Irrational Man (2015)
Directed by Woody Allen
On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student.
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Cue a series of discussions about existential ethics that might seem familiar if you've seen "Match Point," "Crimes and Misdemeanors," Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" or the inside of a liberal arts college dorm room after 11 on a Friday night.
Trying for another Match Point (2005), writer-director Woody Allen grabs a handful of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and a handful of Crime and Punishment and tosses them into a campus setting, which emboldens him to verbalize his stale philosophical concerns even more baldly than usual.
A riff on Strangers on a Train and Dostoyevsky with some upside.
And he also gives a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train.”
He plans the perfect murder of the judge, for which he could never be suspected as he would have absolutely no motive (shades of “Strangers on a Train,” though without the quid-pro-quo).
More "Cassandra's Dream" than " Midnight in Paris ," it's an attractively shot if perfunctorily told shrug of a story that might not be perfect but which in its best moment is nonetheless perfectly enjoyable.
Joaquin Phoenix plays the protagonist, a piece of casting even riskier than Owen Wilson’s in Midnight in Paris.
Para muestra, estos botones: Alan Alda en Crimes and Misdemeanors, Max von Sydow en Hannah and Her Sisters y Owen Wilson en Midnight in Paris.
Actors spend their whole careers hoping Woody Allen will come calling, and the dream is to end up in “Hannah and Her Sisters” or “Midnight in Paris” — that is, with a small piece of immortality.
Allen seems, despite a few recent "comebacks" — Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011), and Blue Jasmine (2013) — to have fallen from favor, probably not aided by certain news items.
After last year’s disappointingly drowsy “ Magic In The Moonlight ,” Woody Allen strikes back with “Irrational Man,” an erratic but compelling murder comedy cut from the same cloth as Richard Linklater’s “Bernie.”