The Woody Allen Collection, Vol. 2 (2001)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Shadows and Crimes

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The second The Woody Allen Collection (MGM/UA Video, $60), features five titles, as opposed to the eight from the previous box. But these five represent a low point in Allen's career. It contains only one unalloyed masterpiece, the great comedy/drama Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Shadows andFog (1992) is a beautifully shot black and white piece with sporadicfunny dialogue, but it never comes together as a whole. Alice (1990)is a complete misfire, a bizarre comedy about a married woman (MiaFarrow) who falls for a musician (Joe Mantegna) and takes Chinese herbsthat make her invisible. Of Allen's two dramas from this period,Another Woman (1988) is by far the more accomplished, with GenaRowlands as a writer who discovers how to live again when she overhearssessions from the psychiatrist's office next door, while September(1987) is dour and unpleasant, following six confused people over aweekend in a country house. But who really wants to see these twoserious films more than once? If the box set had gone one film more ineither direction, including the masterworks Radio Days (1987) orHusbands and Wives (1992), it would have been wroth trumpeting.