Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

At one point in this film a character who is a successful television producer (Alan Alda) comments that while he never graduated college that Columbia university offers a course on the existential themes in his sitcoms. I don't know if Woody Allen graduated college or not but certainly his works are full of existential themes warranting at least a semesters worth of credits. Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of the directors more up front philosophical meditations, two seemingly unrelated but oddly parallel stories about men confronting the boundaries of there personal ethics offer commentary on personal morality and the question of God. Martin Landau is a successful ophthalmologist whose increasingly unstable mistress threatens to go public with their relationship, while Woody Allen is an unhappily married small time documentary filmmaker put in the unwanted position of making a film for PBS about his shallow television producer brother-in-law (Alan Alda). The film serves up the atheistic, largely amoral Woody Allen view of the universe a little heavily for some viewers tastes, but I think it treats the questions with due respect, or at least the extent to which that can be offered by someone pretty well convinced he knows how the universe works. I really liked the emphasis on grown up sibling relationships in this film, you don't see that as much as you could. The rabbi who's slowly going blind offers an interesting further commentary on the proceedings, and one I felt was welcomly sympathetic to the character. 4 1/2 out of 5.