The wrong year for Woody

As Time magazine names the Me Too movement it's Person of the Year -- in what functions as a direct rebuke to the guy who says he was their first choice, Donald Trump -- it's certainly the wrong year to be supporting Woody Allen's latest project.

And yet I am going to see Wonder Wheel tonight ... just as I saw Cafe Society last year, Irrational Man the year before that, Magic in the Moonlight the year before that and Blue Jasmine the year before that. (At least I missed two of three movies before that.)

Then again, the only one of those movies I actually paid for was Blue Jasmine. Magic in the Moonlight was on a plane, Irrational Man was with my critics cards and Cafe Society was a press screening. Tonight I will again be using my critics card.

The thing is, I really liked two of those movies (Moonlight and Society), sort of liked one of them (Jasmine) and only hated one of them (Irrational). It's probably Woody's turn to make another movie I hate. We'll see.

What keeps me coming back is not merely, or at least mostly, the possibility of something good. It's that I find Allen's a career that's really easy to write about. This will be his third movie I am reviewing for ReelGood -- a benchmark that's been easy to obtain because he makes one movie per year, and no one else is that keen to review his movies. So I've got my talking points down (getting old, accused of sexual misdeeds, makes one movie per year) and I can just slot this particular movie into wherever he stands within his own personal trajectory.

I am conscious of the fact that I am continuing to give Allen my attention, if not my money. But then, I am always a guy who tries to separate the art from the artist. Or, if I'm punishing the artist's art because I don't like the artist, I'm more likely to punish the artist for tweeting too much about his movie (James Gunn in Guardians 2) than for sleeping with and marrying his stepdaughter.

That's pretty fucked up when you look at it like that.

Anyway.

I probably should have saved this post until after I'd seen the movie, but tomorrow will be time to post about Star Wars: The Last Jedi on this blog -- as I am seeing it tomorrow night at midnight!

Wondrous

There are so many movies with the word "wonder" in their title that have been or will be released in 2017, they make up an actual measurable percentage of the total number of films. (That measurable percentage would be less than 1%, but it would be a lot more measurable than the films that have, say, "Ragnarok" in their title.)

Getting us started back in June, and really deserving to have this all to herself, was Wonder Woman – a trailblazing comic book film in many respects, and now in title as well.

It’s not the only Wonder Woman-related film of the year, though – not even close. One of them (Justice League) does not have the word “wonder” in the title, though I sure be the studio wishes they could fit it in there somewhere. (Wonder Woman and the Justice League? Wonder Woman and Her Glowering Male Counterparts?) The other does, though – it’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which we haven't gotten here yet, but will soon. It's a story about the creator of Wonder Woman and appears to get into some of the themes of bondage that were initially present in that character and those comics.

The conglomeration of these films can be explained by Wonder Woman having a moment, I suppose. But these other three figure to only be coincidences:

This one comes out next week in the U.S. and stars no less than Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson. It's directed by Stephen Chbosky, whose Perks of Being a Wallflower was a favorite of mine.

Then there's:

Todd Haynes' new film. Already out in the U.S. Not here yet. (A predictable pattern.)

And finally there's:

Woody Allen's new film. We get one a year, and he had to put "wonder" in the title of the one that came out in the same year as four other "wonder" films (or five if you count Justice League).

I wonder which one will be the best?

All I know is that the four (or five) others have a tough act to follow after my beloved Wonder Woman.