just playing into our tennis expectations.[/spoilers]

I do think he was never the grande vista type director. He just creates these sort of 'daily" scenes. He really has always embraced the mundane, and the common aspects of people's personalities. I think he did that here. I also really liked the way he captured London without fetishizing it too too much. Its there in the periphery, it doesn't take over. He clearly did a decent job, because I was never bored. And even when I watched Cache last weekend I got a little antsy at times. To me, that ability to hold someone's attention is a quality of direction (script too, but certainly timing and camera movement and dialogue, etc all play into it).

I will also say I think Jonathan Rhys-Meyers could not hold this film together. He's just not a very strong actor, and I think he's reached the limits of his abilities.

I agree with you (see above) about how smartly he handled "the twist." But really I was less impressed with the murder scene than I was the laying of the tracks that lead to it. The first half of the movie was far more compelling to me than the descent from the peak. I say the turning point was when [spoilers] Nola meets Chris in the Tate and she's weirded out by how he's acting.[/spoilers] After that, the movie becomes too much about physical attraction and not about class, psychology, alienation, etc.

I think the opposite. Acting-wise, Rhys-Myers was the movie's highlight (sorry, Ross).

Oh and the thing with the ring is really really niftier than most give it credit for. Is this really luck for Chris in the movie? Maybe he'd have been better off if the ring actually fell into the river? It's more ambigous than anything.

I am not saying that Allen is a bad director, but I can name five better directors of 2005, while I could not find five better original screenplays.

Do I get a response to the schtick about character development?

I thought Rhys-Meyers was better than Johansson (but I do think Johansson was great. call me biased, but still, she played the part well, because i kinda wanted to shoot her myself? i hate people who nag, even if it has to do with something big like pregnancy!). I can't exactly pinpoint why, but I felt a lot like I did with Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. He took a complex character and made his flaws seem understandable...

Looks-wise, Johansson was the highlight (same with The Island - when she wasn't on screen, I fell right asleep...you know that, I worried about my head accidently touching your shoulder). I think she's been a little Hollywood-ized, though. Lost in Translation, she was very striking, yet looked more natural...kinda.



Old fat movie reviewers agree with me. Suck on that, Lecter!

BTW, it's easier for Match Point, obviously, to make the top five better original screenplays list, since there's less movies elligible. But, would you put it in the top five screenplays, period?

The difference with me torri, is that LiT was a movie in which nothing actually happened. It was supposed to be about the complexity of the characters, their moments in life, and so forth. Now I'm putting my value statements aside for if LiT was successful or not (and I don't think it was all that much), but here, Allen tries to include that "suspense" as you say, and Match Point very quickly becomes about one thing. Will Chris chose luxury or passion, and the moment the passion left his and Nola's relationship, it was quite predictable which court he'd land in.

That is fine, and I do believe films that are truly about the complexity of the characters are not affected by knowing the "outcome." There are movies I've seen a million times, so I clearly already know how they end, and I still love them because of the characters. Here' its not really about the characters at all, and once you know "the twists" there's not much compelling involvement with Chris, Nola, Eleanor, or Tom. They're pretty flat, I felt, which is too bad, since I usually consider Allen's characters his highest strength.