Jose here. Words can not describe how much I loved Midnight in Paris (and I mean it -- after having seen it three times in six days, I still haven't finished my review!) and today you lucky people in North America can have the privilege of watching it on the big screen again!
As part of what might be the year's kickstart to Oscar campaign season, the film is being re-released in the United States in order to take advantage of the word of mouth that has made the film perhaps the most beloved movie so far this year. It's also Woody Allen's biggest moneymaker and I kid you not, I've yet to attend a screening of it that isn't completely packed. People down here even applaud and cheer when the film ends!
In order to celebrate its re-release and to urge you to go see it in a movie theater (Blu-ray will not make justice to the warmth and magic that it exudes on the big screen) I'll go ahead and share what might be my favorite thing about it.
I don't know where Corey Stoll came from and what he did before, but he's perfect as a young, fiery Ernest Hemingway in the movie. He might give the film's most underrated performance but my favorite thing isn't how he possesses the exuberant allure of the iconic writer, but how every single actor in the film take Woody's words and make them their own.
No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
Like his actors, Allen too makes famous literary voices his own, the way in which he crafts words that sound both familiar and strangely "normal" and feeds them to his characters is altogether more surprising because instead of feeling like a total intellectual snobbery fest, the film is charming ebcause of its desire to share with us and invite us to become more familiar with these artists.
Midnight in Paris might have the Woodsman's most enchanting writing since the 80s and like The Purple Rose of Cairo and Manhattan before it, manages to turn the ordinary into pure poetic joy.
Anyway, before my love for it gets too out of control, I ask you: what was your favorite thing about Midnight in Paris?