Woody Allen

Sportswriter Lenny (Allen) has grown obsessed with learning what his adopted son's genetic mother, Linda (Mira Sorvino) is like. He undertakes a lengthy quest to find her but is completely unprepared to discover that Linda is very different than he had imagined. Mighty Aphrodite is a sexy comedy of opposites as Lenny and Linda become entangled in each others' lives with hilarious consequences. As they grow closer to each other, both have untold secrets which, if revealed, could be scandalous. Also starring Olympia Dukakis, David Ogden Stiers, Jack Warden and Peter Weller.

In A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Woody Allen mixes Shakespeare, Ingmar Bergman, and the music and art of the turn of the century. Allen plays Andrew, an inventor, whose listless marriage to Adrian (Mary Steenburgen) has lost all erotic zip. He welcomes two pairs of friends to his country home: college professor Leopold (Jose Ferrer) and his fiance Ariel (Mia Farrow), and dentist Maxwell (Tony Roberts) and his suffragette nurse Dulcy (Julie Hagerty). Before long, everyone's lusting after everyone else's partner, and the plot twists and turns to a happy and magical conclusion.

Woody Allen reinvents himself again with the epic historical satire that is a "wonderful, funny and eclectic distillation of the Russian literary soul." --New York Magazine. One of his most visual, philosophical and elaborately conceived films, Love And Death "demonstrates again that (Allen) is an authentic comedy genius." --Cosmopolitan. Cowardly scholar Boris Grushenko (Allen) has the hots for the beautiful Sonja (Diane Keaton), but cold feet for the Napoleonic Wars.

Nominated for two Academy Awards in 1979, and considered "one of Allen's most enduring accomplishments" (Boxoffice), Manhattan is a wry, touching and finely rendered portrait of modern relationships set against the backdrop of urban alienation. Sumptuously photographed in black-and-white (Allen's first film in that format), and accompanied by a magnificent Gershwin score, Woody Allen's aesthetic triumph is a "prismatic portrait of a time and a place that may be studied decades hence." --Time Magazine.

Diane Keaton stars as Carol Lipton, a bored Manhattan housewife who becomes convinced that her nextdoor neighbor has committed a murder. When her skeptical husband, Larry (Allen), rejects the idea, Carol turns to a flirtatious friend (Alda) to help her search for clues. And as their enthusiasm for the case grows so does their interest in each other. Spurred on by jealousy - and by a seductive writer (Huston) who's also excited by the murder mystery - Larry reluctantly joins the chase, only to learn that much more than his marriage is at stake.

Val Waxman (Allen) was big-time movie director in 1970's and 1980's but is washed up now and just gets commercial directing jobs. He gets another chance at a directing a big film but goes temporarily blind from paranoia. Instead of losing the job, Val and his friends try to make the movie without the executives finding out about the blindness.

Considered by many to be Woody Allen's best film, even over Annie Hall. Hannah and Her Sisters follows a multitude of characters: Hannah (Mia Farrow), who plays den mother to her extended family; her sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), emotional and a bit of a flake, who's involved with a much older artist (Max Von Sydow), who treats her like a child; and Hannah's other sister, Holly (Dianne Wiest), a neurotic who feels incapable of managing her life. Hannah's husband Elliot (Michael Caine) falls in love with Lee, which sets off a series of upheavals.

In 1992, Woody Allen and Mia Farrow--heretofore the Lunt and Fontanne of Hollywood on the Hudson--went public with a media-saturated battle over Allen's affair with Farrow's adopted daughter. Only a few months later, Allen released this film, starring himself and Farrow acting out a virtually identical plot line: an unhappy marriage begins to crumble when the husband strays with a much younger woman (in this case, one of his students, played by Juliette Lewis).

The Front is both a comic delight and perhaps the most graceful act of show business revenge in cinema history. Written by, directed by, and starring various talents blacklisted during the McCarthy-era witch hunts of the 1950s entertainment industry, the film stars Woody Allen as Howard, a cashier and bookie approached by blacklisted television-writer Alfred (Michael Murphy) to act as a "front," i.e., the alleged author of Alfred's works. The scam proves hugely successful.

Writer-director Woody Allen has produced yet another challenging and funny film, this time taking on the musical genre and bending it to his own unique vision. The result is one of the most charming films in recent years, as Allen assembles a typically sterling ensemble cast to evoke the romanticism of years past. This time, the large cast (including Alan Alda, Drew Barrymore, Goldie Hawn, Edward Norton, and Tim Roth) not only turn in funny and touching performances, but they sing the classic songs of the 1930s and 1940s themselves, and sing them very well.