Stardust Memories
Director: Woody Allen
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 1.5
Every review of this film mentions how this is Allen's 8½, but another reference point is Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and how comedy director Sullivan wanted to make 'legitimate movies' - mainly ones that are serious in tone (only to realize, at the end, that comedy is a magical elixir). But this movie literally folds in on itself: if Allen's 'ordinary' films are self-absorbed, this one's self-absorbed with its own self-absorption, and the tone is one of anger and frustration while Fellini's was about, well, 'filmmaker's block' and the struggle with creativity (Woody just gripes a lot). The making of it seems almost unnecessary since his other 'legitimate' movies are really about him and more or less accomplish the same thing - I can take Woody complaining about life, women and the Cossacks, but Woody complaining about Woody is too much.
