An argument over which movie deserves the Best Picture Oscar is completely unwinnable, pointless, and always fun, but I can understand why Annie Hall walks away with the gold in 1978. The playfulness of the structure is so smoothly integrated with the story that it never feels like it's showing off or trying something quirky for the sake of itself. It feels like a whole new kind of movie experience for the time, but I've thought that about other movies and it turned out that I just hadn't seen the stuff that inspired them. Maybe there was another "Annie Hall" before this one, but if so I haven't seen it.
While Allen is good, he couldn't possibly hold my attention for an hour and a half on his own. Keaton, who I will admit I've never really thought of as great, bad, or anything in between, is excellent here. I've even seen the movie before, too, although it's been a long time, and I didn't remember being so impressed by her range.
And, yeah, of course it's hard to stomach hearing some jokes that were still landing in the 70s, especially with the gift of hindsight and imagining Allen workshopping bits about underage sexual conquests ... but, yeah. The movie's still great.
Also: I've blurred out the name of the library because there's no need to throw them too far under the bus, but after seeing the dreaded "This film has been formatted to fit your screen" title card, I tried to flip the DVD to what was presumably a widescreen version and, well, I should have known that it wouldn't work because of this:
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