There’s one thing you can say for Woody Allen: he’s consistent. He has made a film a year since 1977, producing some great classics and some not-so-great duds. Some have been good, some have been bad, and some have just been indifferent, but you have to give the guy some space when he’s producing so much work for so long. His recent spate of films have been among his finest, from Match Point to Blue Jasmine, with only one or two missteps in between. Now, his next film has a title and a distributor in Sony Pictures Classics.
Allen’s latest work will be called Irrational Man, and will star Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, and Allen’s muse du jour Emma Stone. It tells the story of a philosophy professor in the midst of an existential crisis who enters into a relationship with one of his students. Somehow, I feel like I have heard the story before, but Allen usually has a way of making even cliched narratives into something more interesting.
Irrational Man will be distributed in North America by Sony Pictures Classics, which has released all of Allen’s recent films. The director says that he likes working with the distributor, and that “I like the way they handle my movies, very special, very classy and I always hope my films live up to their expectations.” We hope they do too, Woody.
Personally, I look forward to most of Allen’s films. They’re dependable and often quite surprising; even Magic in the Moonlight had its moments of philosophical introspection, despite being very light-hearted otherwise. I’ll be interested to see what Allen has come up with for Irrational Man.