I’ve never been a big Cate Blanchett fan, she is too brittle and androgynous for my taste and she always seems very pissed off about something or the other and perhaps never more so than during her bravado woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown turn as a Ruth Madoff type, whose husband (Alec Baldwin) has just hung himself in prison and who is attempting to build a new life with her foster-sister in San Francisco, in Woody Allen’s latest “Blue Jasmine”
And she saves “Blue Jasmine” with a bravado performance, like an East Coast Blanche Dubois wandering on to the set of “Husband And Wives”. Everybody around her is sniping and fighting and living their lives and Cate as Jasmine is going insane right in the middle.
It is minor league Allen with big league aspirations, you can imagine him writing the concept in his notebook, “Ruth Madoff after the fall”. It sounds like fun and a list of actors, folks like Andrew-Dice Clay, Louis CK, and Sally Hawkins (so great in “Happy Go Lucky”) as Jasmine’s kid sister.
All of them are good and the problem isn’t the acting, or the anachronisms (all the computer illiterate stuff should have dropped by 1995), it is the flimsiness of the script: it seems more like an idea written in a notebook than a fully worked out story, even the ending is terrible.
Still, you are never far from Cate talking to herself, rubbishing her sisters boyfriend or drinking and popping a Zanax and really, what more do you want from a movie? Plus it is Woody Allen, you take a coupla smooths with a rough.
Music: “Blue Moon” is the Madoff’s song and plays from time to time. The rest has a tasty heaping of Louis Armstrong (even with King Oliver!)
1.Back O’ Town Blues – Louis Armstrong
2. Speakeasy Blues – King Oliver
3. Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me – Noone
4. A Good Man Is Hard To Find – Lizzie Miles
5. Aunt Hagar’s Blues – Louis Armstrong
6. House Party – Mezzrow-Bechet Quintet & Septet
7. Out On The Town – Kully B, Gussy G & Bilkhu
8. West End Blues – King Oliver
9. Black Snake Blues aka Black Swing Blues – King Oliver
10. Great White Way Performed By Julius Block
11. The Vision Performed By Dj Aljaro
12. Ipanema Breeze Performed By Paul Abler
13. Yacht Club Performed By Julius Block
14. Human Static Bob Bradley, Matt Sanchez & Gavin Mcgrath15. Average Joe
16. Miami Sunset Bar Performed By Mireya Medina & Raul Medina
17. Welcome To The Night
18. Love Theme Performed By David Chesky
19. My Baby Sends Me Aka “My Daddy Rocks Me (part 1)” Performed By Trixie Smith
Movie: B
Music: A