BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring John Cusack

Trailer

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Wow, this one’s fun and pattern forming. A lot of Allen’s best stuff so far has come from a desire to engage with the cogs of his profession; from Vicky Christina Barcelona’s musings on the nature of art to Sweet and Lowdown’s questioning of a life spent focused on talent. Debates of art vs life tap into the very heart of Allen’s shtick, providing a truth and depth that his pork-fisted attempts at basically anything else can’t touch. Bullets Over Broadway addresses this central conceit head-on, with a neurotic playwright going toe to toe with a gifted gangster and resulting in all sorts of artistic fumbling, arguments over talent and beauty and the point of all things, as well as yet another soundtrack that overshadows the film. It also continues the latter day tradition of stuffing young actors into Allen’s own persona, with John Cusack doing a fine job as the best one yet. He’s helped by a quick pace, interesting supporting characters (Jim Broadbent as a compulsive fat-fuck, Rob Reiner as a real-life fat-fuck Marxist blowhard) and the shrill, unintelligible bird-garble of Jennifer Tilly, who makes everyone else around her look like a comedy genius. The brief scraps of the play-within-a-film are funnier than everything in Don’t Drink the Water, whilst Dianne Wiest makes a fine flight for the Allen exit playing a demented Gloria Swanson wax-work with a penchant for long walks in New York Parks. She’s a great actress, even with her odd puckered up face, and the fact that she hasn’t worked with Allen again since is another black mark in his career book. Maybe all his best films have to shove in someone called Diane…