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We love to build up new celebrities. And then we love to knock em down. If things go right, we love building em back up again even more than when we built them up the first time. That is exactly what is happening with Woody Allen and his new movie, Match Point. For the last decade, Woody has been considered by most of America to be a wash-out. True, his most successful film of the last five years was 2000's Small Time Crooks, which was just okay, but his movies never fail to raise some kind of emotion in the viewer - even if it is more often than not disdain or outright hostility. I have actually liked his recent movies to some extent (though I will excuse myself during the discussion of Anything Else), but even my lack of enthusiasm is all the more vocal simply because we all expect so much more from our pal Woody. Finally, everyone can come together, not to praise a single performance or a certain joke, but an entire Woody Allen film. Hailed as his comeback (and certainly his most complete, well-crafted movie since Husbands and Wives), Match Point owes a debt to Allen's own Best Picture nominee, Crimes and Misdemeanors, as well as A Place in the Sun, and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Some critics point out that this is a drawback to the film, but I enjoyed how the movie practically luxuriates in its own genre, recalling past filmic history, but twisting its narrative to make them their own.

Here, Allen tells the story of a failed tennis pro (the elegant and sly Jonathan Rhys Myers), who finds himself part of a wealthy family's life almost overnight. He is soon dating the somewhat mousy daughter of the rich parents, including the always welcome Brian Cox, but then meets the son's fiancé, an American, played by Scarlett Johannson. Sparks fly, and nothing good can come of their attraction. The movie layers on the dread, while carefully staying true to the well developed characters. Rhys Myers is never portrayed as a purely sociopathic gold digger, and Johannson is not a femme fatale. That makes their interactions truer - and stickier. Filming for the first time in London (Allen has already shot a follow up there with Johannson again, called Scoop) seems to have freed Allen to tell a story in a more filmic way than he has in years. The eye of an American observing the social mores of the different classes and nationalities informs his movie in a way that would not have happened had he made his movie, as originally planned, in the Hamptons. It is nice to have Allen back up on the pedestal. Here's hoping we keep him there for a while.