TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Bardlerx Strictly average movie

SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

betty dalton One of Woody Allen's own favorite movies, although he mentioned he wanted to cut the comedypart out of "Crimes and Misdemeanors". Thankfully he didnt, because "Crimes and Misdemeanors" mixes crime and comedy as perfectly as I have ever seen it. Add to this mix a very melancholic and tragic romance and you have the wonderfully bright ingredients of this Woody Allen classic.The storyline: an secret affair goes sour because the mistress threatens to reveal everything to his wife.The man panicks and starts pondering of ways to get rid of her. This storyline is the backdrop for a moral question: can one get away with crime WITHOUT punishment? The many (humorous and serious) ways in which Woody Allen wrestles with this question is what makes "Crimes and Misdemeanours" so beautiful and endearing.I could go on and on about this movie which is so dear to me, but I want to end with a quote from the brilliant Professor Louis Levy who survived the concentration camps in World War II. Louis Levy is the personification of many moral questions in this movie. And those questions are being posed without humor and in all earnest. In the end Levy asks himself what "love" is: ...when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. We ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past...

oOoBarracuda Crimes and Misdemeanors is the second film that Woody Allen collaborated with Sven Nykvist, but the first one that I have seen. Seeing Nykvist's name appear on screen as the Director of Photography on a Woody Allen film knowing how great a fan he was of Ingmar Bergman nearly made my heart explode. I can only imagine the glee Allen must have experience working with the man responsible for so many of the best shots in Bergman films. I have pretty diverse interests in life so it's not often that favorites of mine intersect so I suppose I lived a bit vicariously through Allen in the moment in which I read Nykvist's name. The 1989 feature of Woody Allen grapples with morality, serious questioning of religion, and the idea of damnation through exploring the life of an ophthalmologist who carried on an affair with a woman who threatened to tell his wife about his misdeeds. Struggling to regain control of his life, one man must determine which version of reality works for him.Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) is an outstanding member of the community. An ophthalmologist by trade, Judah is always hosting lavish parties in his home and honored by the community. What no one would expect from Judah would be the idea that he would carry on an extra- marital affair. He and his wife seem to be happily married, nevertheless, Judah has been carrying on an affair for two years with a flight attendant he met on one of his business trips. As their affair lingers his mistress, Dolores Paley (Anjelica Huston) is of the belief that he will leave his wife and begin a life with her. When Judah denies that he ever indicated that he would leave his wife, Dolores becomes despondent and threatens to tell Judah's wife about everything that has happened between them. His brother Jack suggests that the only way to continue leading his picturesque life is by having Dolores murdered, and Jack has the means to make this happen. Suddenly struck with a bought of morals Judah is stressed over which option to choose. He admits that he doesn't love Dolores but he struggles with the idea of being responsible for ending the life of another human being. Judah also believes that his life will come crashing down if he were to tell his wife, as he feels she would be unable to forgive him. In the other moral story of the film the audience meets Cliff (Woody Allen) a man who is living in a marriage that's seemed to have lost its spark, in the bedroom anyway. Cliff is struggling, he wants to be a filmmaker but he refuses to succumb to the type of filming that is devoid of purpose and only exists to please an audience. Although he strays away from the type of work his wife's husband Lester does (Alan Alda), he takes a job wth the pompous, egotistical, philandering man to please his wife who is desperate for him to work for an income again. While shooting the documentary with Leser, Cliff meets Halley Reed (Mia Farrow) a divorcée who claims to have sworn off men. The pair's mutual disdain of Lester brings them together initially, but as they spend more time together Cliff falls in love and contemplates having an affair with Halley. Culminating in a party whereby the two stories converge, each man involved in their struggle must determine what level of morality they wish to exercise and what they allow to be their guiding set of principles. --I'm not going to write about how incredible the opening speech praising Judah while he reminisces about the affair he's been having with for two years at establishing how highly looked upon Judah is in the community while he simultaneously grapples with a universally detestable act.-- It's funny what you start to notice when you watch several features of one artist's work. For instance, in the Woody Allen films I've watched recently, I'm noticing that the homes filmed have glorious built-in bookshelves that I am eternally jealous of. The image of Woody Allen sitting in a cinema with a film reflecting off his glasses may actually be all I need in life, or you know, a picture of that hanging in my home. Crimes and Misdemeanors was, surprisingly to me, one of Woody's more deliberative films. We even see Judah going back to his childhood home and reliving portions of his life in order to better decipher his moral compass. Equally as contemplative is Woody Allen's character questioning whether or not to engage in an affair only to discover the woman of his affection become engaged to his most sincere enemy. The look of betrayal and heartbreak on Allen's face when he sees Lester and Halley together celebrating their engagement is agonizing. Crimes and Misdemeanors is another Woody Allen film I don't hear talked about nearly enough as one of his best, and in a way I'm happy to keep stumbling upon these surprises.

film-222 This is a deftly made movie with parallel stories and portrayal of the world of Jewish New Yorkers. The angst over whether there is a true morality from an omnipotent God makes the film thought-provoking and, to some, disturbing. Allen has grappled now twice with this idea of getting away with murder and whether one can go on to live a good life without fear of retribution. He explored it in this film, and then again in Matchpoint. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, the issue was whether God was watching and if the guilty character could live well with his conscience. In Matchpoint, retribution is a matter of random luck.The conclusions of both films can seem brilliant to some, but quite troubling to others. The reason this is so, is because Allen's main question, "Can the murderer get away with it?" hinges on one important assumption: that all rewards and punishments occur in this life...and that moral behavior is subject to rewards and punishments. This is in fact a very Jewish point of view (hence the family debate in their Midwood, Brooklyn, home). Jews do not believe in Heaven or Hell, so all has to be achieved in this life. Within the logic that emerges from the above question is inevitably a morally confused universe and cynical point of view. What's worse is that the movie assumes the rewards are things like wealth, career success, love.If murderers do not get found out and do not suffer punishment, does that mean there is no moral God watching over us? No, their crime or misdemeanor is still wrong, because it caused harm to someone. If they have no conscience and they are not caught, it is still wrong. If there is not a God meting out rewards and punishments in this life or the afterlife, what makes it wrong? Does it not matter if one decides to murder for personal gain? Is not the rule to follow simply dog eat dog and every man for himself? Allen has not progressed in questioning the assumption, whether material rewards are the appropriate measure of morality.To get past his ongoing conundrum, the next time Allen takes on this theme, he needs to consider how society as a whole would break down if no one subscribed to any code of morality. There would not be anything to get away with, since everyone would subscribe to the law of the jungle: who ever eats, wins. Without a common code of morals, we would be reduced to a primitive state.Allen is very literary, but to address moral issues, he needs to go beyond the individual and consider social systems as a whole. Morality is a matter of relationships to our fellow human beings, not of individual success in life. One might argue that societies have a long history of sanctioning, through the law, behaviors we find abhorrent today, so morality is still all relative and there is no moral absolute. I think, rather, that human societies evolve as we learn from our mistakes, and we find out these mistakes because indeed there is a moral absolute that reveals them to be wrong: gradually it becomes recognized that it is not okay for women to be an underclass to men; that racism violates the rights of people; that lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering result in a breakdown of the trust required to engage in transactions and the economic health of a society; that crime is a symptom of a lot of social ills, from economic inequities to mental illness to social pressures that sway the individual's moral compass. Obviously, there are sociopaths and criminals who have no empathy for their victims and no conscience about gaining at the expense of others, including murder -- we now have clinical terms for them, and even can link aberrant, deficient behaviors to parts of the brain. Judah's brother is such a one with no twinges of conscience. Judah enjoys the trappings of success very much because those around subscribe to a moral code to which he must pretend.Criminals are put in jail to punish them, to protect society from them, and to reform them. Society's sense of morality evolves in the effort to achieve some social order that is sustainable. If someone gets away with murder, the goal of the law is that society does not implode with everyone doing the same as some norm of behavior. One does not need a God to tell us what works or not. Our different beliefs in God or not, meanwhile, color how we codify our morals in social conduct and the law.Good movie, within its narrowly defined universe, but Allen needs to expand beyond that small universe to truly answer the question of moral absolutes. I hope he reads my review somehow, as I get the sense that his is indeed a very troubled man.P.S. To those who analyze the film in terms of Utilitarianism and Kant, my above take based on human relationships draws from Asian philosophy and Confucianism, and the concept of societies as complex systems.

leonblackwood Review: This is your typical Woody Allen movie which deals with troubled relationships and finding love, but he cleverly added an intense love affair which makes the movie interesting. The whole murder plot was put together great and all of the characters put in a great performance. It isn't a whodunit, like Manhattan Murder Mystery, but it shows how a simple affair can turn horribly wrong. Woody Allen didn't have to include the love affair between him and Mia Farrow, but it does lighten the movie, even though it doesn't end to well for his character. It does feel like two completely different movies in one, which is why the title fits the film perfectly. Watchable!Round-Up: Martin Landau was brilliant in this film. He brought intensity and emotion to his role which made the whole situation between him and Huston believable. Alan Ada and Mia Farrow act the same in all of Woody Allen's movies so there performances wasn't that surprising, and I much preferred the toned down version of Woody Allen's acting which made the film bearable. Anyway, this is a watchable movie which shows that Woody Allen can write and direct other genres except for comedy.Budget: $19million Worldwide Gross: $18.2millionI recommend this movie to people who are into there Woody Allen movies about a man who tries to break an affair and a struggling director who falls in love with a co-worker. 6/10