WOODY WEDNESDAY Ranking Woody Allen’s 47 movies!!!! Part 15

The Best & The Rest: Every Woody Allen Film Ranked

This week, Woody Allen‘s 2016 title (for as we all know, there’s one each year), “Cafe Society,” starring Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Steve Carell, Corey Stoll, Blake Lively and Anna Camp, opens after a warm reception as the opening film at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. You can read our take from Cannes here, or hang on to scroll through and see where it lands on the list below, but we thought this would be a good time to gussy up our previous sprawling two-part Allen retrospective, and because we’ve been a little harmonious around here of late and miss the sounds of sobbing and breaking crockery, to rank it.

READ MORE: The Best And The Rest: Every Stanley Kubrick Ranked

Weathering personal scandal and coming in and out of fashion like flares, Allen’s been at constant work as a director for five decades now, and “Cafe Society” marks his 47th theatrically-released feature. Which means we have a lot to get through, so let’s get straight to it, shall we? Here, ranked worst to best, are all of Woody Allen’s theatrical features —with any list this long, there’s bound to be massive disagreement, so remember, the comments section awaits your ire. Or your congratulations, on the slim chance you agree with all of it.

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Sleeper (Woody Allen, 1973) – Instant Pudding – The Orb [sub. español]

10. “Sleeper” (1973)
Of all the people to be unfrozen 200 years in the future by the rebel underground, scientists unearth the pod containing neurotic jazz-musician/health-store owner Miles Monroe (Allen). With the country ruled by a despot, Miles must infiltrate the government’s uber-secret “Ares Project,” with the help of reluctant hippie poet Luna (Diane Keaton), who eventually turns to the underground cause. Parodying every popular sci-fi trope of the time (a very HAL-like all-seeing computer, for example) and pulling heavily from the works of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin (especially in the robot butler sequence) “Sleeper” is utterly charming fun, that also makes time for a little social critique, like the impermanence of scientific “fact” (a dialogue between two people reveals that fatty, greasy foods and cigarettes are actually extremely healthy) and the modern world’s erosion of intimacy (the brilliant “Orgasmatron”). But though it’s surprisingly trenchant in some of its observations, in the main, it’s blissfully silly fun, building to a cloning scene which might be the most joyous example of extended Keaton/Allen chemistry and tomfoolery he ever filmed.

9. “Sweet and Lowdown” (1999)
Though Allen has missed the mark as often as he’s hit it in his mid-to-later periods, this film is a shining example of everything the writer/director can do right when he’s firing on all cylinders. He gets revelatory, surprising, Oscar-nominated performances out of Sean Penn, as narcissistic fictional guitar player Emmet Ray (transparently based on the legendary Django Reinhardt), and Samantha Morton as mute, adorable Hattie, Emmet’s lover. He uses a faux documentary style, despite the authentic and textured period details, to augment the grandeur of Ray’s life and artistry, with smart dialogue that is quippy and fun highlighting one of the best scripts he’s ever written in terms of balancing dramatic and comedic moments. Moreover, Allen is a lifelong lover and performer of jazz, and this is one of his biggest love letters to the tunes, myths and larger-than-life personalities that populate the genre. As such it is as fundamental to Allen’s personal filmmaking style as the New York City of “Manhattan” or the May-December romance of “[insert title here.]”

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