Comedy

This is probably the best film footage available of Woody’s stand-up routine, including the infamous “Moose” bit. The image quality isn’t great but it’s watchable, and the audio is fine. Here’s a description from TV Party:

‘WOODY ALLEN’ (February 17, 1965, GRANADA)
In this rarely seen half-hour taped for British TV, Woody is able to deliver his night club act without the restraints of American censors. Appearing on a bare stage in front of an appreciative audience, Woody performs many of his classic stories.Read More »

Plot Synopsis from BritMovie
Bored BBC backroom boy Arthur Pilbeam (Arthur Askey) transmits timekeeping ‘pips’ over the radio in Morse code, and finds himself banished to Scotland to set up a new weather station at an Orkney island lighthouse. To his delight a boatload of models are shipwrecked – then the girls start to vanish one by one. Nazi spies are behind it, but Arthur gets the better of them, also posing as a mermaid to lure an enemy battleship into a minefield. Another flag-waving wartime comedy with a plot not dissimilar to Will Hay’s The Ghost of St Michael’s or Oh, Mr Porter! The similarity is further enhanced by the presence of regular Hay sidekicks Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott.Read More »

Synopsis:
Francis Li (Chow Yun-Fat) is a lazy, arrogant cop coasting on his badge, more interested in chasing women than catching crooks. His new partner is Michael Tso (Conan Lee, in his “first” role) a determined, ambitious cop who doesn’t hesitate to get reckless if it means closing a case. When a new shipment of cocaine comes into Hong Kong, and with it a corpse, the two are forced together to get to the bottom of it. Their only lead: a beautiful but naive drug mule (Nina Li)Read More »

Quote:
Attempting to impress his ideologies on religion, relationships, and the randomness (and worthlessness) of existence, lifelong New York resident Boris Yellnikoff rants to anyone who will listen, including the audience. But when he begrudgingly allows naive Mississippi runaway Melodie St. Ann Celestine to live in his apartment, his reclusive rages give way to an unlikely friendship and Boris begins to mold the impressionable young girl’s worldly views to match his own. When it comes to love, “whatever works” is his motto, but his already perplexed life complicates itself further when Melodie’s parents eventually track her down.Read More »

Synopsis:
One of Woody Allen’s earlier, more slapstick-oriented efforts, Bananas tells the story of Fielding Mellish (Allen), a neurotic New Yorker who follows the object of his affections, Nancy (Louise Lasser), to the fictional Central American country of San Marcos, where she is involved in a revolution. Nancy wants nothing to do with Fielding, but he soon becomes a guest of the country’s dictator (Carlos Montalban), before accidentally becoming the leader of San Marcos himself. Fielding is eventually shipped back to the US and tried as a subversive, but being that this is a comedy, and an especially light one at that, everything works out in the end. A far cry from Allen’s later, more somber films, Bananas still works as an often hilarious amalgam of sight gags, one-liners, and bizarre asides.
— Don KayeRead More »

Quote:
In 1973, health-food store owner Miles Monroe (Woody Allen) enters the hospital for a routine gall bladder operation. When he expires on the operating table, Miles’ sister requests permission to cryogenically freeze her brother’s body. After 200 years, Miles is unwrapped by a group of scientists and awakens to a “brave new world” of deadening conformity, ruled with an iron fist by a never-seen leader. Miles is forced to flee for his life when the scientists — actually a group of revolutionary activists — are overpowered by the leader’s police. He eludes the cops by pretending to be an android, and in this guise is sent to work at the home of Luna (Diane Keaton), a composer of greeting cards who thinks that the world of the future is perfect as it stands. There’s more, but why spoil your fun? Sleeper is the most visual of Woody Allen’s earlier films, and demonstrated a more pronounced rapport between Allen and his off- and onscreen leading lady Diane Keaton than had previously existed. The Dixieland score is performed by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
Because Annie Hall and Manhattan, the two highly revered comedies that preceded 1980’s Stardust Memories, concerned themselves with characters whose insecurities led to the demise of their relationships, Woody Allen’s somewhat polarizing 30-year-old homage to 8 1/2 surprised me in its reversal of the old break-up stand-by, “it’s not you, it’s me.” Sandy Bates (Allen), the successful comedic filmmaker in Stardust Memories, could safely say to his chronically depressed lover Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling), “It’s not me, it’s you.” While he bears the bulk of the blame for the setbacks in his current relationships (thanks to a mental breakdown of sorts), Sandy’s most cherished romance wasn’t sabotaged by the self-hatred and neurosis we’ve come to expect from Allen’s stories, but rather by a cloud of melancholy constantly hovering over Dorrie.Read More »

Woody Allen brings a diverting whimsy and a hopeful innocence to this period roundelay, based upon Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer’s Night and Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game. Allen plays Andrew, a Wall Street broker and eccentric inventor who is having frigidity problems with his wife Adrian (Mary Steenburgen). Adrian and Andrew are the hosts, at their summer house in the country, of a wedding party for Ariel (Mia Farrow) and Leopold (Jose Ferrer), a famed academic who is Andrew’s cousin. Over the weekend, another couple converges at Andrew’s summer home — the sly, lady-killer of a doctor Maxwell (Tony Roberts) and his date, the deliciously ditzy nurse Dulcy (Julie Hagerty). Through the course of the weekend, sexual partners are exchanged and magical fairy tale moments are shared.Read More »

In his attempts to reconcile a lounge singer with his mistress, a hapless talent agent is mistaken as her lover by a jealous gangster.Read More »