Wonder Wheel

WONDER WHEEL iss a big surprise. After reading several sour reviews, I wasn't expecting much but Kate Winslet is terrific, the story is quite good, and the look of the film (luscious cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and production design by the always underrated Santo Loquasto) is fascinating.

Story has Winslet unhappily married (to Jim Belushi) and working in a clam house on Coney Island in the 1950s. She meets a lifeguard (Justin Timberlake) and embarks on a doomed love affair with him just as Belushi's daughter (Juno Temple) from a previous marriage returns after her marriage to a gangster has failed. It's sort of a Blanche du Bois meets Eugene O'Neill plot with a twist of the Sopranos.

Everyone is good but Winslet certainly steals the show. The 1950s Coney Island is something to see, and Winslet's house, practically under the giant Wonder Wheel, is awash is garish lights from the ride. Scenes move from orange to blue to red hues. Quite fascinating. Oh, and Winslet has a strange son from a previous marriage. For me this is Allen's best since BLUE JASMINE.

It's such a treat to see good actors actually getting to act in long, uncut scenes and without the camera whipping around and edited into 10-second info-bytes. The soundtrack includes a terrific number by the Mills Brothers I don't think I've ever heard before: "Coney Island Washboard."

Kate Winslet is outstanding, Jim Belushi and Juno Temple are very good, and Justin Timberlake is better than I expected. Great film from a great American filmmaker: Woody Allen.

Wonder Wheel is NOT Woody Allen's best film, it is a bit underdeveloped and has a major casting flaw, but it IS his best film in many years. I think his best films overall are Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Interiors.

I am not a big fan of Blue Jasmine or Midnight in Paris, but I do think that both are decent films in some ways. Blue Jasmine was close to being great, but for me that film was histrionic in a way that I found uncaring, cold, heartless and even mocking in the treatment of Cate Blanchett's character Jasmine. Blanchett was wonderful in the role, but the audience was told to laugh AT her and not with her - and that I found to be a serious flaw in that film. To borrow from that film's obvious inspiration, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE - "deliberate cruelty is not forgivable!" - and I think Allen was cruel to his flawed protagonist whether he intended it or not.

In Wonder Wheel, Allen borrows obviously from O'Neil and Tennessee Williams, but puts his own dramatic twists to it. This film has humorous elements, but it is absolutely a drama and in my opinion his best drama in over 20 years.

The film starts off a bit clunky for the first few minutes, but if you give it your attention and get past the awkward Justin Timberlake intro, you will soon be engrossed in the characters, the set-up, and ultimately rewarded with a very honest exploration of DEEP PERSONAL DISAPPOINTMENT, jealousy, self-delusion and evil deception. Sound fun? Amazingly, the tragic lead character is actually very fun to watch, but you do feel sympathy for her despite the fact that she is her own worst enemy and in many ways the enemies of others, too. The character development of Ginny (Kate Winslet) is the best thing about the film. She is one of Woody Allen's most interesting creations in his entire career. She is absolutely a tragic character - NOT the hot mess rip off of Blue Jasmine that many critics are claiming! Ginny is a much richer, more sophisticated character, and Kate Winslet plays her with agonizing honesty. This is one of the top performances in Winslet's entire career, which says a lot. Belushi and Juno Temple are very good, too.

The film's biggest flaw is Justin Timberlake. He's not a bad actor, but he is very miscast here. He lacks the charisma for this particular character, and it doesn't help that his character is presented to the audience with a distracting storytelling device - talking directly to the audience as narrator. This movie would have been much better without that, and I wish Allen would have either made the lifeguard more humorous, or taken a sharper turn and made him more cunning. He was neither - too safely written AND portrayed, and it is the film's most obvious and main flaw, sadly.

However, Kate Winslet is utterly captivating and you cannot take your eyes off her. There are many wonderful moments where she reveals Ginny in such sublime ways, in such subtle ways, that the louder moments have greater impact because really see and feel all sides to this tragic, very sad woman. My favorite scene in the film involved Winslet and Temple in a bedroom, just the two of them. The scene was completely breathtaking - and one of Allen's most superb moments in his career. Winslet takes this scene to a level of brilliance, and I don't think I will ever forget how it made me feel. It was shockingly naked and I felt like I was watching an emotional porno with Ginny baring all to the audience while at the same time concealing all and deceiving the character sitting next to her. An amazing achievement in writing and acting there, highlighted by brilliant cinematography.

Vittorio Storaro deserves tremendous credit for his extraordinary cinematography, particularly in the scene mentioned above. Together, he and Winslet have enriched Allen's latest film to a much higher glory that it would have otherwise achieved. The script is underdeveloped in areas, particularly pertaining to the lifeguard Mickey (Timberlake) and in a few other areas as well. That being said, this is otherwise a very good film, and in some moments it is a brilliant film.

The current wave of sexual politics sweeping over Hollywood at the moment has resulted in Allen being swept up, yet again, in sexual controversy. Based on facts made public long ago, Allen does not belong in that category, in my opinion. I believe him and I do not believe Dylan Farrow or Mia Farrow. I believe Dylan was coerced as a child by her vengeful mother, and as an adult continues to believe the lie that was fed to her. I believe the results of Woody Allen's voluntary polygraph test, I believe the findings of the court that found no evidence of wrong doing on his part, and I believe the timing of Mia Farrow's claim against him make it almost impossible to believe her story. I think her motive to destroy his life and career is obvious.

I also think that in a few years time, after Allen is gone, the slew of critics who have trashed this film so unfairly, with such mob-driven, cowardly political blinders on, will look back with embarrassment when they realize it is a very personal and sophisticated drama and will probably one day be seen as Allen's best late-career film.

Staying true to style Woody captures life and wonderment in its own amusement park holding strong acting, excellent script with great camera work.

This is a fresh and brilliant story. I liked all the characters. Kate Winslet gives a brilliant performance as the story's main character. Wonderful film.

These days, even the college-educated don't recognize the classics. Spike Lee can film LYSISTRATA, but so long as he moves it to Chicago and calls it CHI-RAQ, no one makes the connection. Instead, they complain that he is slandering Chicago. Well, no doubt, that's what the municipal authorities said about Aristophanes at the time. In this movie, Juno Temple flees from her mobster husband to take refuge with her alcoholic father, James Belushi, and step-mother, Kate Winslett and her pyromaniac son from her first marriage; they've got marginal jobs. The story is told from the viewpoint of Justin Timberlake, who spent the war in the navy. Now he's a lifeguard, studying to be a playwright, conducting an affair with Miss Winslett and falling in love with Miss Temple.

Woody Allen's script makes several references to Eugene O'Neill, and were they living on Nantucket and complaining about how their lives were ruined because the father had made too much money playing the Count of Monte Cristo to attend to his art, everyone would recognize this as LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. However, Mr. Allen has set it in the neighborhood he grew up in and made the fact that they're so broke they're living in a bankrupt freak show house an important plot point, so this will either be overlooked or seen as blasphemy.

This is one of Mr. Allen's serious movies. I join the general population in not being as fond of those as the ones that make me laugh out loud. Yet I take a good deal of pleasure in his recreation of 1950s Coney Island (although his "Greenwich Village hovel" is remarkably clean for the era) and his clear-eyed vision of a world, now vanished, that existed more surely than the one I live in now sometimes seems to.