Midnight In Paris (2011)

Wow. I really love this movie. This movie is absolutely beautiful. It is downright the single best movie of the year (so far). Currently, I cannot fathom how amazing this movie was. Writing this review, it’s been about an hour since the film ended, and I still am at a loss for words. The bad part is that it took me two months to finally go see Midnight In Paris, and now that I have, I can honestly say that I would have rather seen this than Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men, Limitless, Source Code, even Super 8 or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Yes, this movie is that good. When it came out, people were throwing around the term “Best movie of the year”. And right they are. This movie is almost a perfect film. It is just brilliant. This movie is just…great. It adds another member to the list of amazing comedy-drama films that come along way too scarcely. I just love this movie. If you read my other two reviews of Woody Allen films, I said that I started watching his films when this one came out to such glowing reviews. Like this one. Granted, I have not seen a lot of Woody Allen films, but out of the ones that I have (where they were all good films), this one is the best. The film is written and directed by the great Woody Allen, and has that sense of simplistic childlike sophistication that makes films like Juno and About a Boy as great as they are. The film follows Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood screenwriter who goes to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams), who is decently controlling. Gil is trying to finally write a novel, but currently has no success in this endeavor. So escaping Inez’s über-social friends and her not-so-approving parents, Gil begins to take midnight strolls in the City of Love, only to have marvelous adventures, which I am not going to get into solely because I want a complete spoiler-free review here. But, some of the people he meets are played by Allison Pill (from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, BOO-YAH!), Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hiddleston, Adrian Brody, ect. Even with some more complicated science and history in bits of this film, this is a beautifully simplistic film. The first two minutes are just shots of Paris set to music. And you are entranced the entire time. Almost always, when I get to see a movie in theaters, I will get concessions. Not here. Earlier today, I had seen Cowboys & Aliens, and so that gave me my sugar fix. I didn’t care. There were periods of about twenty minutes at a time where I would just be fixated on watching the screen. I can’t even verify if I blinked. The movie became real, and the characters were right next to me. That’s how you put a viewer inside of a movie. Not with post-production 3-D, not with stupid gimmicks (Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World is coming out in a few weeks, and is bringing back Smell-O-Vision. Yay), just good honest storytelling. And this is good storytelling at its finest. Just…go see this movie. It’s brilliant. And if it doesn’t get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, I’m gonna strangle someone.
9.5/10