Annie Hall

Ayyyyy, I finally found one of these on Netflix.

Director: Woody Allen
Writers: Woody Allen
                Marshall Brickman

I really did love this film, I now understand why people love it so much and so many people reference it. Just take a look at Family Guy, a lot of the scenes I've seen there are either parodying scenes from here or are directly referencing them. I don't know how I'm going to talk about this film but I'm just gonna get it out because I'm a little behind on my schedule. Anyways, enjoy.

When I first heard about this film, I already had a preconception of Woody Allen and the sort of person he is so I just sort of gave it a pass any time the opportunity came up. As time went by however I seemed to forget how I thought of Allen and heard this film was a romance, which of course I tried to avoid like the plague because I honestly don't have the patience for that sort of stuff. Eventually, it got to the point that enough people had told me about it and how funny it was that I thought maybe I should take a look at it. The film doesn't really play out as a traditional film, though at the same time it does. Boy meets girl and takes time to fall in love. That's probably the only way this sticks to a traditional film. No surprise the couple break up but remain friends, they're not bitter about the breakup and they don't get back together and get married. It's very mature in that sense, but this is also a strange picture. You'd expect a romantic film to show all the discussions between the couple so you know where the scenes will go but that's not it, all you see are little snippets from Allen's character Alvy Singer's memory and (in some cases) how he wishes those moments went down. The humour here isn't laugh a minute but you can get a decent chuckle out of it from either the surrealness of the situation, the irony in a situation or the reality or even all three.

Allen plays Alvy Singer, a comedian who hasn't had that much luck in his marriages. I'm not sure how to describe his performance other than...an almost stereotypical Jewish man, take from that what you will. Diane Keaton as Annie Hall plays her part as any girl would, she does a good job of playing a character who possibly has some sort of commitment issue, with using weed to be satisfied during sex to replacing that with therapy which then leads to the end of the relationship. It's not as dramatic as it sounds, but just like the rest of the film, it's pretty subtle.

The scenes here are also quite different from how they would be in a typical film. Scenes go on longer than they usually would, such as a scene towards the beginning where Alvy and Rob (Tony Roberts) are walking down the street discussing whether Alvy should move to LA. The scene plays out slowly but doesn't feel like it's wasting time, it looks like a one-take scene but you don't even realise it, the dialogue is saying something and nothing at the same time. For me, half of the scenes in this feel a lot like what you'd see in a Kubrick film.

I'm sorry if this one is a little shit but I've been a bit ill lately and my head's still probably a bit fogged up. Either way, if you've not seen this you've gotta check it out.
This is just my opinion and if you disagree then that's great, I'm open to discussion and I'm always interested to hear how you feel about this film. This is also a critique which is considered "Fair Use"  under the Copyright Act 1976. If you like this film please go and support its creators but buying the DVD or Bluray.