It's a marvellously entertaining fantasy in which a dead journalist comes back long enough to identify the identity of 'The Tarot Killer' - to student Scarlett Johannsson and amateur magician 'The Great Splendini' Woody Allen. He must have enjoyed filming Match Point here (made the year before).
It did make me ponder that murderers feature quite prominently in his films - Manhattan Murder Mystery, Shadows and Fog, Cassandra's Dream, Match Point, Irrational Man, Café Society...
You wonder if part of Alisa's contribution is to the construction. For example, here we go from McShane on the side of the Death boat to quite a lot of action occurring in Life, then back to McShane in the same moment jumping over the side; and there's another moment of played-with time when Scarlett's searching the music room, and Jackman wakes up, realising she's not there, then back to her, and back to him.. and then she just turns up in the bedroom. I'm not complaining, just noticing.
I like the undercutting of sentiment when Allen tells her she's the daughter he never had, and then says 'Just joking - I never wanted to have children'. And lines like 'Land is so difficult to come by, especially outdoors'.
Photographed by Remi Adefarasin. The original cut was two hours fourteen minutes, if you can believe that. A hit - made almost $40m. The music's all classical.
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