Magic in the Moonlight (Woody Allen, 2014)

7/10
Woody Allen seems to be working at an "every other one is a great one" clip these days, with Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine paced by the immediately forgettable To Rome with Love and this newest one, Magic in the Moonlight. It's not as bad as To Rome with Love, but it definitely doesn't hit the highs of the other two. It just feels slight - a little slapdash, a bit of a lark. The plot feels like sitcom fodder, with Colin Firth playing the hardline skeptic to Emma Stone's mystic medium, but the pair have an easygoing chemistry. Firth is always watchable and as good as you'd expect from him and Stone brings her usual girl next door charm to a role that doesn't call for much more.
There are a few laughs, the settings are gorgeous and the music is fun and breezy. For a nice enough 2-hour escape or a good date night flick, you could do a lot worse.

Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)

8/10
Woody Allen's last two movies were pretty fluff affairs - To Rome with Love was the instantly forgettable kind and Midnight in Paris was the excellent, Oscar-nominated kind. Based on that alone I wasn't totally prepared for Blue Jasmine, one of most nuanced, complex, and, well, depressing Allen movies in years. Everything you've heard about Cate Blanchett's performance is true and she could end up with the Oscar for it, but the cast as a whole is incredibly strong. It's to Allen's credit that Blanchett's Jasmine is so oblivious, ignorant, and downright unlikeable when you get down to it...yet you also manage to feel a considerable amount of empathy and pity for her. A very complex "anti-heroine" that I'll still be thinking about for a while afterwards.

To Rome with Love (Woody Allen, 2012)

6.5/10
It doesn't come close to last year's Midnight in Paris, and it would be a pretty fluff entry in anyone's filmography, but Woody Allen's latest isn't really as bad as the reviews would indicate. It's not a great movie, but it's light and fun enough. A bunch of separate storylines are told (and never interweave), some stronger than others, but the movie starts to drag and the humour is sucked out as Allen is forced to finally tie up the threads. There are inspired moments but nothing here comes close to 'must-see' territory.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)

5/10
As far as Woody Allen movies go, this one fell pretty flat for me. It's not a comedy, but the issues the characters go through are tackled so lightly and are without any real resolution that I was left wondering really what the point of it all was. The acting was solid (though I felt Penelope Cruz was over the top, as she often is) and Barcelona was well photographed, that's about all I came away with.

Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)

8/10
The first time I've been equally impressed by Woody Allen as a director than as a writer, Manhattan has some really beautiful photography...not what I was expecting, to be honest. Black and white really served the movie well. I didn't find it to have the same depth as Annie Hall but it was almost as charming, and I found it more likeable than Hannah & Her Sisters (the only two similar Woody movies I've seen to compare it to).

Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)

7/10
There's a lot to chew on here, and it's a very multi-layered story, moreso than what I'd expected for Woody Allen (not that I've seen much of his work). While I enjoyed it, I felt it was lacking a certain charm, or something that would really connect me to the characters. The ruminations on relationships, life, death, religion, etc were all interesting, but I was never close to being moved by it or anything.

Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

9/10
Really funny and really clever. A few hours after I'd finished watching it I found myself still thinking about it, almost already keen to revisit it.

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

9/10
Only the second Woody Allen movie I've ever seen, so don't use me as a barometer. I walked in unenthused and prepared to not like it (the first 10 minutes or so didn't really endear me) and walked out feeling as charmed and as filled with starry-eyed wonder as the protagonist Gill, played effortlessly by Owen Wilson. The plot isn't anything new (a disaffected, struggling writer sejourning with his bourgeoise wife in Paris starts to question his life's direction) but it's presented in a very clever way - Wilson's midnight walks around Paris find him in the past, encountering his heroes from the art world and in particular Adriana, a woman similarly out of step with her own era and searching for a sense of self.
Any movie featuring time travel is bound to include one self-conscious wink-nudge joke for the audience's benefit (e.g. Back to the Future's "President Ronald Reagan - the ACTOR?") but Midnight in Paris has the sharpest one I've ever heard involving Gill suggesting to Luis Bunuel...well I won't spoil it.
The entire movie is very light and breezy, but incredibly tight and clever. There's a bit of inanely expository dialogue, some broadly painted characters, and the ending is a bit cornball, but it's so fun and so charming it's hard to really care too much.
The movie also works well as a 90 minute infomercial for Paris because man do I want to go now.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (Woody Allen, 1972)

7/10
I've never seen a Woody Allen movie before...this may not have been the best place to start (as it's not so much a movie as a series of skits) but there were still some really funny moments. The skits are all based upon taking questions from the book of the same title, taken to ludicrous extremes. The last and best skit, "what happens during ejaculation?", featuring a bunch of workers inside the body's pleasure zones, stomach, brain, eyes, etc, is a scream. Others don't work so well, but I was rarely bored.