Mighty Aphrodite [Region B]

New York stories and Mighty Aphrodite are in my top catagories.One of my favs...

`Mighty Aphrodite', written, directed, and starring Woody Allen seems to be the kind of movie Allen makes after he is worn out doing a strictly realistic, mostly serious movie such as `Crimes and Misdemeanors', `Hannah and Her Sisters', and `Husbands and Wives'. Unlike these excellent seriocomic works, `Mighty Aphrodite' flies off into a world of fantasy similar to the crazy / inventive situations in `Zellig' and `A Midsummer's Night Sex Comedy'.Allen brings along with him his usual band of big name actors taking off from more remunerative roles to have some fun with this lighthearted comedy. As usual, heavyweights such as F. Murray Abraham, Claire Bloom, Jack Warden, and Olympia Dukakis have such small roles that you hardly notice they are there until they are off screen. In the case of Abraham and Dukakis and Allen stock player David Ogden Stiers, this anonymity is heightened by the fact that they are playing masked members of a Greek chorus, filmed in a ruined Roman amphitheater, in Italy, according to the location credits.This movie was done for Mirimax and a sizable number of new names appear among the film's executive producers, although I am certain Allen still has his hands firmly on the artistic reins for the filming of the movie. I have no idea which of these new names represents `Sweetland Films', but their only contribution seems to have been a slightly less austere credit crawl at the end of the flick.Aside from Allen, all of the really heavy lifting on the screen was done by title character actor Mira Sorvino, and it is beyond me how she was nominated for the supporting actress Academy Award and not in the lead actress category, although I suspect it did improve her chances of winning in the lesser category, which she did.Of Allen's two most important movie subjects, love and death, love is certainly the main issue in this movie, signaled by the fact that Aphrodite is the name of the ancient Greek god of love, represented in this flick by Sorvino's character who is a prostitute and pornographic movie actress who wants to get out of that life and settle down in a more normal setting.Allen plays a successful New York City sportswriter who gets connected with Sorvino when he and his wife decide to adopt a baby boy, and Allen becomes obsessed with the identity of the real mother, who turns out to be Sorvino. While Allen tries to set Sorvino up with a farmer turned boxer turned farmer, his wife (Carter) hooks up with a business partner (Peter Weller) who threatens to break up their marriage.While there are a few brief moments of apparent danger when Sorvino's pimp threatens Allen's life if Sorvino quits, the pimp is bought off with nothing more than a pair of courtside tickets to a Knicks game. While the main `realistic' plot is pretty improbable as it is, the real silliness is going on in asides to a full masked Greek chorus very similar to what you would find in productions of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Thrown into this absurdity is Jack Warden playing a modern blind man named Tiresius encountered on the streets of New York. The joke is that Tiresius is the name of a character in Sophocles' `Oedipus Rex' who makes the prophecy that Oedipus will kill his father. In Allen's version, Tiresius simply clues Allen into the fact that his wife is fooling around with her business partner.The invocations of the Greek choruses get even more silly as the movie progresses, with the chorus appearing in modern New York near the end of the film, bursting into renditions of Cole Porter and tunes from other modern composers.Like `Zellig', there is no attempt to avoid straining credulity. Near the end of the movie, Sorvino is rescued from her life of sin by a totally improbable `deux ex machina', which Allen glorifies by simply describing it as such in the voice-over.This movie is about as close as Allen ever comes after `Annie Hall' to returning to the silliness of early movies such as `Bananas' and `Sleeper'. Unlike the early gag fests, you really feel for the characters in this movie. You don't want Allen to break up with his wife and you want Sorvino to get out of her sex business. And, we are much happier at the end of the movie than we are at the end of `Crimes and Misdemeanors' where a killer escapes justice and the nebbish gets cheated out of his girlfriend.This is not one of Allen's very best movies, but it is in the upper half. Sorvino's performance is definitely worth the price of admission.

Great plot

Great DVD. Perfect and a laugh riot. I bought it because Mira Sorvino is on Dancing with the Stars and this role was not mentioned in her bio. She won an Oscar for the best supporting actress in her role as Judy Cum a hooker and porn star. This was the only DVD available, so I was lucky to get it.

I was happy when my DVD arrived, as I have been wanting to see this movie.It arrived within the specified time, and was in new condition, withcomplete, undamaged packaging. I enjoyed the movie, and the service was great.However, one thing did bother me about the DVD: It was the UK version,and I was planning to watch it on my laptop, so I had to change the zone to UK,then change it back when I watched a US-zoned DVD a few days later.I haven't tried it in the DVD player yet, but I hope it works. Other than thisminor issue, it was a great price for a new movie, and Amazon always has whatI am looking for!

This very funny and irony-filled film from the mid-90's is one of my favorite Woody Allen movies. He was moving on from the Mia Farrow fiasco and was immersing himself in some really funny, fresh, and creative writing. The genius in this film lies in the structure provided by an all-star Greek chorus, giving us narration to the movie (Oedipus's mother telling us she'd hate to mention what they'd call her in Harlem), and also popping unexpectedly into scenes... like when F. Murray Abraham, dressed up in his robe and mask, hands Woody a pencil so he can write down a hooker's phone number. That hooker is Mira Sorvino, playing an occasional porn star (Judy Cum) who doesn't know she's the mother of Woody's adopted son. Woody, ignoring the warnings of the Greeks (still they want to know how she was in bed), hopes to learn of his child's ancestry. So he sets up a meet with hooker Mira, who is hilarious in her depictions of her sordid past (she won an Oscar for this slightly over-the-top performance) as Woody tries to help her find a straight path. The results of this endeavor are quite hysterical and unexpected, so check it out. It makes a nice statement on love and fidelity and parents and children and irony, and on fate, as I suppose all of Woody's films strive to do. Lighthearted, fast, and funny.I purchased the Blu Ray and I am very satisfied with the fidelity of the video and the audio. Great to have the Woody movies on Blu Ray, but they are kind of expensive.

although the hooker's voice grates on you after a while.

“Daddy, who’s the boss, you or Mommy?”“I’m the boss. She’s the decision maker, but I control the tv remote!”Some Woody Allen movies come across better than others. This one is great. All leave you in a better state of mind after watching than before you started watching. For someone as meek and gentle as Woody was formed in a ‘physical sense’ Woody is one of the strongest people who might have influenced the lives of many human beings. He calls his own shots and compromises little on his artistic insights. He knows casting, psychology, whatever business it takes to make and sell a film, and he is of course a very funny person.

Ich habe mir diesen Film geholt da Mia Sorvino hierfür einen Oscar bekam und ich den Film niemals im TV schauen konnte. Bin nicht der grösste Allen Fan ,aber waren doch ein paar nette Szenen darin. Eine klassische Momente, das durch die "griechischen" Momente noch gesteigert werden. Mal etwas anderes , als das heute übliche Sehverhalten. Wer sich darauf einlässt wird sich gut unterhalten fühlen.

色んなことを考えさせる作品です。まとまりが良すぎるのが変な作品になっておりますが、不快感はないので、これくらいが、映画には丁度いいのでしょう。ウディアレン監督は上手な味付けをつけて、本編を料理するので、とても味わいいいです。こんな風にはいかないよ、とおもいつつでも映画だもんな。と言うさらっとした良さがあります。

Un capolavoro del grande Woody Allen in lingua originale. Comico, profondo, sorridente, amaro, ... Non c'è un momento di stanca, gli attori sono in stato di grazia. Non riesco a trovare niente che non mi piaccia. Avevo questo film in VHS, l'ho ricomprato in DVD, e lo ricomprerei ancora...

Mighty Aphrodite is the film in which Woody Allen gets the balance right between writing a script that is serious literature and mixing the serious literature with a modern day low-brow bestseller.He uses the idea of the chorus from ancient greek literature as the voice of his conscience and makes a most unlikely series of events seem plausible and highly entertaining,and manages to make something that could have turned out as seeming very sordid,touching and memorable.He was helped in no small part by Mira Sorvino's brilliant (oscar winning) feat of acting in which she played the prostitute Linda as somebody who was like a cartoon character but who was still recognisable as a human being that the viewer would think could exist in real life.There are plenty of subtle and amusing twists and turns in the plot and you come away from this film feeling positive and optimistic about people and life in general.How this wonderful movie managed to inspire Woody Allen to come up with the dreadful film "Deconstructing Harry" a year later is beyond me!