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!