woodpecker-75752 Binge-watched Woody Allen's sitcom 'A Crisis in Six Scenes' last night. The bantering conversations of deluded characters set against a New York skyline with jazzy overtones were all there. His anxious, unkempt protagonist presided over alarming situations, which caused bouts of nervousness, despair and desperation as he tries to understand, prevent and remedy the hilarious but serious situation he finds himself in. The older Allan gets, the more philosophical his movies are. They've become less pleasing to the eye to watch (he looks awfully old, it's not Paris/Rome), and his leading actors are not the creme de la creme of Hollywood, but slightly recognizable actors who - don't get me wrong - do a great job of reading his scripts and sounding exactly like him; something I've always enjoyed and think it original of his art. Now to the plot: it is set in the 60s at the height of anti-war sentiment and radicalism. He plays a not-so-successful writer called S.J. Munsinger, rather optimistically self-fashioned on the great American writer J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), and enjoys his semi-retired life in suburbia, watching baseball on television and sharing a home with his wife who is a marriage councillor. He doesn't watch the news so he is only shoulder-shruggingly aware of what is really going on in the city - the protests, the student uprisings, the arrests, etc are not his concern. One night, a break-in occurs at his home: a young lady, a wanted radical freedom fighter (played by Miley Cirus), who he learns is related to his wife, seeks refuge from the police, FBI, etc for breaking out of jail and shooting an armed guard and who has been on the run. Obviously his world is turned upside down. Hilarity and angst ensue. The young woman, with a very well-spoken and bordering on rude attitude starts to very quickly influence everyone around him; she takes over his house, eats his food, redecorates the walls with Che Guevara posters, hands out books on Fanon and Zedong and waxes lyrical about the injustices of war and the stagnant, meaningless lives of comfortable Americans at the expense of others. No matter what he tries to say or do, no one can agree with him that 'doing nothing is alright too.' It escalates to a somewhat farcical end. Swayed by the deliciously dangerous ideas of revolution in their minds, the people start acting altogether ridiculous. It literally blows up in their face. Aspects of the Theatre of the Absurd came to mind in the final episode - everyone arrives, swimming drunkenly and confusedly, gathering together but not to actually do something revolutionary, but to enjoy having a single purpose. Our protagonist realizes that he must get rid of the young lady guerilla fighter before everyone loses their minds and so he volunteers to help her escape to Cuba. He turns out to be her best (albeit reluctant) helper, while the rest have been mostly passive admirers of revolutionary literature. So what's in it for us?Welllll. Shoooo. Radicalism, while exciting, can be dangerous to one extent, and also fanatical at another. We love the idea of helping, supporting, uplifting the down trodden or fellow man, or bemoaning the status quo, but how many of us actually DO something about it? I can quote Fanon and I can philosophize in what SHOULD be done, but will I ever put it into practice? Probably not. Because I too, want to watch television all day and live in the suburbs and ignore the news while at the same time Viva!-ing the people who do DO something because that's easy. It's also very much part of the human condition. I am just here to study it. And to write it. That's my part. And if I ever meet a radical who asks me to help them get to Cuba, I'll help her! But very reluctantly!

stankian I finally got to watch this after quite a while from when it came out and well, yes, I loved it-I simply loved it. I really don't get the bad reviews - everything is so 'old WA' funny, the dialogues and jokes are straight from the old times, everyone (with the exception of terrible M Cyrus, so annoying I just wanted to shoot her personally) is right in the part - especially Allen, who does his thing that no one else of his other 'stand-ins' has been able to do. What is there not to like?? i laughed out loud so many times I lost count.

moonspinner55 In late-1960s upstate New York, an elderly writer and his wife, as well as their impressionable houseguest who's about to be married, are all given a crash-course in political radicalization by a young woman on the run from the police and FBI. She's of the Constitutional Liberation Army, rebelling against the Vietnam War, imperial fascism and the U.S. government; the wife, an acquaintance of the girl's grandmother, invites her to stay in their house against her husband's wishes until she can escape to Cuba. Writer-director Woody Allen's six-episode series for Amazon Studios (each installment lasting about 23 minutes) is one of the loosest, craziest projects the filmmaker has delivered in a long time. He's assembled an unusual cast, including Elaine May as his spouse and Miley Cyrus as the radical. The series has some lapses in timing and occasionally a geriatric pace (this is a white-haired Woody Allen whose character wears a hearing aid, after all); nevertheless, the funny one-liners are there and the characters are colorful and ingratiating. Allen publicly commented on how surprised he was at the work involved in seeing this project through, and yet he has another film for Amazon on the way.

Strega Granger First reason is that this is the first and the last Wood Allen series ever, so it should be watched just to see what it is about and how it has been made. But remember, if you are not a Woody Allen fan you better skip it and save you suffering; although the series is really short, just 6 episodes of 20 minutes each, meaning that in 3 hours you are done with it.Keeping up with the style, this series takes place in the 60s and the two main characters are the old couple played by Wood Allen himself and Elaine May, who by the way are really hilarious in their roles, as we are used in his films. They play and old married couple, she more receptive to changes and he is against changes, the perfect combination. Then, their life is changed when Miley Cyrus character appears, a hippie against Vietnam War, and then the couple's world in completely changed.The series has its funny moment, some understandable some a bit more unrealistic, but nonetheless funny. It has also drama, because we must not forget the topics that are discussed and shown in the background (it's the sixties, Vietnam War, Peace and Love….) are something that were daily matters on the age of change.It must not be his best work; no "Annie Hall" in here, but it is also not his worst; I still can recover myself after that "Vicky, Christina, Barcelona" thing. It is just a longer movie that you can pause every 20 minutes.