© 2024 Kansas City Public Radio
NPR in Kansas City
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Walker's Three to See: <i>Midnight in Paris</i>

KCUR Arts Reporter Steve Walker shares his top movie picks of the week.After great success with shooting in London (Match Point) and Spain (Vicki Cristina Barcelona), Woody Allen seduces us with a clever, magical bon bon set in Paris. Owen Wilson plays a Hollywood screenwriter visiting the city with his high-strung fiance (a bravely obnoxious Rachel McAdams) and falling head over heels in love with it. This affair between man and geography gets strange when the clock strikes midnight and he is whisked off to various bistros where time is frozen in the 1920s and the customers include F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Wilson's character rationalizes this time travel by admitting that maybe the era in which he really exists is so unsatisfying because, well, life's a little unsatisfying. With thanks, too, to cameos by Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein and Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali, the movie is very satisfying.

KCUR serves the Kansas City region with breaking news and award-winning podcasts.
Your donation helps keep nonprofit journalism free and available for everyone.