Midnight in Paris
GRADE: B
It's somehow appropriate for Woody Allen to make a movie about nostalgia at this point in his career. In Midnight in Paris, he returns to the rain-soaked blue notes and nervous, bourgeois babble found in his best films. Owen Wilson plays Woody stand-in Gil, who's on a pre-wedding trip to Paris with his high-maintenance fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Gil — a screenwriter (what else?) obsessed with the past and trying to write a novel — falls in love with all the city's nostalgic charm and, lost one night, ends up at a party with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Cole Porter. Soon he's fumbling his way into the artistic elite and falling for a flapper played by Marion Cotillard. Allen's reimagining of 1920s Paris is beautiful, laden with the soft light of warmth and age and a love for what's past. The ensemble cast is fittingly emblematic of Allen's '70s and '80s classics. The past looks good on him.
Opens Friday, June 10, at the Landmark Maple Art Theatre, 4135 W. Maple Rd., Bloomfield Hills; 248-263-2111.
