Top Five Woody Allen Films

Forget about his scandalous private life for a second - Woody Allen has made some funny films. (He also made some painfully boring films in the Eighties, but I would too if I was married to Mia Farrow.) I can confidently recommend five gems that don't have him making out with leading ladies less than half his age, though he's still an acquired taste. So acquire some taste and come straight back!



1. Bullets Over Broadway (1994).
John Cusack stars (replacing Woody) as a 1920s playwright who's mortified when a local gangster shows a flair for dialogue and successfully improves his latest work.
"Was there nothing in the original draft you feel was worth saving?"
"The stage directions were lucid. Best I've ever seen. And the colour of the binder. Good choice."

2. Love And Death (1975).
An extremely silly parody of Russian existentialist literature, though I argue that you don't need to have read any (I haven't) to enjoy the film. If you like Bob Hope, Mel Brooks or Charlie Chaplin then there's something here for you.
"We have to take our possessions and flee. I'm very good at that. I was the men's freestyle fleeing champion two years in a row."

3. Annie Hall (1977).
If you've never seen a Woody Allen film before, start here. It's a modern love-gone-wrong story told using split-screen, animation and other techniques unusual to the romantic comedy genre. If I was blogging about my celebrity crushes 30 years ago, I'd leave space for Diane Keaton.
"I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light."

4. Deconstructing Harry (1997).
A writer thinly disguises his friends' lives in his best-selling books, and we see flashbacks to real events contrasted with their fictionalized counterparts. Billy Crystal plays The Devil!
"You have no values. With you it's all nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm, and orgasm."
"In France I could run for office with that slogan and win."

5. Sleeper (1973).
Another "early, funny" one about a Greenwich Village grocer who is cryogenically frozen when a routine operation goes wrong and is revived 200 years later. Could this be the first comedy science fiction film, just five years after 2001?
"I knew it was too good to be true. I parked right next to the hospital."