Maps to the Stars (2014) - Cronenberg fries Hollywood to a crisp

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Stylized, shadowy and ominous, star faces make up this smouldering poster for David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars

 

A young woman lands in Los Angeles and befriends a driver. She becomes a personal assistant for a female star, who is hunting a role that her abusive mother once played, while the girl's local new family fears for her.

 

Maps to the Stars is written by Bruce Wagner (Young Lust (1984)) and directed by great Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg (Crimes of the Future (1970)).

Cronenberg's best film since Eastern Promises (2007), the film is an icy cold portrait of Hollywood, which comes across as an incestuous temple of falsity, cynicism, a vacuum of values, of shameless egocentricity, vanity and abuse. To call the film satirical or a comedy even is misleading, because it doesn't bring about laughter. But it is compelling, not least for us who are fascinated by Tinseltown.

A formidable cast helps it along: Julianne Moore (Marie & Bruce (2004)) is fearless and gives the film its integrity; Olivia Williams (Now Is Good (2012)) and John Cusack (Cell (2016)) are strong as awful parents; Mia Wasikowska (Tracks (2013)) is intriguing and flawless as their returned daughter; and Evan Bird (The Killing (2011-12)) is striking and chilling as their morally ruined 13 year-old celebrity son.

It is impossible to watch Maps to the Stars without wondering if this is how the stars behave between appearances? SPOILER The story culminates extremely, - Moore is beaten to death with a statue; Williams self-immolates, - and amorally; two youths commit suicide together while reciting poetry. The very dark Maps to the Stars is a well-made drama regardless.

 

Related posts:

David Cronenberg: Top 10: Best Hollywood-set movies

Cosmopolis (2012) - Cronenberg/DeLillo/Pattinson's speculative limo lullaby
A Dangerous Method (2011) - Cronenberg's rather disappointing waltz with the fathers of modern psychology 

2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II] 
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2007 in films - according to Film Excess Eastern Promises (2007) - Cronenberg invites us to meet the Russian mob in London

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 
A History of Violence (2005) or, Who Is Tom Stall? 
Spider (2002) - Cronenberg takes us to the tormented (and slightly dull) mind of a schizophrenic 
Existenz/eXistenZ (1999) - Cronenberg's 1990s-flavored VR nonsense
Dead Ringers (1988) or, Brothers and Their Instruments 

The Fly (1986) - Cronenberg's gory, entertaining treatise on sickness, decomposition - and transformation 
The Dead Zone (1983) - Eerie sci-fi/horror King-adaptation
The Brood (1979) or, Marital Fury and Craze!   

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 13 mil. $

Box office: 4.5 mil. $

= Mega-flop (returned 0.34 times its cost)

[Maps to the Stars premiered 19 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 112 minutes. Wagner wrote the novel Dead Stars (2012) based on his script, while the film was stuck in development for 6 years. Viggo Mortensen and Rachel Weisz were initially meant to act in it. Shooting took place from July - August 2013 in California, including Los Angeles, and in Ontario. It was Cronenberg's first time shooting in the US. The film opened #32 to a 143k $ first weekend in 66 theaters in North America, where it never widened and only grossed 350k $ (7.8 % of the total gross). The film's 3 biggest markets were France with 1.6 mil. $ (35.6 %), the UK with 599k $ (13.3 %) and Italy with 508k $ (11.3 %). The film was nominated for a Golden Globe and won 2 prizes in Cannes, among other honors. Cronenberg returned with Consumed (2014, short), a video to advertise his debut novel of the same title, but has otherwise retired from films upon finding financing them having become too difficult. Moore returned in Still Alice (2014); Wasikowska in Madame Bovary (2014); and Cusack in Drive Hard (2014). Maps to the Stars is fresh at 61 % with a 6.37/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Maps to the Stars?

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood/Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) - Tarantino gets lost in Hollywood

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+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year 

Major stars and exotic, palm tree-laced Hollywood lures from this irresistible poster for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

  
Hollywood, 1969: Western TV-show veteran Rick Dalton is an alcoholic struggling to stay relevant, and with the help of his loyal stuntman friend Cliff, he takes up an Italian venture, while new neighbors come with trouble...

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is actually the 11th feature from Tennessean master writer/director Quentin Tarantino (My Best Friend's Birthday (1987)), - although it is marketed as his 9th), perhaps because he has stipulated that he will only make 10, and that he isn't quite done yet. (It can come to 9 if you don't count his first, little-seen debut My Best Friend's Birthday and also count his Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 as one film, which is obviously untrue.)
The film arrives with high hopes, not least because it teams up two of the world's biggest stars; Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York (2002)), who previously starred in Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), and Brad Pitt (Johnny Suede (1991)), who joins a Tarantino film for the first time here. But also because it is a Hollywood-themed movie, which seems appropriate for self-professed movie maniac and pop culture reference artist par excellence Tarantino.
And yet Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a massive disappointment.
The film entertains, - and anything less would have been wildly scandalous, - but it does so leaving a bitter aftertaste, before it ends in a climax that is ludicrous to put it mildly.
While Tarantino's style and humor was refreshing early in his career, - especially so in the uninhibited and brilliant Pulp Fiction (1994), - it is here stale and old-fashioned: Some of the film's comedy is witnessing DiCaprio's pathetic protagonist describe Mexican girls as 'chili peppers' and 'hot tamales'; another rests on Pitt's character having murdered his wife and gotten away with it. This doesn't mean that the film reveals a misogynistic or racist filmmaker, necessarily, but there's so much more of it: A fetishized child actor (played by 10 year-old Julia Butters (13 Hours (2016))), martial arts legend Bruce Lee getting slanderously poured down the drain in another scene that depicts him as a ridiculous, whimsical braggadocio; and then there's the film's third and last starring actor, Margot Robbie (About Time (2013)), who is treated to a third 'lead' part here (portraying ill-fated actress Sharon Tate) that involves her just being wonderful, pregnant, and not speaking.
Tarantino has been criticized for at least two of these things, and this film is one case where such criticism actually hits a sore point. Because this under-use of Robbie's talents is peculiar.
The film has no central narrative; it consists mostly of Dalton and Cliff's moseying around Hollywood (and Rome); and it is long. Pitt is what works best in it as the laid back, manly Cliff. SPOILER One scene has him pick up an underage girl hitchhiker, who brazenly asks him for sex in the car minutes later. The scene seems a clear reference to Sharon Tate's husband, master filmmaker Roman Polanski's later felony of engaging in sex with a 13 year-old girl in Los Angeles, which gave him a short prison sentence, and whose further consequences led him to flee the US for Europe. The scene has Pitt admirably adamant in his refusing the girl's advances; yet she is also so natural, alluring and forwardly sexual that it implicitly seems to inject that underage girls are also sometimes really after an older man sexually. (But as the Polanski case was a 13 year-old, and this 'girl' here is just about a woman, it shows a mature response while visually condoning Polanski, whom Tarantino has also defended for his misdeed without inhibition in the past.) Plenty of audiences will miss this and many other more or less pregnant references in the film, as every one who isn't a Hollywood and movie aficionado will, and as this review shows, it may be for the better, though it also robs them of the opportunity to really evaluate the film.
SPOILER The following scenes at the Spahn ranch, where Charles Manson's 'family' had found a home under the lonely, unknowing roofs of blind ranch-owner George Spahn (Bruce Dern (Nebraska (2013))), seem to be Tarantino's rejection of Communism (as practiced by the Mansonite hippies), this as experienced by the sure-footed stand-up guy of Pitt's Cliff. A curious side-note it that radically left-wing Lena Dunham (Girls (2012-17)) for some strange reason cameos as one of the hippies.
The film may have been salvaged by the right ending, but the ending is its worst part:
SPOILER Tarantino more or less repeats what he did in Inglourious Basterds (2009), when he had Diane Krueger kill Hitler, Goebbels and a cinema jam-packed with other Nazi scum in its maverick, ahistoric ending. In this case DiCaprio and Pitt kill the three Manson family loons who go to their house instead of the one next door, (where the real massacre took place, the killing of 8½ months pregnant Tate and 4 other people), and do so in a seemingly violent mayhem of glee at the Tarantino's rectifying another historic wrong. Yet this one is somehow "too close to home" and just wrong.
It comes off as an immature and bizarre ending to a detailed and entertaining but lethargic serving from a filmmaker who is way past his own heyday and doesn't know it, or doesn't care.

Related posts:

Quentin Tarantino:  2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2019 in films - according to Film Excess
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Django Unchained (2012) - Tarantino's gutsy, colorful 'Southern' 
Inglourious Basterds (2009) - The Movies take revenge on Nazi scum
2007 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
Death Proof (2007) - Tarantino's awesome, rubber-burning Grindhouse homage 
From Dusk till Dawn (1996) - Tarantino, Rodriguez and chums' enjoyable Mexico vampire extravaganza (writer-star)
Desperado (1995) - Rodriguez' second Mexico actioner is a sexy, latino fireball (actor) 
Four Rooms (1995) - Rodriguez, Tarantino & Co. fail with LA hotel anthology comedy (co-director)

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 95 mil. $
Box office: 244.2 mil. $ and counting
= Box office success (has currently returned 2.57 times its cost)
[Once Upon a Time in Hollywood premiered 21 May (Cannes Film Festival, France, in competition) and runs 161 minutes. It is Tarantino's first major feature made without the involvement of The Weinstein Company, as Tarantino's backed away from them following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, which began rolling in October 2017. He instead made an impressive deal with Sony, which included them distributing and he receiving final cut privilege, a 95 mil. $ budget, 25 % first-dollar gross, - a rare and very lucrative deal for the filmmaker, - as well as getting the film rights after 10 to 20 years. DiCaprio and Pitt were both paid 10 mil. $ for their performances. Shooting took place in California, including Los Angeles, from June - November 2018. A reported, huge 110 mil. $ were spent to market the film; with this and Tarantino's extraordinary deal in mind, estimates say that the film needs to pass 400 mil. $ to start being profitable theatrically. It opened #2, behind holdover hit The Lion King, to a 41 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 2 weeks in the top 5 (#3-#5) and has grossed 126.6 mil. $ to date. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets to date are Russia with 15.8 mil. $ and the UK with 15.4 mil. $. The film is listed as a US/UK/Chinese co-production, but it doesn't look like it will get a Chinese release, (it has come out in Hong Kong and Taiwan though.) It has one scheduled market left to open in: Italy on 18 September. The film won a dog award in Cannes and is guaranteed to have been forgotten by Oscar time. But IMDb's users have voted into #232 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Swades (2004) and PK (2014). Tarantino want to make a Star Trek movie as his 10th and last feature,  - but let's see. DiCaprio returns in either gangster drama The Black Hand or crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon; Pitt returns in Ad Astra (2019); Robbie in Bombshell (2019). Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7.81/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?

Amy (2015) - Kapadia's Amy Winehouse doc. is a magnificent heartbreaker

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Amy Winehouse on the poster for Asif Kapadia's Amy

Amy is, without question, the most talked about and hottest documentary of the year so far.

Amy Winehouse is just a big girl with family and mental issues and a very rare musical and vocal gift, when she makes her first album, which sets her on a course that ultimately costs her her life about 8 years later.

Subject Amy Winehouse touched a lot of people with her candid, self-written songs and confident, throw-back soul and jazz beats, when she debuted with Frank (2003), and hit the mainstream with Back to Black (2006), her second and final album.
Amy is directed by English director Asif Kapadia (Senna (2010)), who presents her story chronologically, using a mix of private videos, - Winehouse and her friends shot lots of videos throughout the years, which come to great use here, - media output from her performances, interviews and public sightings.
Amy breaks your heart.
It is the story of a very troubled young woman, whose problems persist and build, as none of the people around her take them serious enough. Basically Amy reveals that Amy Winehouse was mentally ill for all the years that we, the public, knew her. That she should have been cared for long before she began to be. And that the pressures and volatility of the monstrous media machine that goes along with a career as a music phenomenon helped to crush a great talent.
Kapadia's biggest achievement may be that he gathered all the material for the film and attained all the necessary clearances and participations of Winehouse's nearest family and friends, who must surely have been agonizing to deal with for months on end. Another stroke of genius, I think, is that he does not use any talking heads, but just lets the subjects tell their stories about Winehouse (with ample title cards, so we know who's talking), while video footage keep playing. This allows her to stay the focus of the film, and bars it from delving into being principally about her surroundings. Amy lets us enjoy Winehouse's singing and her incredible songs, which we gain an insight into that we didn't previously possess, if we didn't know intimate details of her life, relationships and mentality. This makes her songs more heartbreaking than they otherwise were. - I for one will have to wait a long period to hear her songs again simply for this reason.
As the film begins its slow movement towards the abyss that is Winehouse's early demise, one can't withstand an urge to look for the guilty ones. Sure, Winehouse made her own choices to some degree, and brought herself down, but she was 'helped' by especially two repugnant figures that couldn't have been closer to her than they were: Her father, absent and self-admittedly a "coward" in her childhood, who (unsurprisingly) doesn't attain great fatherhood skills as his daughter walks on the edge as a drug-addicted money-machine. (Father Mitch has, naturally, attacked the film, and called it "preposterous", "misleading" etc. - with no real result.) - And Winehouse's numbskulled boyfriend and later husband Blake, who is the one to introduce his weak-minded, obsessing girlfriend to crack-cocaine and heroine and milk her for money for his own addiction and gross lifestyle.
Thirdly the tabloid medias that made Winehouse's life a surreal and circus-like encampment share some blame, and during some of the many clips of paparazzi madness in Amy, I pondered to myself what kind of people these disgustingly immoral vultures really consider themselves to be.
It is dubious if the culture has changed or learned anything from the case of Amy Winehouse, - aside from having been given some first class songs. But perhaps Amy can sum up some of the dangers of the business for coming artists, promoters and managers who should take much better care of young stars than was the case here. - Bulimia, depression and other mental illnesses are not to be slighted, especially not in a young person!
Amy also serves as a stand-out portrait of one of the clearest (and, regrettably, most short-lived) shooting stars of the 21st century as well as a harrowing depiction of the bottomless darkness that is addiction. - Take your teenage kid to it, if you want to teach him/her a serious lesson about these issues.
Amy left me short of breath and devastated. It is one of those masterpieces that's hard to recover from for a long while, and which I might never see again, simply because of its despairing power.

Related posts:

2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

Top 10: Best drug-themed movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2015 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch the strong trailer for the film here

Cost: 2.3-3.1 mil. $
Box office: 14.3 mil. $ and counting
= Big hit
[Amy has taken the world by storm, in documentary-scope: After screenings in Cannes and the Edinburgh Film Festival, it has received ecstatic reviews everywhere and attained the highest-grossing opening weekend for a documentary to date in Winehouse's native England, where it made 519k £ in its first three days. To date, it has made more than 5 mil. $ in the UK and nearly 7 mil. $ in North America. Kapadia looks like a filmmaker to look out for; he is already in post production with his next project at the moment, drama feature Ali and Nino (2015).]

What do you think of Amy?
Please, share your thoughts on the review, if you've seen the film

The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie

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An original, virile poster for Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

QUICK REVIEW:

Fame catches up with Detective Harry Callahan of the SFPD, who gets a new, Asian martial arts expert partner and a new assignment: A celebrity-killing serial killer maniac.

Dead Pool is a highly entertaining, appealingly compact sequel, (at just 91 minutes it is both the crime action movie series' last and shortest entry). 
It is definitely better than the first of the four sequels, the series' most commercially successful film, Magnum Force (1973). - Because the 80s truly shine through, and also because the film presents an imaginative story with some fun characters: Jim Carrey (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)) as a heroin junkie rock star; Liam Neeson (Schindler's List (1993)) as an a-hole movie director, and Patricia Clarkson (Six Feet Under (2002-05)) as a sweet blond. - And Guns N' Roses cameos in the film.
Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry (1971)), the center of it all, is in physical top shape here, where he SPOILER ultimately gets to harpoon the villain!
The Dead Pool is written by Steve Sharon, based on a story by him, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw (Firefox (1982), scientific advisors, both), and directed by stunt man and stunt coordinator on more than 100 films Buddy Van Horn, who also directed three: Besides Dead Pool, the other two are also Eastwood vehicles; Any Which Way You Can (1980) and Pink Cadillac (1989).

Relate review:

Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life 
Buddy Van Horn: Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business!

A young Patricia Clarkson in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

An equally young Jim Carrey also in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

A flying car --- a trick that never grows old --- in Buddy Van Horn's The Dead Pool

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 31 mil. $
Box office: 37.9 mil. $ (US only)
= Uncertainty
[Without international figures, it is not possible to tell if Dead Pool made a profit. It seems likely it just broke even theatrically or perhaps even incurred a minor loss.]

What do you think of The Dead Pool?
And the other four Dirty Harry movies?

Birdman (2014) - Iñárritu's clever, but cold showbusiness dramedy

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Michael Keaton hovers over a side-street to Broadway in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Birdman

Birdman is the 5th feature by Mexican master director Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel (2006)). With it, he has taken a leap out of his usual niche, globalization-themed, fateful, powerful dramas, into something described as a dark comedy, but is more accurately a satirical dramedy (drama-comedy.)

Riggan is a Hollywood actor, who is trying to make a professional come-back by adapting, starring in and directing a Raymond Carver play on Broadway.

Michael Keaton (Beetlejuice (1988)) is a very hot ticket for his first Oscar for his performance as Riggan, (the title Birdman, who appears several times as the actor's alter ego/personified illusions of grandeur, is played by Benjamin Kanes (Piranha Sharks (2014)).) Although I personally like some of Keaton's other performances and films more, he gives it his all here. It just didn't get to me much, but I don't think it's his fault at all.
Zach Galifianakis (Due Date (2010)) has an unusually serious role here and does well with it. Emma Stone (The Help (2011)), who also, as a definite result of a streak of over-applause by the Academy, is nominated for her work in Birdman, plays Riggan's aggravating daughter. Finally, Edward Norton (Fight Club (1999)) riffs on his own image as a difficult primadonna as Riggan's new, difficult co-star.

Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in one of the funniest scenes in Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's Birdman

The details:

- There's quite a few laughs in the film, though they are, like the film as a whole, mostly cerebral, society-bashing, show-business-riffing cleverness, which never reached me at a gut level. That was a general problem for Birdman. Normally, this isn't for a comedy, because most comedies don't need you dramatically involved on a gut-level, but Iñárritu's fierce, dramatic ambitions of almost endless intensity throughout does beckon that we are transferred into Riggan's world on a gut-level. - Which he has accomplished better previously, most accomplished in Babel, but also in the great films 21 Grams (2003) and Biutiful (2010).
Birdman is accompanied by an experimental jazz score, and the film is presented as one uninterrupted long take, (the work of Mexican sorcerer/cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity (2013)), - also likely to win his then second Oscar for his work in Birdman. It is clear that Iñárritu was going for an eclectic, New York-pulsating, vivid, wild, urban feel with these choices, as with the slightly pompous opening titles and quote. It all made me and many other audiences have sweaty hand palms and arm pits for large portions of the film. Its style almost denies you being comfortable.
I, personally, had some difficulty with some of the other female characters in Riggan's life, (minus also Naomi Watts (21 Grams): Telling them apart and remembering their places in his life seemed to me to have been made unnecessarily convoluted.
Birdman is undeniably clever, - maybe a bit too much so for my taste. Although I did enjoy it, it left my system quickly afterwards, unlike the director's better films, and I must say that I am hoping for something more from Iñárritu's coming western The Revenant (2015).
Just about everyone are raving about 9 time (!) Oscar-nominated Birdman right now, - not few of them, I suspect, because they feel obligated to follow the crowds and do so.

Related reviews:

Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu:  Biutiful (2010) - Sad globalization stories from Iñárritu
Babel (2006) or, Everyone's Connnected  
21 Grams (2003) or, Hardcore Life
Amores Perros/Love Is a Bitch (2000) or, People = Bad, Dogs = Good

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 18-22 mil. $
Box office: 42.4 mil. $ (and counting)
= Too early to say (still in cinemas in many countries, and many premieres still pending)

What do you think of Birdman?

Antiviral (2012) - B. Cronenberg debuts with name-loyal, unpleasant, tedious gross-out

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A bloody mouth providing marketing for Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral

In the near future, a company exists that offers celebrities' diseases for purchase to ordinary people. Our hero secretly smuggles viruses out from the clinic in his own body, but in doing so now contracts a mortal illness.

Antiviral plays out in clinically sterile sets and has a fascinatingly beautiful lead in Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class (2011)), who gets transformed into something hideous during the film. - Brandon Cronenberg (Broken Tulips (2008) short), whose feature film debut this is, seems, however, obsessed with Jones and continually explores him in tediously long shots without anything dramatic happening.
Antiviral's big problem is that it fairly quickly becomes an extremely laborious and unpleasant film. Cronenberg's dislike of giving expositional information makes us as audiences fumble around in darkness with his permanently sick, unsympathetic and disgusting characters. Unsurprisingly, Cronenberg thought this serving up while "in a fever dream during a bout of illness." And on top of this, it seems that he has a sickly fetish for bodily fluids. Should this for some reason tease you, Antiviral may be just what you've been looking for.
Cronenberg is the son of great Canadian director David Cronenberg (Maps to the Stars (2014)), and Antiviral seems almost overly virtuous to the family name in that it seems like it might have been made by his father, had he been a young man today. But, perhaps, before slashing Brandon Cronenberg for not rebelling against his heavy heritage here, we should remember that David Cronenberg also started his later illustrious film career with some pretty soggy flicks like Shivers (1975).

Related post:

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Lead Caleb Landry Jones in a typical moment of his from Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral

 Watch the trailer here

Cost: 3.3 mil. Can. $
Box office: 0.06 mil. $
= Mega-flop
[Despite competing in Cannes' Un Certain Regard-section and being shown in Toronto International Film Festival, and winning Best Canadian First Feature Film award at the Canadian Film Awards, (co-winning (...) with Jason Buxton's Blackbird), Antiviral has gotten lukewarm reviews and has bombed severely financially. Brandon Cronenberg clearly has his work cut out for him in finding finance for his next film.]

What do you think of Antiviral?
Do you want to see another film by Brandon Cronenberg?
If so, what do you think he should tackle next?

To Rome With Love (2012) - Woody Allen's slightest film to date

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Stars on the poster of Woody Allen's To Rome With Love

Americans in Rome fall for the wrong people; Italians in Rome fall for the wrong people.
Everything is wholly gaga in Rome, which initially serves laughter here and there, but after roughly 45 minutes, it is clear that the film has nothing left to offer.
Alec Baldwin has a bizarre character, who just follows Jesse Eisenberg around without really being there, (the film is described as magical realism, but it never succeeds with anything resembling 'real' magic, unfortunately.)
A few other actors charm accidentally, Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha (2012)) mostly. Penélope Cruz has been made into a tawdry tramp here, which is a little hard to take. Judy Greer (Deconstructing Harry (1997)) is OK but doesn't compare to great writer-director Woody Allen's (Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)) earlier, charming, full-bodied female characters.
Allen also plays in the film, battling a young, local rough-neck communist. Rome is a hired, rushed job full of compromises and left-hand work. It is an almost completely ludicrous movie, and probably the weakest that Allen has ever completed.
Allen is at the moment finishing his Magic in the Moonlight (2014) and preparing his next film, as is the prodigious master's modus operandi.  

Related posts:

Woody Allen: 2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V] 

2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2012 in films - according to Film Excess  
Anything Else (2003) - Perfect contemporary relationship comedy
Celebrity (1998) or, Beautiful Celebrities Talk About Sex (guest review)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) or, Keep your Heart
Annie Hall (1977) or, My Relationship With Alvie Singer 

Allen wanted to call the film Bop Decameron, then Nero Fiddles, but was eventually forced to accept the title (which he reportedly hates); To Rome With Love

Here's the trailer for the film

Budget: Est. 17 mil. euros, equal to approximately 18.37 mil. $
Box office: 73.2 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of To Rome With Love?
Do you agree that it is Woody Allen's poorest film to date?