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Created Aug 24, 2013 03:38PM PST • Edited Aug 25, 2013 06:55AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   I love Cate Blanchette. I despise Woody Allen. Life is complicated. Blue Jasmine finally perfects the genre of movies that review those crucial moments in your life. It also depicts the course of one’s life and the ripples it creates for those in their wake. Allen is the writer and director, a fact that illustrates the eccentricities of great talent. Allen uses a full toolbox of dramatic tools to finish the job that Vanilla Sky and The Place Beyond the Pines started. Failing only once but critically (see below), Allen crafts a great tale of disaster by drawing in elements of Leaving Las Vegas for Blanchette to perfect in this 98 minute beauty. A special treat is that the movie is the largest ensemble of white male heterosexual characters, just like the old days, in the most unlikely city for such an enrichment. More than that, there wasn’t even a hint of the urban metrosexuals in lime green trousers. Imagine that. The movie surprises and delivers at all levels of consciousness.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Blanchette seems to turn in a career’s worth of excellence in her role as Jeanette “Jasmine” Francis. I don’t personally elevate an actor’s body of work over great performances, and Cate again reminds me why. But the surprise is that the cast elevates their game well. All of the featured actors turn in “really great to perfect” performances with the exception of Peter Sarsgaard as Dwight Westlake, who would have been otherwise recognized had the remaining cast not delivered as grandly as they did. The cast did its duty creating surprise if not drama on several occasions that will prohibit any review from describing the story as predictable.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

   So my wife and I debated on the ride home on who exactly was the leading actor. It is a statement of the effort from Bobby Cannavale as Chili that he rises to a potential lead with Alec Baldwin as Hal Francis, Jasmine’s lyin’, cheatin’ sumanobitch dead husband. I will now look for Bobby thanks to this performance. It topped with him standing in the produce section begging Ginger (Sally Hawkins) to get back with him. All the great love stories seem to culminate with the wedding, but we knew Ginger and Chili had a chance when Ginger said “there is nothing to see here” standing over tomatoes. Alec Baldwin has made a career right here in the USA with inappropriate voice mails and snarky credit card commercials, perhaps the greatest achievement of Kim Kardashian’s sex videos. Thankfully Alec Baldwin has a good heart, so it is always easy to forgive him when you see him, even as an evil husband.

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

   I love Cate Blanchette. She is a movie star. She is that great actress who performed in those years between Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence. She is Australian and therefore is poor at being famous. While the audience is informed of her nervous breakdown, her performance as Jasmine does not require it. We know. We haven’t seen a performance in mental illness this strong since Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Blanchette also turns in the best performance in futility of improvement since Nick Cage in Leaving Las Vegas. Only my memories of that movie allowed me to understand that Jasmine was going to wind up in a heap of worn beauty and faculty on a park bench talking to herself. A few facts about 2013 are now in. It is a great year for movies. And we haven’t seen a performance more worthy of an academy award in a long time.

7. Female Costars Really Great 4.5

   Sally Hawkins plays Ginger the sister who winds up in an apartment with two kids and stars tattooed on her shoulder. Ginger is the outcome, the final result if you will, of the hot mess you always coveted. Immediately you knew you were never going to need viagra to bang her. She has a kind soul whose humility gave way to an inferiority complex. Made to believe that her sister, Jasmine, had life all figured out, she anxiously ruins her life with Augie. Augie and Ginger are the first and best depictions of the old saying “a fool and his money are quick to part company”. But Ginger is that walking gift from God called a “guy liker” who does not give up on love even at the high cost of pain and suffering. The story is easily enriched by her various love stories, of which there are three, covering in parts of the 98 minutes all the major mistakes romantics make along the way. I hope I see Sally again and again in movies.

8. Male Costars Really Great 4.5

   Two co-starring actors surprised me. I tend to think it was the actors but in all honesty future efforts may prove it was the writing and the direction. Louis C.K. as dirtball Al surprised me as a married adulterous slime ball who hurts my girl Ginger. He did it really well. He portrayed an awkward loser very well, blinding me of clues of his treachery. The Rolling Stones have a song called “Worried About You” for girls like Ginger and guys like Chili, and Louis C.K. portrays all the reasons why. On the other hand, the warm hearted but heart broken, broke, hard working American male hasn’t been seen in a while as played by Andrew Dice Clay (Augie). Look, his first scene handing his sons over to Ginger after a weekend was a shockingly heartfelt, broken hearted guy as well as it can be played. And Augie’s last dialogue explaining to Jasmine of the consequences of Hal’s deviousness and the impact on his life was the closest thing to a cinematic rendition of Wild Horses I have ever seen.

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Greatness is greatness. It is obvious in this movie. If the worst you can say about the script and direction of a movie is that if a scene seems highly unlikely then things went well. I doubt Augie would have bumped into Jasmine at a Jewelry store, providing him the opportunity speak truth to distortion. Allen is entitled to this one stretch of the imagination. But Allen puts the instruments of excellence on display throughout the movie. At the very end, he uses my favorite setting for recognizing despair. The beautiful Cate Blanchette not looking all that beautiful is seen muttering as preparation for her days deep in dementia while sitting on a park bench. The park bench was used to similar affect in Shawshank Redemption with Brooks Hatlen and in Solitary Man with Michael Douglas, but Cate Blanchette, a women who should never be alone, mumbling about a moment must go down as one of the best monstrous strokes of dramatic genius ever delivered by a director. The use of the location of the vodka bar in Ginger’s apartment delivered the message that Jasmine was living in a crevasse in this vast world without a moment of wasted script. The movie is filled with these nuances. You can see them in other movies dispersed in violence, flesh and booze but in Blue Jasmine it is a parade of information that Allen uses to tell the story.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

    A swat of a vase or lamp shade and a dislodged telephone isn’t even violence any more.

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

    A bed and Louis C.K. is vomit in your mouth.

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

    as above

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

    there were a few moments where some of the characters were unpleasant to each other.

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

    Alec Baldwin is a lousy oligarch and Woody Allen needs practice at portraying them if he seeks to build stories around such characters.

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Glib 1.5