It was an interesting site:

Teen Spirit had four friends over to watch Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. They crowded onto the green leather couch; there was a girl visiting from France in the group so they had the French subtitles going.

The film, with Martin Landau, Angelica Huston and SO many other great actors, is an interesting one. It’s got it all:

The big dark issues of mortality, ethics, and meaning Woody Allen style. The humor. The flashback scenes to the Jewish family seder, the relationship stuff. The funny lines:

“People don’t commit suicide in Brooklyn. They’re too unhappy…”

Lots of LOL stuff. But it’s a dark, dark film about justice and accountability in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of God. Here from Roger Ebert:

The implications of “Crimes and Misdemeanors” are bleak and hopeless. The evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind. To be sure, justice is done in the low-road plot: Cliff does not succeed in leaving his wife to marry a girl for whom he would be the worst possible partner, and the rich and triumphant Lester gets the girl and will possibly make her happy, or at least rich. But in the main story Dolores lies in her grave, and Judah finds that life goes on — for him, at least. For Martin Landau, the performance is a masterpiece of smooth, practiced diplomacy, as he glides through life and leaves his problems behind. Landau is never more effective than when he is shocked and dismayed at his own behavior. It’s as if he’s regarding himself from outside, with a kind of fascination. He sees what he does, and does nothing to stop it. In his own world, he is the eyes of God.

Teen Spirit and a friend are watching EVERY Woody Allen film. Up next: Orson Welles. I forget who they’ve already done. They loved Hannah and Her Sisters.

It’s their own private extra-curricular course in film history.