Juliet Taylor Movies

Woody Allen's Love and Death is purportedly a satire of all things Russian, from Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky novels to Sergei Eisenstein films, but it plays more like a spin on Bob Hope's Monsieur Beaucaire. Allen plays Boris, a 19th century Russian who falls in love with his distant (and married) cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton). Pressed into service with the Russian army during the war against Napoleon, Boris accidentally becomes a hero, then goes on to win a duel against a cuckolded husband (Harold Gould). He returns to Sonja, hoping to settle down on the Steppes somewhere, but Sonja has become fired up with patriotic fervor, insisting that Boris join a plot to kill Napoleon. Intellectual in-jokes abound in Love and Death, and other gags are basic Allen one-liners; for instance, after being congratulated for his lovemaking skills, Boris replies nonchalantly, "I practice a lot when I'm alone." The pseudo-Russian ambience of Love and Death is comically enhanced by the Sergey Prokofiev compositions on the musical track. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"All the animals come out at night" -- and one of them is a cabby about to snap. In Martin Scorsese's classic 1970s drama, insomniac ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) works the nightshift, driving his cab throughout decaying mid-'70s New York City, wishing for a "real rain" to wash the "scum" off the neon-lit streets. Chronically alone, Travis cannot connect with anyone, not even with such other cabbies as blowhard Wizard (Peter Boyle). He becomes infatuated with vapid blonde presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who agrees to a date and then spurns Travis when he cluelessly takes her to a porno movie. After an encounter with a malevolent fare (played by Scorsese), the increasingly paranoid Travis begins to condition (and arm) himself for his imagined destiny, a mission that mutates from assassinating Betsy's candidate, Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris), to violently "saving" teen hooker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis' bloodbath turns him into a media hero; but has it truly calmed his mind?

Written by Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver is an homage to and reworking of cinematic influences, a study of individual psychosis, and an acute diagnosis of the latently violent, media-fixated Vietnam era. Scorsese and Schrader structure Travis' mission to save Iris as a film noir version of John Ford's late Western The Searchers (1956), aligning Travis with a mythology of American heroism while exposing that myth's obsessively violent underpinnings. Yet Travis' military record and assassination attempt, as well as Palatine's political platitudes, also ground Taxi Driver in its historical moment of American in the 1970s. Employing such techniques as Godardian jump cuts and ellipses, expressive camera moves and angles, and garish colors, all punctuated by Bernard Herrmann's eerie final score (finished the day he died), Scorsese presents a Manhattan skewed through Travis' point-of-view, where De Niro's now-famous "You talkin' to me" improv becomes one more sign of Travis' madness. Shot during a New York summer heat wave and garbage strike, Taxi Driver got into trouble with the MPAA for its violence. Scorsese desaturated the color in the final shoot-out and got an R, and Taxi Driver surprised its unenthusiastic studio by becoming a box-office hit. Released in the Bicentennial year, after Vietnam, Watergate, and attention-getting attempts on President Ford's life, Taxi Driver's intense portrait of a man and a society unhinged spoke resonantly to the mid-'70s audience -- too resonantly in the case of attempted Reagan assassin and Foster fan John W. Hinckley. Taxi Driver went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but it lost the Best Picture Oscar to the more comforting Rocky. Anchored by De Niro's disturbing embodiment of "God's lonely man," Taxi Driver remains a striking milestone of both Scorsese's career and 1970s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The McCarthy-era "witch hunts" in the entertainment industry set the stage for this comedy drama set in the 1950s. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a cashier at a corner bar who works as a small-time bookie on the side, with little success. One day, Howard's old friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy), a successful television writer, makes a business proposal to him; Alfred's leftist political views have resulted in him being blacklisted from the major television networks, and he can no longer get work. Alfred asks Howard to act as a "front" -- Howard puts his name on Alfred's scripts, sells them, and takes a cut of the payment for his trouble. Howard's new career as a "writer" is an instant success, and soon Howard is fronting for a handful of blacklisted scribes while earning a healthy income and becoming the toast of the television industry; another fringe benefit is a romance with beautiful network employee Florence Barrett (Andrea Marcovicci). However, comic Hecky Brown (Zero Mostel), who had a brief fling with socialism years before, now finds his past catching up with him, and he's told in order to save his job as host of a weekly television show, he has to get the goods on some suspicious figures, among them Howard Prince, whose background looks a little too clean for comfort. The Front was written by Walter Bernstein, who was himself blacklisted during the 1950s, as were co-stars Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, and Lloyd Gough. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship -- but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

On the heels of Annie Hall, the Oscar-winning romantic comedy that rocketed Woody Allen to the front ranks of American filmmakers, Manhattan continued Allen's romantic obsessions in a slightly darker, more pessimistic vein. Allen stars as Isaac Davis, a TV comedy writer sick of the pap he is forced to churn out and harboring dreams of being the great American novelist. His love life is in barbed-wire territory: he is tormented by his second ex-wife Jill (Meryl Streep), a lesbian who has written a tell-all book about their marriage, and he is dating teenager Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), to whom he refuses to commit, and keeps hinting that a breakup may be imminent. Isaac's disillusioned (and married) best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) has begun an affair with the cerebral writer Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton). While Isaac makes a last minute, sink-or-swim decision to quit his job and devote all of his time to book writing, and neurotically moans about what the lack of a full time job will do to him ("My parents won't have as good of a seat in the synagogue," he moans. "They'll be far away from God... away from the action") Yale is crippled by his lack of resolve, as indicated by his inability to leave his wife Emily (Anne Byrne). Meanwhile, Isaac and {%Mary) begin to fall for one another. Tracy then tells Isaac the basic truth that none of his hung-up friends and past lovers fully realizes: "You have to have a little more faith in people." Manhattan is both a seriocomic dissection of perpetually dissatisfied New Yorkers and an ode to the city itself, filmed in glorious black-and-white by ace cinematographer Gordon Willis, and set to a score of rhapsodic George Gershwin music. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The ads for Arthur suggested that this was an obnoxious film about an obnoxious man, an eternally drunken millionaire indulging his every whim. Instead, Arthur (Dudley Moore) is a sweet, somewhat pathetic character whose millions have left him lonely and with no motivation in life. When the film opens, Arthur is on the threshold of an arranged marriage with simpering socialite Susan (Jill Eikenberry), whom he does not love. Everyone expects Arthur to behave himself, but nobody truly cares for his well-being, with the exception of father-figure butler Mr. Hobson (John Gielgud, who won an Oscar for his performance) and blue-collar shoplifter Linda (Liza Minnelli). Arthur would prefer to marry the lowly Linda, but his iron-willed grandmother (Geraldine Fitzgerald) threatens to pull the plug on his huge inheritance if he doesn't honor his position in life and go through with his marriage to Susan. A sequel, Arthur 2: On the Rocks, followed in 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In Still of the Night, a mystery thriller written and directed by Robert Benton, a psychiatrist falls in love with a woman who is suspected of the murder of one of his patients. Dr. Sam Rice (Roy Scheider) is treating a married museum curator. When the man is killed, Sam is visited by his dead patient's mistress and co-worker Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) who wants him to return a watch -- that was left at her home -- to the patient's wife. Sam is immediately attracted to the cool, aloof Brooke, who has been discussed during numerous therapy sessions. When he hears about the mysterious death of Brook's father, and he himself is stalked by a woman who resembles Brook, he begins to both desire and fear her. Despite its rather leisurely pace, and some dream sequences which distract from the suspense, Still of the Night is an effective thriller despite a contrived surprise ending when the killer is revealed. Scheider is believable as the doctor in love, but Streep is rather strained in a role that demands a sexual allure and eroticism which she seems uncomfortable portraying. Benton's cinematography is moody and frightening, particularly when Scheider is followed through Central Park. Despite its flaws, Still of the Night should please fans of psychological thrillers. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

Director Alan Parker and writer Bo Goldman chronicle the emotional disintegration of an unhappy marriage. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton play George and Faith Dunlap, a seemingly happily married couple living with their four daughters in a converted farmhouse in Marin County, California. George is inwardly empty and decides to have an affair with Sandy (Karen Allen), who has doubts about how long their affair will last. Faith is also suffering from ennui and takes up with Frank Henderson (Peter Weller), the contractor for the Dunlap's tennis court. Frank, after discovering about Faith's affair, is in a confused state: he wants to leave and live with Sandy but doesn't want his wife to date other men and demands the love of his daughters -- all of whom now detest him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Saul (Dudley Moore), a married psychiatrist, becomes romantically obsessed with Chloe (Elizabeth McGovern), one of his patients. Chloe has already devastated one psychoanalyst, and although the venerable Freud himself (Alec Guinness) appears to counsel Saul in his worst moments, the man continues on his tormented way. In spite of notable names in the acting field, neither the subsidiary characters nor the story itself rise above the limited dialogue and plot. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Falling in Love can be described as an urban American Brief Encounter. Reteamed for the first time since The Deer Hunter, Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep star as a married couple. Thing of it is, they're not married to each other. While Christmas shopping for their respective families, architect Frank Raftis (DeNiro) and graphic artist Molly Gilmore (Streep) "meet cute," their holiday packages becoming mixed up. What starts as a pleasant chance acquaintance blossoms into romance. Inevitably, however, both parties realize that what they're doing is wrong--a shade too late to save their marriages, as it turns out. The film ends with a bittersweet "one year later" coda. The natural charisma of its stars lends distinction to the otherwise so-so Falling in Love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Woody Allen Manhattan mosaic, Hannah and Her Sisters concerns the lives, loves, and infidelities among a tightly-knit artistic clan. Hannah (Mia Farrow) regularly meets with her sisters Holly (Dianne Wiest) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) to discuss the week's events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's various subplots. Hannah is married to accountant and financial planner Elliot (Michael Caine), who carries a torch for Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow). Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey (Allen), who used to be married to Hannah and spends most of the film convinced that he's about to die. Appearing in supporting parts are Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan (Farrow's real mom), as the eternally bickering husband-and-wife acting team who are the parents of Hannah and her sisters. The film begins and ends during the family's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, filmed in Farrow's actual New York apartment. Unbilled cameos are contributed by Sam Waterston as one of Wiest's brief amours and Tony Roberts as one of Allen's friends. Hannah and Her Sisters collected Oscars for Michael Caine, Dianne Wiest, and Woody Allen's screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A weekend stay at a Vermont summer house provides glimpses into the lives of six unhappy people, plagued by unrequited feelings, thoughts and desires. Mia Farrow plays Lane, a troubled woman who hides from a terrible childhood memory. She's in love with Peter (Sam Waterston), who is tempted by Stephanie (Dianne Wiest), her good friend. As the summer days come to a close, resentments and anger come to the surface, many of them related to Lane's relationship with her actress mother (Elaine Stritch). ~ All Movie Guide

Biloxi Blues was the second of playwright Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical trilogy (number one was Brighton Beach Memoirs; number three, Broadway Bound). Matthew Broderick stars as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome, who is drafted and shipped off to boot camp in Biloxi, Mississippi in the waning days of World War II. Eugene is at the mercy of near-psychotic drill sergeant Toomey (Christopher Walken), who seems to have a personal vendetta against the poor schlemiel (Toomey also has all the film's best lines). While sweating out basic training, Eugene is indoctrinated into manhood by local prostitute Rowena (Park Overall). The film version of Biloxi Blues retains the wit and poignancy of the theatrical original--except towards the end, which pointlessly emphasizes a showdown between Eugene and Toomey. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide