Manhattan

You are happy, you lack nothing, everything is fine. And suddenly someone appears who shows you that you could be even happier and you wonder how you managed to live without them until now. Eventually, a person takes a step in one direction or another, but - something always appears anyway. The purest dose of pure romance, experiences, anti-snobbism, ironically exaggerated conversations about art, and Woody's best performance, scriptwriting, and directing form. I recognized myself in so many places, smiling and saddening. I have seen scenes that seemed to come from my ideas of ideal partnership or my future. And one day, I will find myself completely in Manhattan. (10/17/2005)

It's not better than the two best Allen films I've seen so far (i.e. Annie Hall and Zelig), but it's still very good. I didn't want to burst out laughing or be particularly moved by Manhattan, whereas the film felt rather very authentic, believable and like (as much as I dislike the phrase, I have to use it again now) real life. And in addition to a number of irresistible dialogues, it contains a beautiful scene in a planetarium and a wonderful declaration of love: "You're like God's answer to Job. He would say: I do a lot of terrible things, but I can still make one of these." I'll give it four and a bit. (01/24/2014)

Unlike Woody Allen’s best films, Manhattan won’t make you laugh or engage you in a relationship drama. It will, however, warm the cockles of your heart with its relaxed, natural flow, black-and-white aesthetics and fantastic atmosphere of the time and place. And the final dialogue serves as an intelligent conclusion. A jazz-like film. (11/25/2012)

First, Woody Allen clumsily picked the mistress in the form of a 17-year-old masculine woman, who looks more like a boy from a cornfield than like an underage girl from Manhattan, and then he decided to bombard me with a few unrelated texts, which were actually supposed to make sense in the context of his way of life. The result is such that I actually found out that in Manhattan at the end of the 1970s they had tap water as rusty as the freshest beer from a local tavern and that girls sought out boys who could talk about art for 20 minutes straight in an ostentatiously dull manner. An interesting movie, but I cannot say that it impressed me all that much. (11/10/2015)

Woody Allen in fine form, but it's almost annoying how fixated he is on New York and its beauty. It's almost propaganda in places. But his dialogues flow like poetry, they're appropriately punchy, and thanks to him, they're delivered absolutely brilliantly. Some of his lines you just can't make up. Using black and white was definitely an interesting step. (11/20/2015)