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.

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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)