5 Awesome Woody Allen Movies and 5 That Sucked

...and 5 That Sucked.

5. Cassandra's Dream (2007)

Cassandra's Dream was part of Allen's brief dalliance with the UK in the mid-2000s, but remains one of his least-memorable outings, despite starring the likes of Tom Wilkinson, Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor, who give their all even though a lacklustre Allen script doesn't know what it wants to be. Unfortunately, like a lot of Allen's recent films, Cassandra's Dream essentially feels like a patchwork of the auteur's core themes. We've got a murder mystery, but without any of the sly, subversive humour that made his past films a hit, and the attempt to establish a morally ambiguous line of villainy feels completely lifted from Allen's own Match Point from two years previous. The obvious philosophy, the contrivance of the premise, and the fact that it feels absolutely like a director just coasting on his own laurels are all equally depressing; while it's great to see Allen working so much, it's not necessarily worth him bothering if it's going to be as dispassionate and hurried as this.