Café Society (2016)

CAFÉ SOCIETY  (2016)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Woody Allen
    Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, 
    Blake Lively, Corey Stoll, Parker Posey,
    Jeannie Berlin, Ken Stott, Sheryl Lee
This is a Woody Allen movie that doesn't seem to be about very much till the very end, when you realize that maybe it is. You've seen the characters in Woody movies before. The bright, caustic, Jewish dweeb (Jesse Eisenberg), a New Yorker looking for some sort of work in Hollywood. The smart young woman (Kristen Stewart) who wears little-girl outfits and falls for a slimy older man (Steve Carell), just like Emma Stone and Colin Firth in "Magic In the Moonlight". The wealthy sophisticates. The working-class family back in New York. The brass-knuckles gangster (Corey Stoll) who can make people disappear for good. It's set in the 1930s (Woody's favorite time frame) and Vittorio Storaro bathes Santo Loquasto's beautiful sets in a nostalgic golden glow. Every character is handy with a quip, and the approach to fidelity is casual. It's like that right up to its wistful conclusion, when it occurs to you that the old man doing the voiceover narration (Woody) has something to say, after all: the notion that we all have to live with our decisions, no matter how impulsive or misguided. And something more: that it's not just the choices we make, it's the timing of them that makes all the difference in the world.