Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

New York, 1928. David Shayne is a playwright and his last two movies have bombed. He has a new play and wants to direct it himself. However, he is unable to find a financier for his play until Nick Valenti comes along. Slight problem - Valenti is a mobster, and he now insists that his talentless girlfriend, Olive Neal, get the lead role. Things are about to get very complicated.Written and directed by Woody Allen and here he is in fine form (as he was throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s). Clever and very funny. Biting humour, smart plot and snappy dialogue.Great performances. John Cusack is solid in the lead role but it is the supporting cast who shine. Dianne Wiest got a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her efforts. Chaz Palminteri and Jennifer Tilly got Oscar nominations, for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively.

As Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN Paris (2011, a 6/10) doesn't impress me much and his latest Italian carol TO ROME WITH LOVE (2012) gets horrifying feedbacks, so I fumble around his earlier oeuvre, thanks to his prolific filmography, thus comes BULLETS OVER Broadway (a 7 Oscar nomination receiver in 1994) courtesy of one simple criterion, more often than not, films in which Woody is not starred are much better than in which he is both the director/writer and the actor.I have only watched a handful of Woody's films, but BULLETS OVER Broadway could easily sit in the top row of any years-best list (for me, it just misses my top 10 film in 1994, which is an ultra-competitive year for films, but Cusack, Wiest, Tilly and Palminteri all crack into my top 10 acting rankings). Wiest and Tilly, obtained two Oscar nominations and Wiest was the final winner, who is divinely lofty and my pick as well, she is simply amazing in her delivering of the repetitive "don't speak" lines and the voice warm-up scenes before the final premier. Meanwhile Tilly is plainly acting herself (being slightly amusing and largely annoying), this is an exact example of the disparagement between a bona fide actress and an one-off sensation (Palminteri's Oscar nomination may also belong to be the latter unfortunately), notwithstanding the fact that most acting laborers will never even procure such an opportunity, for instance John Cusack, who is playing Woody Allen in the film and is reliably superb but regrettably snubbed again (after THE GRIFTERS 1990, a 7/10). Speaking of the film, the script has Woody's distinctive bourgeoisie and artist self-mockery in it and the genre mash-up of gangster comedy and a Broadway playwright trapped in his writer's block works adroitly well, although the shooting shots are not Woody's strong suit and the diamond-in-the-rough deployment is over-simplified (maybe there is just no reason beyond it). But on the whole, the witty conversations will always strike a chord if you are an ordinary man with a highbrow heart, and in the final analysis, Diane Wiest alone is worth the time.

This was one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. The only other Woody Allen movie I've seen is "Annie Hall", and I liked this so much more! The reason I wanted to see this movie was because Jennifer Tilly stars in it; furthermore, she was nominated for an Oscar because of her performance in it. In the middle of this crime/comedy, I realized why. I predicted that the mobster would shoot her because she wasn't as good as the understudy in the play that she was forced to be casted in because her boyfriend, the mobster (Joe Viterelli) was funding the production for an aspiring and talented writer who had recently made flops because as he claims "I wasn't able to direct them." This play he was able to direct. It's well-known that actors and actresses who play characters who die in film are more likely to be nominated or to win an Oscar. While Jennifer Tilly played the stupid moll, mobster's girlfriend well, her death should have been the addition that made her win. Unfortunately, Diane Wiest won in a very overacted performance. This movie is hysterical, and makes you realize that art can come from the most unexpected of places10/10

I can not share the generally enthusiastic opinion of this film shown by most other IMDb database users. I am sorry about this as I want to like it - its main theme, contrasting the relative importance of love and art, both for Society and for most of its individual members, is significant for us all; and it is a very visually appealing presentation giving an excellent depiction of New York city as it was some 80 or more years ago, mainly in shades of brown that are never jarring to the eyes. I am not one of those who dislike Woody Allen's work .The Purple Rose of Cairo and Love and Death (where he showed he was able to combine farce with both fairly natural dialogue and his beloved philosophical discussions, this deserted him in BOB) are both treasured parts of my private movie collection. Although BOB is largely free of the artificial dialogue which spoils many of Woody's other films, it was spoilt by unrelenting and continuous overacting. Many films include at least one actor guilty of this heinous sin, but when they almost all do so the fault probably lies squarely with the Director. Here you could watch a few minutes culled from almost any point in the film and be confident of finding a shouting match, or characters waving their arms about like windmills.Many cinema fans do not like watching silent films because of the overacting they are said to feature. This is conventionally explained by the absence of dialogue forcing a greater emphasis on gesture, but John Barrymore even in some of his most unrestrained roles seldom continued exaggerated gesturing beyond the point when it was needed; and this need was often due more to difficulty in creating effective close ups than to the absence of sound, problems that co-existed in those early days. Today an actor can convey a world of meaning whilst quietly sitting at a table by, for example, just raising an eyebrow and uttering the word "Really" in an appropriately questioning tone. In silent days a one word caption "Really" would be almost as effective but the scene at the table, filmed from 5 or 10 metre away, would not do justice to the raised eyebrow in the same way as a modern close up, filmed from a distance of no more than a metre; so I can watch, for example, the 1925 version of Ben Hur more readily than I can Bullets over Broadway - improved technology has made us much less tolerant of artefacts that destroy the intended atmosphere. Fans of BOB claim the behaviour shown in this film is in fact typical of interactions between the types of character being portrayed, and the overacting is not as severe as I am suggesting. I doubt if this is true, but even if so the film itself makes it clear that this would be no excuse. The gangster's hit man Cheech in an early sequence explains carefully that it is no good presenting any dramatic work in a manner with which a viewer cannot empathise - depicted dialogue and behaviour must always be adapted to what would be expected and accepted by the potential audience. I do not live among people who shout and wave their arms about all the time, although I will of course accept such behaviour in a film where it is a natural response to a stressful situation; but if I do not live among people who behave like that, I am not likely to watch a film that shows everyone doing so continuously, for very long before I turn it off - or at the very least feel compelled to complain, as I am doing now.Bullets over Broadway is of course dangerously close to being a direct copy of the film Mistress, released a couple of years or so earlier, the stories are almost identical, except that the locale has been changed from Hollywood to New York and the film being produced has become a stage play. The same type of moral and artistic issues are brought out in both of them. Mistress was not so well enjoyed by IMDb users, but it is very interesting to compare the impact created by the two works. Whereas BOB plays more like a farce most of the time, Mistress provides biting satire which for me is both more enjoyable and far more effective. It was extremely well acted by almost all the cast, and Robert De Niro in particular gives a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. No wonder the Hollywood elite did not like it, many of its barbs must have struck very close to home! Recently, after watching Bullets over Broadway I re-watched part of Mistress to decide whether my more favourable recollections of it were justified. I noted one short slanging match develop towards the end, this was quickly cut short by another character telling the perpetrator to calm down. Back to reality - this was all I really needed to see.. Mistress was real enough for me to feel like an outsider watching events happening, whereas BOB was definitely more like watching entertainers trying to keep me amused. For me the wrong film has been made available on DVD.