The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

(From left to right) Woody Allen, David Ogden Stiers
and Helen Hunt in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."

Now seems like the perfect time to revisit writer/director Woody Allen’s “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.” This year marks the 15th anniversary of the picture’s 2001 release, and it’s currently available to stream over the Netflix platform. More interestingly, the film has gained a somewhat dubious reputation in large part because Allen himself has labeled it as ‘perhaps his worst movie,’ making it certainly worthy of another look.

The film takes place in 1940 and features Allen as C.W. Briggs, a longtime insurance investigator whose messy workspace at his sprawling New York office is overhauled, much to his displeasure, by a new hotshot efficiency expert, Betty Ann Fitzgerald (a splendidly acerbic and funny Helen Hunt), whose modern way of doing things conflicts with his antiquated methods.

The two characters immediately loathe one another, and conversations are highlighted by a heavy dose of sarcastic quips and barbs leveled back and forth like tennis volleys. “Who do you think I am,” Fitzgerald exclaims during their first meeting, “some peroxide little stenographer with her brains in her sweater whose rear end you pinch?”

“Pinch it? I couldn’t get my arms around it,” Briggs fires back, Groucho Marx-style. For her part, she peppers him with a barrage of insults (roach, inchworm, mouse, weasel) demeaning his smallish stature throughout.

The plot twists begin at an employee dinner, where Briggs and Fitzgerald are summoned to the stage by a bizarre magician (David Ogden Stiers) who waves a tiny scorpion pendant in front of their faces and uses a pair of code words (Constantinople and Madagascar) to plunge them into deep hypnosis. Later, the tricky swindler puts Briggs into a trance over the phone, this time using him as a proxy to prowl around town like a zombie plundering expensive jewels.

When the insurance company is forced to examine the case, the clues point back to Briggs. Flummoxed, Briggs finds himself on the run for robberies he committed but has no memory of, with Fitzgerald eventually becoming an unwitting accomplice after hearing the magic word.

Charlize Theron in Woody Allen's funny, underrated
screwball comedy "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."

“Curse of the Jade Scorpion” is a charming, breezy and consistently funny screwball comedy and a playful valentine to film noir. At one point, when acting on a hunch, Briggs credits “the little man that lives inside me,” a line that seems inspired by Edward G. Robinson’s memorable turn as an insurance man who uncovers Fred MacMurray and femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck’s twisted scheme of romance and murder in Billy Wilder’s masterful crime drama “Double Indemnity” (1944).

Allen has said that he believes casting himself as the lead in “Curse” was a mistake, but nothing could be further from the truth. Consider a moment early on, when Briggs is in the midst of an argument with Fitzgerald, demanding that she return some files to his office. “Or what?” she commands.

“Or what?” he asks, awkwardly. “This is the question you…ask me? Or…or what? … Or what? Are you…saying ‘or what’ to me?” The intimidated, halting way that Allen recites these lines— all nervous gestures, turning his head off screen and pausing as if searching for stingers—is ingeniously nuanced and subtly hilarious. Anyone familiar with Woody Allen knows there’s no one else in movies who could act quite this way. It’s one of his funniest performances.

The film isn’t flawless. Dan Aykroyd is interminably dull as the cheating boss whose fling with Fitzgerald fizzles, opening the door for her and Briggs to become an unlikely couple; and Charlize Theron is underused as a slinky, smoky blonde who prefers seducing athletic types but gets Briggs instead.

Still, it’s not nearly enough to compromise this consistently fun and entertaining romp. “My instincts aren’t infallible,” Briggs says near the end. If Allen’s instincts are right about “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” being his worst movie, it clearly means it’s ok to be wrong sometimes.

Lolo (2016)

About two-thirds of the way through “Lolo,” the title character, a struggling, smug young artist still living at home, is having a conversation with his mother’s new boyfriend about their living arrangement. Although mom has already given him the boot, the son attempts to save face by convincing the boyfriend that moving out was his idea. “I need my space,” he says. “We're not gonna play blended families like some dumb American comedy.”

Julie Delpy (center) directed and stars in "Lolo" with
Dany Boon (left) and Vincent Lacoste.

The line is meant to be ironic but falls flat because the movie—a mildly amusing, increasingly tedious French romantic comedy about a 40-year-old divorced mom looking for love while her emotionally needy son still competes for her attention—essentially becomes what it parodies, devolving into familiar clichés instead of discovering something fresh to say.

It’s a shame, considering “Lolo” was directed and co-written by Julie Delpy, who also plays the mom and is the talented, radiant French star of many enduring, intellectually challenging films—from Richard Linklater’s smart, sensitive “Before Sunrise” trilogy; to “White,” the darkly funny and brilliant middle chapter of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s contemplative, masterful Three Colors trilogy.

Delpy does get some pretty good performances from her cast. Dany Boon is endearing as Jean-Rene, the computer geek who falls in love with Delpy’s character, Violette, an exec on the chic Parisian fashion scene; Karin Viard is the sassy Ariane, Violette’s sexually candid best friend; and Vincent Lacoste is effective as Lolo, the duplicitous, clingy son with a sinister, half-realized Oedipus complex.

But the film’s sense of humor is more sophomoric and vulgar than inspired or funny. The ways in which the devious Lolo attempts to sabotage his mother’s relationship with a series of cruel practical jokes leveled at Jean-Rene—spreading itching powder onto his clothes, slipping a tranquilizer into his drink at a party, sending a pair of hookers into his room while he’s sleeping—demonstrate that the infantile comedy here never really rises above sitcom level.

About the only thing the movie proves is that, touché, the French can make dumb American comedies just as well as Americans.

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)

A scene from "Shaun the Sheep Movie," the new animated
movie from the makers of "Wallace & Gromit."

Plunged into a state of ennui from the clockwork daily routine of farm life, an enterprising, slightly mischievous young sheep figures out a way for him and his friends to avoid the farmer’s clippers and get a day off to sit on the couch, watch TV and eat snacks in “Shaun the Sheep Movie,” the delightful, funny and imaginative latest work from Aardman Animations, the wildly talented team out of Bristol, England behind such stop-motion gems as “Wallace & Gromit” (about an absent-minded Brit and his faithful dog) and “Chicken Run” (a cartoon version of “The Great Escape”).

The plan, of course, doesn’t go smoothly. Shaun and the rest of the flock from Mossy Bottom Farm end up sending their owner on a wild ride to the Big City, as it’s called, where he crashes and winds up with a case of amnesia. The sheep travel to retrieve the farmer, but are threatened with capture by a relentless animal control agent, who wants to lock them up in dark, gloomy cells with other stray animals and hilariously wayward pets—menacing dogs, a cat version of Hannibal Lecter, and a melancholy, harmonica-playing goldfish.

Along the way, Shaun is joined by a flurry of quirky, wonderfully distinct characters—all with the big, expressive eyes that are an Aardman trademark. There’s Bitzker, the farmer’s sheepdog, a shepherd with a weakness for bones and a skepticism that suggests Gromit; Slip, a lonely, lovable homeless dog with scraggly features; Timmy, a tiny sheep who looks up to Shaun; and Shirley, a sheep so large that items disappear under her round, cottony coat.

Most strikingly, there is no dialogue in “Shaun the Sheep.” The characters communicate almost entirely through facial expressions and physical gestures. It’s like a stop-motion silent film, with sounds limited to indecipherable murmurs and mumbles, grunts and groans, sighs and sometimes whistles. And since so much depends on the movie functioning in visual terms, its success is a celebration of the storytelling power of imagery and movement.

Much like Wallace & Gromit, which began as a series of short films before inspiring a feature-length movie in 2005, Shaun started small, first with a supporting role in “A Close Shave” in 1995, then as a series in 2007 for British television. The wunderkind behind these worlds is Nick Park, who created the characters and directed the films. This time, Park is signed on as executive producer, turning over the directing reins to fellow Aardman players Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Still, it’s likely Park had plenty of influence on the collective vision. Regardless of who’s at the controls, nowhere else in movies is stop-motion animation done with such consistent beauty, humor and warmth. “Shaun the Sheep Movie” is another splendid example of the Aardman team operating at the peak of their creative powers.

Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

Making 'Magic': Emma Stone and Colin Firth in
Woody Allen's "Magic in the Moonlight."

The magic in Woody Allen’s “Magic in the Moonlight” is meant to be celestial, referring to the seemingly perfect way the stars line up and twinkle in the sky on a clear night. “You think that's menacing?” a character asks while contemplating the vast and mysteriously beautiful cosmos in one such composition. “I think it's pretty romantic.”

Actually, it may have more to do with how the main characters in this slight but charming romantic comedy—in which a famous, insufferably pompous illusionist from upper class Europe falls in love with a naive, dime store clairvoyant from Kalamazoo—manage to be so likable despite being, essentially, a pair of scoundrels.

The movie opens in Berlin in 1929, where Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth) is finishing up another performance as the eminent magician Wei Ling Soo, who stuns audiences with such gimmicks as sawing people in half and vanishing enormous pachyderms. Backstage, in between removing his Chinese regalia and barking criticisms at his subordinates, Stanley greets an old friend and fellow illusionist, the duplicitous Howard Burkin (Simon McBurney), who brings a challenge to debunk a young medium poised to use her mystic powers to swindle a rich widow.

The action shifts to the French Riviera, where a fetching, flamingly red-haired clairvoyant named Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) has set up shop at the posh home of an old matriarch desperate for various assurances about her dearly departed. Stanley arrives, incredulous and curmudgeonly, and immediately begins hurling contemptuous witticisms at Sophie in an effort to discredit her. “My visions are cloudy,” she says at one point. “Are they cumulous clouds or cirrus,” he quips.

But Sophie turns out to be a tough nut to crack, and part of the fun is that the more deep secrets she reveals by gazing into the great unknown with her big eyes, the more the perpetually cynical Stanley—clearly representing the erudite, faithless intellectual that Allen would usually play—begins to believe in all the spiritual hokum he’s been dismissing. Plus, he’s falling in love with her.

One of the pleasures of the film is the way Firth and Stone stir up an unlikely chemistry with a playful mixture of insults, mischief and scandal. It’s an implausible romance that recalls the mismatched leads in some of the venerable screwball comedies of Ernst Lubitsch (“Trouble in Paradise”) and Howard Hawks (“His Girl Friday”). Notable supporting performances include Eileen Atkins as Stanley’s lovable and unapologetically pretentious Aunt Vanessa; and Hamish Linklater as a warbling, ukulele-playing heir hopelessly smitten with Sophie.

Allen’s visuals and signature long takes are radiant. Especially sumptuous are lush scenes of the French countryside near dusk, with the setting sun imbuing everything with a warm, amber glow. Perhaps the best moment, however, takes place when Stanley and Sophie dash into an observatory during a thunderstorm, a scene that echoes Allen and Diane Keaton at the beginning of their romance in “Manhattan.”

And the soundtrack, a proverbial joy in any Allen film, is a gloriously mellifluous valentine to hot jazz greats of the era—the burgeoning Cole Porter and the inimitable Bix Beiderbecke in this case taking center stage. “Magic in the Moonlight” may not be in the upper class of Allen’s oeuvre, but it certainly is fun to watch and a considerable delight to listen to.