Match Point - Movie Review

"[M]adness...sifts through him like a straw" This is complete gibberish! Intended or not, redundancy, opacity, and tautology seem to sift through your review like the apparently proverbial straw. I have to agree with the comments on the New World page. Your reviews are getting more and more annoying. You feign complexity by juggling boons and pangs, but it reads like a child with a dictionary.

Awful review.

This review is unreadable. Well, I guess I read it, but it wasn't easy.

are you sure you've seen the movie with your eyes open?

Crimes and Misdemeanors was OVERrated?? "What does register is a filmmaker out of touch with his own neuroses..." Is there a rule that everything Mr. Allen does has to be completely nuerotic?

This review takes pretension to new levels. Please try and write about film from a different perspective, because this is just rediculous.

I left this review feeling baffled, as if I had missed something, but only after reading these comments and rereading the review do I agree that the review is trying to hide the fact that you did not see this movie behind vast pretension. It seems that instead of commenting on any actual content of the movie you've come up with several criticisms that are so intentionally vague as to preclude anyone but yourself from understanding their meaning. There are phrases that seem laden with deep meaning, but instead of elaborating you abruptly drop another seemingly meaningful thought. "Johansson isn’t playing a starry-eyed actress from Colorado; she’s playing Scarlett Johansson, playing a starry-eyed actress from Colorado" may not actually mean anything, or have any relevance to what you're trying to get across, but at least you seem to know infinitely more about film than your reader can ever hope to achieve. Stylus, I thought you were heading in a good direction with the site redesign, but please, please, please get rid of Sky Hirschkron. Her/his writing serves only to alienate your readers with any sense, while those less intelligent or less well-read but who desire to seem smart since there's no possibility of actually being as such will delight in reviews like this. Ultimately it comes down to who you want your readers to be.

That may have been harsh and hastily written (above), so instead of assuming that I'm the typical reader of Stylus I'm just going to stop reading the movie reviews on this site if they continue in this vein. I've guess I have a soft spot for pretentious writing about music because I understand it all (and can tell when the writer doesn't), but with movie reviews I suppose there's a tiny possibility that when I don't understand the references and think that the reviewer is full of bullshit, I could be wrong. So, Sky, I'll give you the benefit of a tiny shred of doubt: if you seriously believe everything you wrote, then I shall be proven wrong and I'll ignore the movie part of Stylus in the future. (And if you come in here and explain that all of the redundancy/contrived incomprehensibility is intentional, or worse, making an ironic statement about the film, I'll just hate you for the pretentious ass that you are.)

ugh, terrible review.

Some people were born to be Nazis, but think racism is bad, so become hipsters instead.

I agree with most of what Sky says and don't really have that much of a problem followng it. I wouldf rephrase it: Allen's reliance on stereotypes remains. In the past he uses the sstereotypes to make humor and provoke thought. Here he uses these stereotypes in an effort to create high, realist drama. The characters don't come off as realist though. Sky particularly derides Nola is incompatible with herself as well as the realism of this film. They are all too broadly drawn and hence "half-baked." "But while Woody’s growing sense of a decadent upper-class bereft of intellectual curiosity is on the mark, what are Fyodor Dostoevsky and Giuseppe Verdi doing next to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Walter Salles? Beats me." I totally agree. What the f. "The film can safely feign complexity by juggling boons and pangs, moods of remorse and gleeful abandon." I totally agree. What the f. What happened to you woody? He's totally being obnoxiously bergman (and I like it when bergman does it) with the dead people coming back in one of the most amateur film schooly moments of the year. And in response to the "sky is a bad writer" vibe, I think part of the disconnect is what seems to be an attempt to respond to critiques out there of the film in the review itself, that leaves some of the reading public out of the conversation. for example, the first two sentences of the second paragraph. Or the first of the third paragraph. The last clause of the review means comething to me, Woody is "making a final bid for recognition by exacerbating lives beyond his reach." Translation. The characters he portrays are really far off the mark, man. They totally don't vibe with the action of the story. They seem created in the vas deferens of a crumbling bleu old guy. These people aren't real man (which goes back to the point about using stereotypes for high drama vs. for humor). I think somewhere along the line, Allen took his stereotypes from his movies and called them archetypes, which is just plain crazy.

oh and by the way, sky. what the fuck took so long for new world and match point? Match point and new world are practically out of the theatres at this point.

Yeah. Sorry about that. I knew I wanted to review MUNICH, MATCH POINT and NEW WORLD way ahead of time but I couldn't bunch them together so I had to space them apart, then I had to postpone one, etc. etc. I am reviewing BUBBLE in two weeks, though fortunately that film's theatrical staying power is sort of irrelevant...

well, if I'm going to see bubble at all, i'm going at it alone, so your review might have something to do with whether I spend the time (and damn the money, I say) on Bubble. Regardless of a negative or positive review, I'll assume you're a moron (and apparently a bad writer) and want to see it for myself (even though I might have to start boycotting Landmark Theatres for their vertical integration (who mixes cinema with economics?) and pretentious sp of theatre). So hop to it, you dullard! Or " I'm just going to stop reading the movie reviews on this site if they continue in this vein," he says with a pout spreading across his chapped lips. Too many of mother's lollipops.

The Disexists, It's a parody of erudition ha ha gjob. Erectioneer btw I should prob mention i just fucked your mom and she's way rough. Lube that bitch up.

Yeah cuz hurting peoples self-esteem is good, gjob.

jaysus. can I ask you disex, was it fun to write in that way? I bet it was, because sometimes its fun to write that way. I think people should calm down and realize that sometimes authors have fun when they're writing. That's one of the reasons why I'm a writer. Its the readers job to sift through the excessive parts (not pretentious, that word is so overused), especially online. Its a problem less of intelligence and more of simple communication. Oh, and my bringing up Bergman should come as no surprise because people have been saying that about Allen for years. It just came off as amateur Bergman for lack of a better plotline. Oh and I remembered why Fyodor Dostoevsky and Giuseppe Verdi are next to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Walter Salles. So that Allen could score the love of the 50 year old crowd and the movie would play at Landmark instead of Regal. And does having a shot of the book Crime and Punishment necessarily make the murders fraught with profundity? I asked my moron classmate in film school the same when he had a shot of one of characters reading great expectations in a short film about unrequited love. I think the inclusion of literary references, by showing the main character reading them, should not impose any more meaning besides, "I can not make good drama."

Wasn't the point that not only was he reading Dostoyevsky, but he was reading the guide to Dosteyevsky as well, meaning he really doesn't belong in the world he seems to be being thrust into, but will try to fit in?

Usually reading commentary on a book in addition to the book is a sign of higher academic rigor. For instance, if you wrote a paper on Crime and Punishment, what would your prof say if it were just something you thought up off the top of your head? It wasn't cliff's notes. Additionally, and, I regret to point this out as I find it painfully obvious, but Crime and Punishment is clearly there to tie in the narrative twist in the last third of the film, C and P is all about the guilt of a man in a state of almost madness who killed someone, who to get himself off makes it look like a burglury. It's all about the issues that Allen supposedly addresses in the film, but NOT AT ALL. I think its a pathetic gloss in the form of pseudoadaptation. It pained me to watch it. He had given himself the 'high art' declaration by adding the few shots of C and P, which initially acted as character develoment. When the plot unfolded, it implicitly assumes that you were supposed to think, oh this is similar to C and P so MatchPoint must be significant art, much like C and P is. C and P is significant in style and theme. MatchPoint is not. It almost made me want to hate a fantastic novel.

essentially, the last third of MatchPoint for me becomes a cliff's notes version of C and P masquerading as significant art. And who has ever really come to understand the themes of literary works through a glossing cliff note?

"Usually reading commentary on a book in addition to the book is a sign of higher academic rigor. For instance, if you wrote a paper..." Right, and that makes sense. But couldn't it also/instead be a sign of not understanding? I mean, especially considering that he's not actually writing an essay or in an academic position at all. And then throughout the movie it is apparant that he's not the upper class guy that he's being groomed to be. He doesn't like his job, he's bored by his wife and his situation with her family, he cheats on her, etc. If I see someone on the bus on the way to class, reading a novel, and then putting it down mid-passage to read the guide, that doesn't say to me first and foremost "higher academic rigor", it says to me "I don't understand this book".

I'm sorry, skyhir, I thought we were trying to take an intelligent approach to this issue, but no one told me you were still in 7th grade. Oddly, I respect you much more in these comments than in the article -- at least you relate on a human level (even if immaturely sometimes) here instead of burying meaning (or lack thereof) beneath heaps of vocabulary. Try taking such a straightforward, more conversational approach to your reviews as well. Or, again, if this was an exercise in testing the limits of pretentious literature, congratulations, you found the line of readability by crossing it.

"Erectioneer btw I should prob mention i just fucked your mom and she's way rough. Lube that bitch up." "Yeah cuz hurting peoples self-esteem is good, gjob." Well done, Sky: you have just reached the level of utter cunt. Is it any wonder most of the comments (including my own) are too preoccupied with your autistic inarticulacy to actually discuss the film? Hibeside is valiantly battling on with the matter in hand, so I'll try to do likewise. Match Point is a dreadfully drab film. Its cultural allusions are so clumsily worn - like the wayward affectations of a clueless teenager - it's just embarrassing. The law of diminishing returns has never been so mercilessly demonstrated: the characters, themes, and scenarios resurrected from his earlier, far greater films have been xeroxed into insignificance, making this the most dispiriting film of Woody's career. I hope he can find his way back to form, I really do. At his inventive best, Woody Allen inspires, delights, and charms like no other. Match Point is the drool hanging from the lips of a slumbering genius. Let's hope he wakes up.

yeah, I think I can see your point evan, but I think I would frame it differently. The upper class sorts were practically unintellectual, speaking lovingly of cars and horses, trying to set up a gallery (or whatever that plotline was) with the help of other people rather than through their own intelligence. If there is any kind of separation the C and P shots made, it was to show his intellectual curiosity before his intellectual incapacity. Of course it probably reads as bourgeious (sp?) ambition more than anything else, but I;m going to stick to my guns and say those two shots of him reading C and P and then Cox's line about having an interesting conversation about C and P with the main character are throw away lines, afterthoughtedly thrown in to make the audience think about this characters actions in relaton to C and P itself, a fairly cheap way of elevating the intellectual rigor of the film itself, in an unintellectual, ir-rigorous manner. But yeah, the C and P holds some character development, but if its only that, its hastily put together. My first thought when I was in the theater and I saw the main reading that, I was like, what the fuck was that. and then after cox's comment, I was even more dumbfounded by its seemingly anomolous return. But then Allen chewed on that a bit and ruined a great novel. It just has such an amateur afterthought feel to it.

My memory could just suck, but I don't remember anything in the film suggesting that the upper class was unintellectual. Two things come to mind suggesting the opposite. The museum scenes, and the office scenes. Practically everyone in the film is upper class, except for the policemen, who are (sort of, lovingly) portrayed as unintelligible. I doubt that Woody would use something as significant as Crime and Punishment for "throwaway lines".

I think you should watch the film again if you don't think Allen portrayed some of the upper class as pretentious and mostly vapid.

I also think you might be missing something about the upper class. You are aware of the difference between land owners and everyone else, right? There are landowners and there are everyone else. Our two main characters are clearly not upper class, nor is the woman who was killed. Nor was much of the people in the office. But frankly that doesn't even matter that much.