Monday, January 16, 2006

Wooden Allen

Interesting review of Woody Allen's latest which, I fear, leaves my worst suspicions confirmed:
"Allen wouldn't be the first God-haunted artist to struggle at the height of his career with questions of faith and despair that in his later work cease to resonate. Ingmar Bergman, one of Allen's idols, wrestled profoundly with the absence of God in the films of his middle period, but eventually seems to have made his peace with the emptiness of the universe. Similarly, Graham Greene's middle novels are torn by the conflicting forces of spiritual belief and personal immorality, but in his later novels the struggle seems to have drained out of Greene's soul..."
I haven't seen it though. Chose Hoodwinked instead, which was liked by both millinerds. I know it's a "kids movie," but seeing that all the kids were in other theatres, we figured we should try to balance the scales. Writes Thomas Hibbs regarding Hostel:
"Yet, the most depressing and horrifying thing about these sorts of films is, alas, not the explicit gore. It is the fact that at nearly every screening of a gruesome horror film I attend (from Massachusetts to Texas), I see parents in the audience with young children. That strikes me as a serious form of child abuse and a more convincing sign of the impending apocalypse than anything depicted on the screen."