Woody, 'Scoop' and 'Midnight in Paris'

Sorry I haven't ducked in for awhile. Things have been kinda crazy.

Gotta tell you about a couple of films I've seen lately. Good stuff. Lots of fun.

A couple of Saturdays ago, my friend Matt Shelton and I caught the delightful new Woody Allen film "Midnight in Paris," starring Owen Wilson as Gil, a shameless dreamer in love with 1920s Paris. The ever-fetching Rachel McAdams plays his bitch of a fiancee Inez (sorry, but there's no other way to say it) who is most concerned with becoming a member of upper class California society.

I don't want to give much away, because the film's plot is basically a spoiler, but this has to be the best flick I've seen in several years. Whatever else you might think about him -- and God knows there's plenty to think -- Woody Allen makes consistently smart movies. Even the obnoxious people sitting around us at Downtown West (one guy showed up late and actually shined a flashlight into our faces) couldn't ruin it.

If you want to go see that rare film that won't require mental flossing after screening it, run don't walk to your nearest multiplex for "Midnight in Paris." And if you love old-fashioned movie making in the best sense of what that means, or majored in English or creative writing in college, you'll really love it.

Woody has been on something of a roll of late. I watched "Match Point" when I was laid up with kidney stones back in '06 and also loved Woody's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," both starring that lovely Scarlett Johansson, a couple of summers later.

Tonight I'm catching up with "Scoop," released in between those two, again starring Scarlett, this time as a budding reporter visiting London, who stumbles into what might be the scoop of the title when a dead reporter (Ian McShane) tells her the identity of a serial killer while she's in the midst of a magic act perpetuated by Woody's Sidney Waterman. Off to hunt the guy, Scarlett subsequently falls in love with him -- the aristocratic Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman).

I love Woody's hilarious one-liners ("I was born into the Hebrew persuasion but when I got older I converted to narcissism") and engaging characters.

Perfect way to unwind after work on a Saturday night.

Summer in Spain

Let's just get this little contradiction out of the way right now:

I hate Woody Allen. But I love his movies. Particularly when he's not in them.

Oh, that's not quite true. I loved "Play It Again, Sam" and "Annie Hall" and a few others. It's just that his neurotic character tends to wear a little thin during the course of a 2-hour movie.

Woody doesn't appear in his latest picture, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." Which is OK by me, but it wouldn't have mattered. This is a quirky, seductive, fun little film.

It all starts when two American friends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), decide to spend the summer in Spain. Vicky is the serious one, about to marry a settled, if somewhat stifling, fiancee (Chris Messina). Cristina is a filmmaker of sorts, very much the wanderer, trying to find herself in bohemian Europe.

And it's in Barcelona that they meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a dashing Spanish artist who bluntly asks the girls to take a weekend trip with him. He doesn't even bother pretending; he's really got one thing in mind.

Vicky doesn't want to go. Of course, Cristina does. And, as these things tend to go, Vicky, the hesitant one, falls in love with him, as does Cristina in time. Add to this mix Juan Antonio's wild, mentally unstable ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) and it makes for one bizarre little summer romance.

Let me say here that Bardem is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. If you've yet to see his tour de force in "No Country for Old Men," run don't walk to the video store and watch that movie tonight. I think I fell in love with Rebecca Hall during the movie and I don't guess I have to say one word about Scarlett Johansson. Sigh.

I'm not sure why I liked this film. Well, I have a few guesses. It offers a blatantly humanistic view of love and sex, refreshing in its honesty.

More than that, Allen always delivers a witty, intelligent, well-written picture, and he does so again here. (Am I really the only one in America that loved "Match Point"?) It's a bit jarring not to see his beloved Manhattan skyline dominate one of his movies, but he's obviously in love with the beauty of Barcelona, and he lets his cameras capture all of its romance in glorious Technicolor.

After watching this film, one definitely longs to spend the summer in Spain, delving into its treasures, losing yourself in the less rigid mores of the continent.

Then the lights come back up and you drive back to $5/gallon gas, back to the reality of the day, back to the stifling uniformity of the suburbs. Oh, well. It's nice while it lasts.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is now playing at Regal CinemaArt at Downtown West. It is rated R for language and sexual content.