I don't know how many more articles we need on the miserable state of Woody Allen's career, but here's another one. As with all the others, Emmanuel Levy asks, "how long can Allen be a famous artist, if he hasn’t made an interesting film in years"?

Which just makes me wonder - Do you guys even go see the films anymore?

 
Levy blames a large part of Allen's stumble on the some kind of post-Soon Yi-scandal identity crisis. But I just dont see it. Even if we isolate our critique to the 14 films Allen's made since 1992's Fall of Mia-quoting Husbands and Wives, I can't conceive of how we can call this output a failure.

That period starts with Manhattan Murder Mystery and Bullets Over Broadway before getting to Mighty Aphrodite, the last of Allen's films to win an Oscar; significantly, it continues with Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry and Sweet and Lowdown, which to my mind are three of his best (and most "interesting") films. Leaving Celebrity aside, the period from 1996-2000 marks a remakable spurt of formal experimentation for Woody Allen, unseen since the faux-Bergman years. We're talking about an experimental musical inspired by Peter Bogdanovich's greatest catastrophe; a self-surgical farce of post-modern literary proportions; and a "documentary" about Django Reinhardt's fictional rival - what's not to like?

I'm not going to argue that Melinda and Melinda is a masterpeice, but it's certainly not "uninteresting". I'll concede that the three films that preceede it (Anything Else, Hollywood Ending, and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion) are not particularly "interesting", but considering they were made and released within 24 months of one another, I'm not sure this is accidental. What other major American filmmaker is releasing three films in two years? Plus, the film that proceeds those films, Small Time Crooks, was generally well-received and a minor hit.

Like any artist, Allen's career seems to proceed in fits and starts of inspiration; unlike most American filmmakers, he has a wide international audience that seems to demand a new work from him every 12 months. Keep in mind that he's directed almost forty films in forty years. What percentage of his filmography has to be certifiably "great" before we can leave him alone?