Woody Allen lost any sense of storytelling
Is it laziness or sheer incompetence? I'm inclined to believe it's the former, given that not so long ago he made an actually great film - Midnight in Paris -, and a couple decent entries since. But with each new movie Woody seems to become lazier as a storyteller, and nowhere is it as evident as in last year's Irrational Man and his latest Café Society.
These movies are some kind of weird anti-cinema: dialogue doesn't seem even remotely realistic, there's no weight or poignancy to the drama, even the most basic form of narrative structure is completely disregarded, he narration either pointlessly describes what we're seeing on screen or describes what we SHOULD be seeing on screen, characters change attitude from scene to scene with no sense of development...It feels Like he just wrote these scripts in a couple of days, turned on the camera and kept rolling.
It's frustrating to see the guy who made Annie Hall and Manhattan having trouble to tell even a basic straightforward story like this. There's some enjoyment to be had if you, like me, are into classic Hollywood, it's interesting to see what a Woody Allen gangster movie would feel like, cinematography by Vittorio Storaro looks gorgeous and there is a greater care to composition here than in his last few movies, and there are some genuinely funny characters and sketches. So I liked it a lot better than the terrible Irrational Man. Still, that doesn't change the fact Café Society is much, much bellow Allen's capabilities.