FILM REVIEW: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Josh Brolin as a down-on-his-luck writer out looking for his Muse.

Released in 2010, years after director Woody Allen's sterling reputation was sullied by an accusation of child molestation concocted by his spurned ex-lover and certified whacko Mia Farrow, this gem got short shrift from the public and the critics. It's now streaming on Netflix where I may have to watch it a second time, it's that good.

Starring Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Josh Brolin, you know immediately that the acting will be outstanding. The plot is almost a typical Woody Allen story, this time  involving several married couples: she loves him but he's having an affair, and those two get divorced and then he wants her back again, and more like that. This time it's set in London just to make it interesting.

In the middle of everything is a somewhat sketchy fortune teller who brings in a bit of the occult, with much talk of the afterlife, the before life and a seance to contact someone's deceased wife added for good measure. It's all great fun and at the same time dead serious, what with rampant fears of a lonely old age and the bold theft of a dead man's artistic work turning a light-hearted comedy with some (not many) belly laughs into a dark tragedy. But that's what Woody does best, and his tried-and-true formula works well in this film.