An Irrational Man * * * *

Woody Allen is really quite amazing.  It’s not just the amount of work he produces but the quality of it. A Woody Allen film seems to come out on an annual basis.  In fact, if he didn’t come up with a new film each year you’d wonder where it was. 
So it is in 2015 he gives us An Irrational Man.

Obviously pleased with her effort in Magic In The Moonlight he has cast Emma Stone again.  This time she plays Jill, a student at a minor university that is so charming in its location and gorgeous lead light and polished wood construction it is probably impossible.  But Allen’s films have always had another worldliness about them.

Joaquin Phoenix plays a lecturer in philosophy who is demonstrably brilliant. But he comes across as damaged rather than bombastic. He seems to have philosophized his own life to meaninglessness. What can a man do but commit the most forbidden of crimes and see if he can get away with it?  Choosing his “deserving” victim carefully his success leaves him elated.  

Women find him attractive (well he is handsome and brilliant) and although he does not exploit this, after a while it is hard to resist the insistent advances of a colleagues wife and later the much younger Jill.

It has humour and delicious plot turns. It’s another brilliant film from a masterful writer/director who has proven to be as  good as the legendary directors he always admired.