Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 21 October

Midnight in Paris (Allen, 2011)

I’m filling in on RNZ At the Movies for the next fort­night so will be sav­ing my thoughts on the week’s new releases for that audi­ence, so today’s news­let­ter is anoth­er “on this day” edi­tion from October 2011:

While Paris is abused in Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers (one of Anderson’s air­ships is impaled on the fam­ous La Saint-Chapelle), Woody Allen attempts to write it a love let­ter in the latest chapter of his European adven­tures, Midnight in Paris. Owen Wilson plays a dis­con­ten­ted screen­writer on hol­i­day with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her par­ents. He wants to live and write in the inspir­a­tion­al city and be a ser­i­ous nov­el­ist but she would rather he con­tin­ue his Hollywood hack­work and build their dream house on the Malibu beach.

At a loose end one night he goes for a walk, gets lost and through some kind of magic­al time portal (or a bump on the head) he finds him­self in the middle of Paris in the 20s – full of bon­homie, joie de vivre and artists and writers soak­ing up the scene. None of whom are French. Still, thanks to Papa Hemingway he meets Gertrude Stein who gives him some tips for his book and intro­duces him to a fledgling fash­ion design­er (and Picasso-muse) played by Marion Cotillard.

If late-period Woody Allen films seem effort­less it’s prob­ably because not much effort actu­ally goes in to them – like Eastwood he has been around movie sets long enough to know how to fin­ish on time every day – but Midnight in Paris has more charm than most while con­tinu­ing to indulge Allen’s usu­al obses­sions. Of all the Allen-proxies we have seen (most recently Larry David in Whatever Works) Wilson is the most nat­ur­al – mer­ging his affable per­sona with Allen’s stut­tery cynicism.

Also reviewed in that Capital Times column: the already hin­ted at The Three Musketeers, Selena Gomez in Monte Carlo (“Like a teen ver­sion of Sex and the City, Monte Carlo man­ages to insult everything it touches – includ­ing my eye­balls.”), Herzog’s 3D mas­ter­piece Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and the Errol Morris doc­u­ment­ary, Tabloid.

Where to watch Midnight in Paris

Aotearoa and Australia: Digital rental

Canada: Streaming on CBC Gem (free with ads)

Ireland and UK: Streaming on Prime Video

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Roku (free with ads)