Best movie of this year hands down!

Touches You

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I'm not a huge fan of Woody Allen's movies after Manhattan Murder Mystery, but I loved Manhattan Murder Mystery. Yes, there was the murder mystery of course, but also the relationship and chemistry between the main characters (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Alan Alda, Anjelica Houston). Whilst I haven't been to NY, I want to visit the place and see where it was filmed!! The twist in the plot line was intriguing and unexpected. The tape recorder scene at the end is one of the funniest scenes in movie history without a doubt. I laughed out loud big time and kudos to the editor. I'm pleased to have Manhattan Murder Mystery on DVD and I can watch this movie over and over again.

I must admit that I'm very surprised this little movie enjoyed such favorable reviews. Admittedly, a movie budgeted at $13.5 million puts it into a top bracket, but the money seems to have been spent mainly on the cast and on greasing hands for all the NYC location shots. And of course, although reviewers loved this movie, it was far from a success with picturegoers. Even accounting for TV and video sales, it would have been lucky to break even. Shot in a freewheeling style on actual Manhattan locations, it re-teams Woody with Diane Keaton. Also along for the ride are Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston, plus an overweight Jerry Adler as the mysterious Mr. House. I'll readily admit that if you're not expecting too much from the movie, it's quite enjoyable, but it's a long way from Allen at his early best or even the Allen of Shadows and Fog, made only two years earlier! True, the on-screen Allen character is still intact, but he seems to lack the on-screen charisma of even a Broadway Danny Rose. Now he's just an irritatingly over-argumentative little guy who has to be talked into everything until he eventually gives in! Available on an excellent Columbia/Tristar DVD.

After 20 years of marriage, and with one son in college, Larry (Woody Allen) and Carol Lipton (Diane Keaton) try to accommodate with each other's interests, and from the very first hilarious exchanges, we get the point on how dramatically opposed they happen to be. To give you an idea, Larry loves watching ice hockey games while Carol prefers to listen to Wagner; she loves Manhattan's nightlife while he'd rather watch the midnight movie in bed. The differences between Carol and Larry get more obvious when they meet Mr. and Mrs. House (Jerry Adler and Lynn Cohen), an old couple living in the same floor. In a remarkably dialog-driven sequence, we feel Carol's enthusiasm to have an extra-time for socializing and Larry's impatience to live and stop enduring Mr. House's collection of stamps. At the end, we're not that surprised by the following discussion about the path their life is taking, their mutual attraction and all that marital existentialism. They have a dinner with friends in the following scene which feels like a reminiscence of "Manhattan", which is not surprising since the setting is one of the film's three titular 'M'. We learn that Carol wants to open a restaurant, Larry believes it's a foolish decision to take so late in life, yet one of their recently divorced friends Ted (Alan Alda) encourages her. We get it; Larry enjoys his life's pacific serenity while Carol desperately looks for a new meaning before it's too late. Many couples face that situation where the ambitions and goals in life suddenly differ, but Allen handles this material with a less polemical tone than the previous "Husbands and Wives" as if he was tired of hostile arguments. He leaves more room for Ted, whose adventurous temperament fits Carol's thirst for newness, not without feeling jealous about that. It's a pivotal, even crucial moment in Carol and Harry's marital life.Yet the title doesn't lie on the film's premise: it's a mysterious crime that will shatter their boring routine. Speaking of the mystery, if the previous scene where they meet the friendly Houses' couple reminded me of "Rosemary's Baby" when Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes met the Castevets, I was even more struck by the plot's similarities when after a night out, Carol and Larry discovers that Mrs. House died of a heart attack. Much more, Mr. House looked unusually cheerful and not too much distraught by the loss of the woman he spent 28 years and planned to be buried with in a twin-cemetery, raising Carol's suspicion. "She had a heart condition," he says, Carol insists that Mrs. House never mentioned that. At that point, we know what she's about, she smells something fishy and whether she's right or wrong matters less than that she finally found an opportunity to live some thrills. And the difference of attitudes between Carol and Larry is the film's comedic basis.Indeed, the conflict between Carol who wants to go further and Larry who wants her to stop, will originate one of Woody Allen's funniest lines: "Is that what you do when I'm forbidding? I'm not going to forbid you a lot, if you do". The greatest delight of "Manhattan Murder Mystery" relies on the way its intricate plot contributes to enrich the human relationships involved in the resolution and vice versa. Carol's amateurish investigation, her growing complicity with Ted, and Larry's clumsy attempts to help her after he understands that his marriage is in peril, are magnificently portrayed. And all these interactions culminate with the help of Marcia Fox, played by a scene-stealing Angelica Huston, a dark and sensual authoress and professional poker-player, so intuitive that she'll even steal Carol's thunder in the crime- solving process, and fascinate both Ted and Larry. As a counterpart to Carol's personality, like Ted for Larry, Marcia Fox will also teach Carol a few things about the word 'jealousy'. After, "Husbands and Wives", a powerful social commentary about marital relationships and an opportunity for Woody Allen to exorcise all the demons resulting from the custody battle with Mia Farrow, "Manhattan Murder Mystery" feels like a moment of pure refreshment. If it's not the best of Woody Allen's rich filmography, not nominated for a Best Original Screenplay or Best Supporting Acting Oscar (while it deserved some accolades) it's still extremely enjoyable and delivers what we'd expect from Woody Allen. And the main pillar of this enjoyment is definitely Diane Keaton's comeback and her incredible chemistry with Woody Allen. Indeed, I have much admiration to Mia Farrow, and she'll be forever associated with some of Allen's greatest achievements, but there has always been a sort of inner sweetness in Farrow that confined to poignancy and even sometimes to pathos, and this characteristic reaches a paroxysm in "Husbands and Wives" where not only her character, but the actress herself looked both unhappy, embodying the marital conflict that was poisoning their lives. Woody Allen said "Mia likes to do funny things, but she's not as broad a comedian as Diane is", although I don't approve the manner but I have to agree with the director, Mia Farrow is fine but as far as comedy is concerned, Diane Keaton has that little sparkle that makes all the difference. Yes, we have the New York middle-class lifestyle, the intellectual discussions with the couples of friends, Allen's neurotic personality ("a dead body and claustrophobia, a neurotic's jackpot"), his distaste for Wagner, a compositor who gives him the "urge to invade Poland" and the whole romantic twists and commentaries on men and women's relationships, all the ingredients for a great Allen's film are here but Diane Keaton is the icing on the cake.And believe me, she's for more than three quarters in what make "Manhattan Murder Mystery" such a delicious pastry, reminding us how a great chemistry she always had with Woody Allen, hell, even when they argue, they're hilarious.

This frantic comedy, released during the tumultuous tabloid scandal between Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, is co-scripted by Marshall Brickman, Allen's writing partner for MANHATTAN and ANNIE HALL. ANNIE HALL was originally conceived as a murder mystery before reimagined as the rom-com we know and love, and here's a double-whammy collaboration: Diane Keaton, Woody's co-star/love interest during the seventies, returns to the iconic director's canon. And the results are disastrous.Allen and Keaton play a THIN MAN "Nick and Nora" like couple who meet their elderly neighbors – a seemingly normal stamp collecting coot and his talkative wife. The wife dies and the husband doesn't seem very jaded. Keaton, overacting desperately, investigates the possible murder, which at first seems a long shot. When she's not tailing the accused through the New York, or teaming up with her charming friend Alan Alda, the film consists of tedious dialog between Allen and Keaton, whose chemistry is, to quote Alvy Singer in ANNIE HALL, "A dead shark." Woody Allen delivers flat one-liners like a sleepy clown after the circus has let out. And when the convoluted mystery is solved there's still twenty minutes to figure out what exactly? Although the climax, homage to Orson Welle's THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI using actual scenes of the famous Fun House montage, is a clever twist, the rest is a failed class reunion. And even "worse than the chicken at Tresky's."For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com