the audience applauded

Best movie ever!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Review: After seeing who was starring in this movie, I was really looking forward to it, but once again, Woody Allen's constant babbling and silly humour just didn't work for me. The whole town is scared to leave there homes because there is a serial killer on the lose and they gather together to try and capture him. They form different gangs, who don't get along and all the way through the film, Woody Allen is completely left out of the loop. With such an intense situation, Allen's character is going around spurting out these annoying one liners which gets on everyone's nerves, including mine. On top of that, you've got the squeaky Mia Farrow whose in a troubled relationship and ends up sleeping with Cusack for loads of money. I liked the banter with the prostitutes, played by Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster and Lily Tomlin, but the storyline gets a bit weak after a while. It would have been much better if it was a whodunit because you see who the killer is, way to early in the movie. Anyway, I think it was a waste of a great cast and I personally thought that Allen and Farrow spoilt the movie. Disappointing!Round-Up: I was expecting Madonna to have a big part in this film, after seeing her face all over the poster, but she's only in one scene. You do see a few famous people along the way, like John C. Reilly and William H. Macy, but I doubt that you will notice them. Judging by the box office takings, I wasn't the only one that thought that this movie was a bit weak. Basically, for a suspense thriller, there really wasn't that much suspense or thrilling happening, so it has to get the thumbs down from me.Budget: $14million Domestic Gross: $3million (Terrible!)I recommend this movie to people who are into there Woody Allen movies about a town of people trying to capture a serial killer. 3/10

This so-called comedy is a rethinking of Woody Allen's own short play 'Death' (published in his 1976 collection 'Without Feathers'), transplanted to a weird, Kafka-like Middle European setting and mercilessly padded (at the expense of the humor) to allow room for several high profile guest stars, most of them in roles too small to be noticed. The effect is not unlike a student film parody of a Woody Allen comedy, following a hapless nebbish (who could only have been played by Allen himself) pressed into service by urban vigilantes hunting a shadowy killer. The familiar one-liners and stale meditations on God, sex, and death are all camouflaged behind some beautiful (if hokey) black and white photography, with transparent references to more than one film school idol: Bergman, Murnau, Fellini, and so forth. What's left is the novelty of seeing Kathy Bates playing a prostitute alongside Lilly Tomlin and Jodie Foster, and John Malkovich cast as a circus clown opposite Madonna. It wasn't meant this way, but the casting is the funniest thing about the movie.

Another mid-career Allen film unfairly dismissed both by critics and (I must admit) myself at the time of it's release. Sometimes with great filmmakers, we get spoiled and anything flawed or less than pure genius gets maligned for being weaker than that filmmaker's very best work instead of being appreciated for being miles ahead of most of the films that get made.I was shocked at how much better I liked this on a recent re-viewing almost 20 years after seeing it in the theater. Yes, the super-star cameos still seem a bit distracting and self-serving, but nowhere near as much as in 1992. Yes, some plot elements work better than others, the ending is kind of clunky, etc. But this is still a great-looking, visually dense film, that manages to tread (most of the time) a very difficult tightrope of being funny and playful, while still exploring disturbing themes of paranoia, guilt, crowd mentality, religion, etc. Certainly not a great film, but a brave one more worthy of being enjoyed for it's strengths than attacked for its admitted shortcomings.

"I'm performing an unusual amount of autopsies these days", says the cool, rational doctor played by Donald Pleasence in his laboratory filled with cadavers. "That's probably what accounts for so many of those human fingers laying around, you don't generally see that" replies a frightened Woody Allen in perhaps his most misunderstood film; the abstract, experimental Shadows And Fog.While that might not read like a humorous exchange, believe me, in context it's quite funny.The story for Shadows And Fog is based on Woody Allen's one act play titled Death, published in his 1975 short story collection Without Feathers and takes place in an unnamed city over the course of one foggy night.There is a psychotic killer loose and he's been strangling any citizen unlucky enough to cross his path. He murders with a stunning callousness and so far has left no clue to his identity or motives, which has baffled the authorities and sent the general populace into a frenzy of fear.In their frustration, some have formed a vigilante group with a clever plan to catch this murderer on their own and they have just awoken Kleinman (Woody Allen) from a deep sleep to help them.But, even though he asks numerous times, Kleinman can never get clear instructions on exactly what he is supposed to do to help with the plan. All the other vigilantes seem to know their parts, but Kleinman hasn't a clue about his and no one will tell him.However, as the night rolls on, despite nearly being murdered by the maniac himself, Kleinman will also become the prime suspect hunted by the police and will almost get lynched by the vigilante mob as well. He will also lose his job, his home, his fiancé, his freedom, most of his friends and in a final moment of abject humiliation; he will even lose his ability to perform sexually. And you think you've got troubles!Woody Allen wants to show us how quickly a civilized man can lose everything meaningful in his life through no fault of his own. Did I mention that Shadows And Fog is a comedy? I remember when I first saw this film in 1992, it seemed like I was the only person in the theater laughing. That's mostly because I was the only person in the theater.Aside from the murder angle, there are other subplots mixed in that connect to the main story with varying degrees of success, including a story about a clown and a sword swallower in traveling circus, a lost mother and an abandoned infant, some "undesirables" (read Jewish) getting rounded up to be shipped off to camps and a whorehouse full of lusty women who engage in philosophical discussions with over-educated university students.Yes, Shadows And Fog meanders like someone lost on a foggy night and the film tries to hang too many incidents onto a light narrative frame, but if being overly ambitious is a fault, then it is a good one to have for a movie. Think about all the movies you have seen that didn't try to do anything at all and barely succeeded at that! But if this film were in say German, subtitled in English and directed under a nom de plume, it probably would have gotten the critical praise it deserved instead of the critical silence it received.Stylistically, the look of Shadows And Fog is patterned after old German Expressionist films like The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and M (interestingly, both of them deal with crazed killers who strike at night). But you don't need to understand German Expressionism to understand Shadows And Fog.Whether you like the story or not, the Black and White cinematography by Italian cameraman Carlo Di Palma and the massive city set designed by Allen regular Santo Loquasto deserves praise. This was the largest interior set ever built in New York and they used every inch of the Kaufman Astoria Studios to create this Kafkaesque world. With it's many deceptive levels, perspectivized alleyways, bridges and foggy docks, Shadows And Fog is amazingly good looking and held my visual interest even when I tuned out a bit with some of the sub plots.One of the great glories of Shadows And Fog however, is its cast. Along with Allen and his regulars, Mia Farrow, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Steirs and Julie Kavner, we also have Kathy Bates, Lily Tomlin, Jodie Foster, John Malkovich, Donald Pleasence, Josef Sommer, Kenneth Mars, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, Fred Gwynne, Kurtwood Smith, Robert Joy and in an inspired piece of casting, Madonna plays a slutty circus tramp.Although Woody Allen performs in Shadows And Fog, he still has cast John Cusack in a younger "Woody" surrogate role. But while the older Woody gets the snappy one-liners, John Cusack is saddled with lines asking ontological questions about life and musing aloud about love, sex and death. "What are your views on divine matters?" he has to ask one character.That John Cusack can make these heady lines sound natural says a lot about his talent. Remember what Walter Huston said about the job of an actor; an actor isn't paid to make good dialog sound good, he's paid to make bad dialog sound good.Finally, as a filmmaker, Woody Allen is in that unenviable category of having been so good for so long, he is no longer compared to other filmmakers, but is compared to his own previous great works. On that scale, Shadows And Fog is only mid-level Allen, but mid-level Woody Allen is better than most other directors' best efforts.