According to The New Yorker, the acclaimed director and all-around stand-up guy Woody Allen's 2013 film "Blue Jasmine" is yet another masterpiece in a long line of them. According to us, it is boring masturbatory fantasy from an out of touch ghoul who, in an ideal world, would have been locked up in prison for the past several decades rather than pumping out an endless stream of bombastic nonsense.
Cate Blanchett won Best Actress for playing Jasmine Francis, a mentally damaged widow who we find out through a series of unnecessary flashbacks was married to a wealthy Madoff-inspired Ponzi scheme mastermind. Jasmine really doesn't have a character arc because she is clearly crazy to begin with, but fancy-pants critics would have you believe that the film depicts the subtle unraveling of a fragile soul with a cutting wit that's sharper than an 18th century French guillotine (or something similarly pretentious).
Sally Hawkins was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for playing Ginger, Jasmine's adopted sister who is based on the character Stella Kowalski from Tennessee Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire." She is recently divorced from a meathead named Augie, played by Andrew Dice Clay, and is dating a new meathead named Chili, played by Bobby Cannavale, but Jasmine's insistence that she can do better drives her into the arms of a third loser, played by Louis C.K. (speaking of mastabratory fantasies).
Alec Baldwin plays Hal Francis, a rich narcissist who, like Baldwin himself, seemingly sails through life doing and saying whatever he pleases. But the role does require some acting when Johnny Law finally catches up to him and he has to face the music for his lifetime of recklessness.
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