Midnight in Paris

It somehow seems appropriate for Woody Allen to make a movie about nostalgia at this point in his career. In Midnight in Paris, he returns to the rain-soaked blue notes and nervous, bourgeois babble found in his best films. Owen Wilson plays Woody stand-in Gil, who's on a pre-wedding trip to Paris with his high-maintenance fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Gil – a screenwriter (what else?) obsessed with the past and trying to write a novel – falls in love with all the nostalgic charm of the city and, lost one night, ends up at a party with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Cole Porter. Soon he's fumbling his way into the artistic elite and falling for a flapper played by Marion Cotillard. Allen’s re-imagining of 1920s Paris is beautiful, laden with the soft light of warmth and age and a love for what’s past. The ensemble cast is fittingly emblematic of Allen's '70s and '80s classics. The past looks good on him.