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Whatever works, Woody Allen remains himself

At first a visiting card of Woody Allen movies was an old crab as a main character. In the later period - old crab. And, of course, the biggest director's love New York, in which action develops.

If an old crab happens to be a neurotic pouring literary humor pearls in a nervy way, W.Allen performs him himself. If it happens differently, another non-standard actor is invited.



In „Whatever Works“ („Whatever Works“) Larry David became an old hobbling growler Boris Yellnikoff - former nuclear physicist. Once he was a kind of nominated for Nobel. Therefore now, or maybe the entire life, he never loses an opportunity to repeat that he is a genius and most of people round about are not.

One day, to be precise, one night, an oppressive elucidation strikes already a pensioner Boris. He understands that a moment of dying comes inevitable. Therefore a guy decides not to waste time for the life he is fed up with: leaves his wife, his house in a prestigious place of New York and goes to live in the flat where he is able to feel bohemian. He earns his living sneering children who he teaches in the city parks and yards.

What is more, one evening sitting in a coffee-bar with his friends Boris even cusses out a mother of one of his pupils who came to defend his son. After hearing a tirade of sarcastic offences for a women, friends politely say goodbye and leaves genius alone. He has nothing else to do except gimping home. But near his landing Boris meets a homeless girl Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood). A girl is begging for a bit of bread but actually moves to live with Boris.

Melodie, a naive runaway from province, soon tunes in a role of a listener of Boris contemplations and gets her part as a lower species hat in hand. However, as it often happens in movies about an acquaintance of elderly grumbler and young cutie, she has what to give to old infirm Knickerbocker. A peace of joy of life, for example.

That is as a kind of matter of course, as a kind of unexpected that Boris and Melode becomes husband anw wife. Perhaps mainly because Melodie doesn't have with whom to compare Boris and his character. But the real string of misunderstandings begins when runaway Melodie's mother appears on doorstep and when Melodie's father shows up looking for his wife. Naturally, both faints after hearing about the changes of their daughter's life. However, soon New York helps them to discover their real callings.

All this time Boris grumbles without a break and W.Allen amuses in his traditional ways: snappy humor of his dialogies and monologies, the oddity of the human relations and queer life situations. What can be paid for the scene, when Boris, declaring thet religion is only superstitions, washes his hands singing a birthay song, because this defends from microbs.

All in all, it is 92 minutes of good all W.Allen and a bunch of reasons to start contemplating, what indeed means in the cinema when character is looking into the camera.

The therapy of "Inglourious Basterds"

I won't tell about the plot of this Quentin Tarantino's remake of the Enzo G. Castellari's military drama which was shot in the year 1978. On one hand, big part of the audience already has seen the "Inglourious Basterds". On the other one, I don't want to steel the pleasure from those who haven't seen it to lose themselves in the cobweb of tarantinial stories, (almost) traditionally constructed as a thriller novel: with chapters, life stories of different characters, deep looks into the pats and strays from the point.

"Basterds", it might be said, even doesn't have the main character. However, movie has a biggest star - Brad Pitt, on of those Hollywood cuties, who feel great in nonstandards: he has proven it in "Fight club", "Meet Joe Black" and in dozen of other films. B.Pitt's created American lieutenant Aldo Reine - jolly cutthroat, who can't stand with a thougt that afer war Nazis will take off the uniforms and nobody will recognize them. Therefore Lt. is practicing a branch of postmodern art - knifes swastikas on the caught Germans foreheads. Reine chops syllables in classic dialect of rustics in Southern America and doesn't throw away the manner even speaking Italian. Therefore I was repeating "a-rri-ve-der-ci" long after watching the film. Those who have seen, understand me.

However, Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), an intellectual of Nazis army, who is proud of having the name of "Jews hunter" because he deserved it by tough work, hardly concede to Reine. Officer who is chasing all Jews in France with a satisfaction of the detective virtuoso, rarely miss a chance to philosophize for a minute and even more rarely - to drink a glass of milk.

The film is full of unforgettable personages. How can be evaluated properly always angry Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) from "Baterds" squad, who can crease up the whole audience without even ome smile of himself? Or what about Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor) who whumped only a few phrases in only a few minutes when he was filmed in a corner of the room? Or...

Read this paragraph only if you have seen the film. But it's time to approach the end. The most important thing in this film, to my mind, is the therapeutic effect of the culmination. Adolf Hitler and all his hangers-on are closed blindly in the cinema theatre, then burned down, burst and shot. Does triple revenge unchain? Anyway, looking at the cruelties of the World War II through the glass of sophisticated humor really releases certain constructions of thinking.