It wouldn’t be a new year without a new offering from Woody Allen, who has released his films annualy since the late 1960s almost without fail. With YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER, Allen has once again attracted a sterling cast to his vision of romantic dissonance. Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones play a married couple who split so that Hopkins can pursue a call girl. Naomi Watts is the couple’s daughter, who becomes infatuated with her boss (Antonio Banderas) while her husband (Josh Brolin) swoons over a mysterious stranger. To top it all off, Jones puts her faith in the hands of a fortune teller whose offhand predictions have no basis in reality.

The fourth London-shot film from the former patron saint of New York cinema, YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is still pure Allen. Lovers have quarrels, adults abandon rationality in the face of hopeless infatuations and, above all, human foibles are put into sharp focus through the director’s uniquely neurotic lens.

PH