Blue Jasmine (2013)
Average Rating: 8/10
Reviews Counted: 193
Fresh: 176 | Rotten: 17
Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine finds the director in peak late-period form -- and benefiting from a superb cast led by Cate Blanchett.
Average Rating: 8.4/10
Critic Reviews: 46
Fresh: 40 | Rotten: 6
Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine finds the director in peak late-period form -- and benefiting from a superb cast led by Cate Blanchett.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 30,054
Movie Info
A New York housewife struggles through a life crisis.
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All Critics (193) | Top Critics (46) | Fresh (176) | Rotten (17)
Lives constructed on pretense can only stand for so long. Watching them collapse is appalling but undeniably entertaining.
Top CriticA sharply observed, post-economic crash comedy-drama that boasts a formidable performance by Cate Blanchett and addresses such pertinent real-world concerns as class, gender and corporate criminality in urban America.
You have to dig deep in Allen's back catalogue to find a single performance as affecting and well-judged as the one Cate Blanchett delivers.
It's narratively uneven but the occasional lapses of focus are rescued by Cate Blanchett's riveting lead performance.
This also benefits from one of the strongest casts he's assembled in years: Cate Blanchett is exceptional in the lead, and there are strong supporting turns from Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, and (in a surprise dramatic turn) Andrew Dice Clay.
Jasmine resembles one of those '50s wives -- widowed or dumped -- who find themselves with nary a skill to survive, or at least not in the manner they'd grown accustomed.
Darkly funny, often in a laugh out loud, self-deprecating way, but it also doubles as a cautionary tale.
Blue Jasmine captures a manic and delusional woman attempting to rebuild herself after a prodigal life she received, but never deserved.
Blanchett's performance is fascinating. She's an Ingmar Bergman figure yanked straight out of Tennessee Williams.
Jasmine is a good movie, one of Allen's best in years, but the draw here is Blanchett, whose performance takes an off-putting character and makes her surprisingly, um ... not quite on-putting, but riveting.
Allen creates a clever and intriguing intersection of lives, relationships and anxieties, all balancing on the ready-to-pop balloon of Jasmine's psychoses.
Blanchett embraces the Blanche DuBois-like nature of the character yet manages to reach Vivien Leigh-like levels of histrionics in much more subtle and naturalistic ways.
In its basic situation can be heard the distant clang of A Streetcar Named Desire, though it's neither pastiche nor reprise, just a quietly respectful tribute.
[Woody Allen's] spin through Tennessee Williams territory, where he has never gone before, seems fresh in the hands of an expert cast.
The whole is less than the sum of its parts, though some parts (especially Blanchett's performance) are well worth watching.
There is all this talent -- and so little reason for it in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine.
Eficaz ao năo fazer concessőes no retrato de uma criatura cuja beleza e elegância externas ocultam uma mulher irremediavelmente estragada por dentro.
Blanchett, wielding a stiff cocktail in one hand and a bottle of anti-anxiety pills in the other, gives her character a skillful shove from neurotic towards psychotic.
I can't credit Allen overmuch for acknowledging, at this late date, a culture of criminality too blatant to ignore; but I admire, and am moved by, his decision to look at his new subject obliquely, through the experience of an enabler of the crimes.
The movie is a near-perfect capture of a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown without going off the deep end into a farce.
Insightful, squirmingly funny and boasting an absolutely unmissable performance from first time Allen collaborator Cate Blanchett.
While the film may hold some viewers at arm's length, the performances are worthy of stand-up-and-cheer ovations all round.
Woody Allen's latter films just seem to get better and better...another A-grade movie to join Match Point, Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona...a superb Cate Blanchett does some of her best film work to date.
The result's highly effective on a human level. If only the film had been set in the real world.
Audience Reviews for Blue Jasmine
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Good Film but expected more! Woody Allen's finely tuned screen-writing skills and his talent for eliciting standout and often award-winning performances from his leading ladies are on full display in "Blue Jasmine." Cate Blanchett gives her best acting performance of all time. Her character changes dramatically every scene. There is a tendency in recent years to either over-praise Allen or rip him to shreds. I don't think this film deserves either fate, being an enjoyably diverting if occasionally pretentious and derivative comedy/drama. It may not belong in the pantheon of great Woody Allen movies like "Annie Hall" or "Manhattan" but it's no "Curse of the Jade Scorpion" or "Celebrity" either. If it didn't have the Woody Allen brand on it, I suspect that it would quickly come and go without notice as a fairly well-made independent drama with some nice acting that has some gripping sequences while ultimately being a little on the dull side. Because of Allen's enduring reputation, it will probably pick up an Oscar nomination or two for Blanchett's performance and for Allen's questionably "original" screenplay because Allen's name still carries cache with the taste arbiters. It had too many dull stretches and redundant exchanges for that kind of attention for my money, but its high points made me feel like there were worse ways to spend an hour and a half. Go see it if you want.
Jasmine French used to be on the top of the heap as a New York socialite, but now is returning to her estranged sister in San Francisco utterly ruined. As Jasmine struggles with her haunting memories of a privileged past bearing dark realities she ignored, she tries to recover in her present. Unfortunately, it all proves a losing battle as Jasmine's narcissistic hangups and their consequences begin to overwhelm her. In doing so, her old pretensions and new deceits begin to foul up everyone's lives, especially her own.
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