Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and To Rome with Love
An anemic muddle and a good Woody Allen.
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Meanwhile, another American student, Hayley (Alison Pill), has gotten engaged to a handsome young Italian lawyer named Michelangelo (Flavio Parenti). Her parents, Jerry (Woody) and Phyllis (Judy Davis), are on their way to Rome to meet their daughter’s fiancé. Upon arrival, they all pay a visit to Michelangelo’s parents. There, Jerry, a retired opera producer, discovers that Michelangelo’s father, Giancarlo (Fabio Armiliato), is a world-class singer. (Armiliato, making his movie debut, is actually a noted operatic tenor.) Unfortunately, Giancarlo only sings in the shower. Jerry, itching to break out of retirement, determines to make Giancarlo an opera star. Since Jerry’s own opera productions tended toward the avant-garde (staging Tosca in a phone booth, casting Rigoletto with mice), he feels he can work around this shower problem.
Then there’s a newlywed provincial couple, Antonio (Alessandro Tiberi) and Milly (Alessandra Mastronardo), who have just checked into a Roman hotel, and are awaiting a visit from Antonio’s straight-laced relatives. But then Milly goes out and gets lost in the teeming streets, leaving Antonio alone in their hotel room, where he’s soon surprised by the arrival of a spectacular call girl named Anna (Penélope Cruz), who has been prepaid to provide her services to a man who unfortunately is not Antonio. Then his relatives arrive to meet Antonio’s new bride—who unfortunately is not Anna. Although not for long.
Finally, we have a shlumpy office drone named Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni), a family man to whom nothing of interest has ever happened—until he steps out of his apartment one day and is accosted by a gaggle of tabloid reporters. He protests that they must have mistaken him for someone famous. But then a limo pulls up and he finds himself being driven to a TV studio, where he makes a talk-show appearance that turns him suddenly into a national star. Soon he’s being harried for autographs and hit upon by gorgeous women who want to sleep with him. Leopoldo is appalled by this unexpected glitter storm…although not entirely.
The movie is an exercise in virtuoso confusion. Despite its structural complexity, it never wanders into incoherence or mindless clamor. It doesn’t have the perfect fantasy glow of Midnight in Paris, but it does offer the uncommon pleasures of trimly wrought dialogue, witty situations, and some fine comic actors who seem happy to be serving their director’s familiar purposes. Which, depending on your Woodman stance, I suppose, could be enough.
Kurt Loder is a writer living in New York. His third book, a collection of film reviews called The Good, the Bad and the Godawful, is now available. Follow him on Twitter at kurt_loder.
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a good Woody Allen.
Oxymoron. I would rather live live these guys' lives than watch another shitty Woody Allen movie.
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Seconded. I've never found the whole "nebbishy New York Jew" routine to be even a little funny, and I don't know how anyone ever has.
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You might have a point if all WA movies had been about nebbishy NYJs.
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I like his earlier, funnier movies.
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I never wanted to see any of his flicks again but I enjoyed a lot of them. But those were the better ones for sure.
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You will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Midnight in Paris are both really good. As good as his earlier stuff.
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well, over 50% of them are. And the movies where some WASP actor stands in for Woody Allen's presence, they adopt the same annoying, neurotic, overly-talkative, beta male mannerisms.
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You might have a point if all WA movies had been about nebbishy NYJs.
That's pretty much all he's made since "Hannah and Her Sisters".
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Pretty much Allen's entire career has been based on the portrayal of one character, and that character is of course a sterotype. It doesn't bother me; I don't have a problem with stereotypes, I just never found his character funny is all. Obviously some people do.
For my money, when it comes to Jewish humor, Mel Brooks blows Woody Allen out of the water.
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"I've never found the whole "nebbishy New York Jew" routine to be even a little funny, and I don't know how anyone ever has."
FINALLY, THE TRUTH.
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Is my meter broken, or is this honestly the first time you've heard someone hate on Woody Allen movies?
Most people don't like his movies - look at his box office history. But some people like (at least some of) them a lot. I'm in the latter camp after spending years in the former. Ain't no big deal either way.
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the Lincoln movie sounds terrible. I'd rather see it though.
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The book was written by a comic-book nerd who thought putting ARGGH MONSTERS into classic novels would improve the product. Expecting anything other than the most superficial entertainment is expecting far too much.
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'Save the children, Woody Allen can't marry them all"
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Abe Lincoln as a super hero? Who next? Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot?
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So Lincln equals Stalin,Hitler and Pol Pot?So what does F.D.R.equal,Lex Luther and Dr. Doom?
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Grover Cleveland.
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Not only were all southerners slavers, they were vampires as well.
Just look at what Federalism creates!
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I kinda had hopes for AL:VH. I liked Day Watch and Night Watch, although maybe as much for the grungy Russian settings and refreshing absence of Hollywood as anything else.
Oh, well. There's a new Pixar coming, and while I can't say they never disappoint, that's only because their standards (and so my expectations) are so high.
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Glad I'm not the only grown-ass man going to see Brave.
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Err yeah, I have to go see this movie cause of my kids, yeah that's the ticket.
On the plus side Brave + Madagascar 3 at the Drive In for $15 a carload this weekend.
I probably wouldn't have bothered to pay to see Madagascar 3 (why can't they just drop the main characters and just make a Penguins/King Julien movie like they should) on it's own it makes a nice little bonus feature.
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In most of the movie lists for this year, Brave turned out to be the only original. Everything else was sequel, prequel, comic book, or remake.
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It's one of those jokes that should've remained a joke. A book is too far; a movie is gratuitous.
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The book was beyond atrocious. I can't imagine a screen adaptation of said tome adding anything of conceivable interest, unless the role of Mary Todd Lincoln were to be assayed by (oh, say) a topless Salma Hayek.
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It's one of those half-baked ideas that should have been made into a 5 minute youtube clip. And fanboys could wax deliriously on the comment page about how it sucks that no one has the balls to make this into a movie; and how people don't make real movies anymore.
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It's one of those half-baked ideas that should have been made into a 5 minute youtube clip.
That the preview is actually pretty cool-looking only serves to confirm this.
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Even Pixar's been phoning it in for a while now.
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Why can't you say they never dissappoint? Every one of their movies was at least very good with Cars 2 being the only one which is threatening to fall into the merely average category (Larry the Cable Guy as comic relief, brilliant, as the leading man, bordering on disaster but somehow they pulled it off and made a good movie out of it).
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Allen’s touch is light and charmingly comic,
I guess there's a first time for everything.
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I can't believe Loder actually went and saw a preposterous waste of celluloid as AL:VH.
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I can't believe Loder actually went and saw a preposterous waste of celluloid as
AL:VH.Midnight in ParisFIFY
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He definitely took one for the team by doing that.
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Hey it's amazing how low your standards sink when you're getting paid for it.
That said I highly doubt any celluloid was used for AL:VH, it was probably all digital from the get go.
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A Kazakhstani director making a movie about Abraham Lincoln killing vampires, how can this movie not be a hit.
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Kazakhstani director Timur Bekmambetov
So they got Borat to direct this POS.
"This is Abraham Lincoln. He is number 4 vampire hunter in whole of Kazakhstan."
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It's possible I'm reading too much into this, but between the vampire movie and Django Unchained (another revisionist hate-flick directed at rubes of the South -- who were all Democrats, by the way) I'm detecting what was intended to be a trend for this election cycle.
'Only our heroic Obama, unshackled from the chains of Libertarian oppression and gridlock, can slay all those hicks with their desire for individual freedom and free markets. Don't forget to vote for him...'
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Expect the southern hate to only get worse, especially if Obama loses in November.
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Knock on wood -- for that last part.
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You know that Abe Lincoln was the first Republican president, right? I was actually surprised that "Vampire Hunter" was made, considering that one point.
As for "Django," well ... Tarantino hasn't made a decent picture since "Jackie Brown," and odds are he'll turn what could've been a reboot of classic Spaghetti Westernisms into a glib, irritating talk fest and a pastiche of C-list schlock nobody actually watched (see: "Inglorious Bastards" [screw your cutesy art-spelling, Q])
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I never realized that the Angel of Marye's Heights was really a vampire sucking blood of wounded Yanks, not succoring them with water.
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this being the http://www.ceinturesfr.com/ceinture-lee-c-28.html oblivious Bekmambetov, the leaping slo-mo martial moves on display
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nfortunately, this being the oblivious Bekmambetov, the leaping slo-mo martial moves on display, http://www.zonnebrilinnl.com/z.....-3_14.html purportedly taking place in the mid-19th century, clearly date back no farther than The Matrix.
