Well Past Midnight

None of the Times' film critics say in today's paper that they'd nominate "Midnight in Paris," Woody Allen's newest movie, for any of the Academy Awards' major categories. That makes some sense because the movie isn't a very serious or weighty one like the type critics prefer when bestowing awards. Nonetheless, I think it's one of the most charming ones that I've seen in years, light on its feet, sparkling and as delightful to indulge in as the chocolates that must line Paris' streets. (I've never been, but have had marvelous chocolates brought from there as a gift.)

"Midnight in Paris" succeeds so well almost in spite of itself: The plot, where Owen Wilson's character, a Francophile screenwriter who can't make it as a novelist, is transported back to 1920s Paris by way of the clock striking midnight and a vintage taxicab, reads like one of Allen's old comedic pieces in the New Yorker; yet it endearingly holds together for an entire movie. Good chunks of dialogue are thinly disguised expositions about the film's central themes -- nostalgia, art's highbrows and lowbrows, love, and the trials of quotidian daily life; yet the actors deliver them quickly and sincerely enough that they don't slow everything to a crawl. When Wilson tells his paramour from the 1920s, played by Marion Cotillard (as they've been whisked back to La Belle Epoque), that "the present is a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying," I nodded my head in agreement. Wilson also plays that familiar type -- Woody's stand-in when Woody isn't in the movie; yet Wilson is more restrained and all of the actors seem to be having a great time, particularly the ones who get to impersonate the 1920s' landmark artists. That Kathy Bates is a convincing Gertrude Stein isn't a high compliment, though, at least in terms of looks.

It's been popular for a long time to say that you haven't liked Woody Allen's movies for the past 15 years, if not the past 30, but at this point, he's actually made some good ones recently. "Bullets Over Broadway" is no longer the exception that proves the rule about this criticism. Also good are "Midnight in Paris," "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," "Mighty Aphrodite," "Scoop," and even parts of "Deconstructing Harry." I've always been an apologist for the artists I like best, even during their late periods' decline, and this movie catches me quite tightly, as someone who sometimes believes he were made for an earlier era. But the criticism of Allen is too easy. Go see "Midnight in Paris." It's wonderful.

Above is the movie's trailer.