Midnight in Paris [Blu-ray]

Enchanting
Best Woody Allen film in many years. I'm a big fan of Allen, and enjoy all his work, but this movie is a return to his sublime magic with films like Manhattan, Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters. And in fact, may be a bit better, or perhaps just very different but equally captivating. Owen Wilson turns in a great performance, as does the entire cast. I found myself swooning during the film, actually falling in love with it as it unfolded on the screen. Lovely surprise. I'm buying this as soon as it is released. It's a keeper.

One of Woody's most charming films.
"Midnight in Paris" is one of Woody Allen's enchanting forays into cinematic fantasy. While it isn't quite up to the fantasies Allen made in the 1980s ("Zelig," "The Purple Rose of Cairo"), it merits a solid four-and-a-half stars, and I'm happy to kick in the extra half-star to give it the highest rating.

"Midnight in Paris" is the story of Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter dissatisfied with his career, visiting Paris with his snippy fiancee (Rachel McAdams) and her dreadful parents (Kurt Fuller, Mimi Kennedy). One night, wandering alone through the Rive Gauche, he sees an ancient Peugeot limousine; the passengers stop and invite him in. This is Gil's entry into the Paris of his dreams--the Paris of the Twenties, in which Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody), Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (Alison Pill, Tom Hiddleston) and others cavort in a magical city of abundant promise and possibility. There is even more...

It Glows! Lliterally.
"All men fear death. It's a natural fear that consumes us all," says a character in "Midnight in Paris"... "However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears."

Paris is her name. She has seduced writers for centuries, and in "Midnight in Paris" writer/director Woody Allen makes love to her with his camera, in the most poetic of ways.

Or perhaps he's referring to art, to achieving such intimacy with your craft and such artistic climax that you become immortal, like Hemingway, Matisse, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Dali, or Allen himself.

Gil Pender, the protagonist in Allen's new film, has never experienced that kind of artistic height. Played quite convincingly by Owen Wilson (in a surprising and refreshing role that Allen had to re-write for him), Gil is an aspiring novelist who is visiting Paris with his girlfriend...

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