Melinda and Melinda

For the last 35+ years, Woody Allen has been consistently churning about about a film a year. No American director has been more faithful and consistent, and consistently honest about himself than Allen. You have to wonder how he hasn't run out of jokes yet. It opens in typical Allen fashion in a small restaurant where a couple of intellectual playwrites are debating over whether the world is by nature comic or tragic. And then, he utilizes and idea that I would have liked to try: the two writers begin to tell the same story filtered through each of their perspectives -- comic and tragic. Rhada Mitchell play Melinda in both stories, but, besides that, there are no overlapping characters. Mitchell, who was Johnny Depp's wife in Finding Neverland gives a stunning performance that, if it's not too early for me to say, should earn her an Academy Award nomination. Will Ferrell plays the character that Woody Allen himself would have played once upon a time in the comic version of the story, and he's got it down from the speech patterns to the movements and neuroses. It may not be his most profound or funniest film, but it was immensely enjoyable because by this time we've gotten to know him so well that you can almost anticipate the next line which leaves a smile on your face when it finally arrives. This is probably his best film in at least a decade.