The Ten Best Woody Allen

Here's his own choice of six from New York Magazine, as of June 2010:

Woody Allen’s Six Favorite Woody Allen Movies
6/25/10 at 3:45 PM

Proof again that artists have no business judging their own material: "There are a few better than others, half a dozen, but it’s a surprising paucity of worthwhile celluloid," says Woody Allen of his own movies in a delightfully depressing London Times interview today. His six favorites: Purple Rose of Cairo, Match Point, Bullets Over Broadway, Zelig, Husbands and Wives, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/06/woody_allens_six_favorite_wood.html

At the risk of having him accost me, McLuhan-like, for telling him what I think is his best, here are my top ten Woody films, in no particular order (which you should know by now):

Manhattan
Annie Hall
Crimes and Misdemeanours
Take the Money and Run
Hannah and her Sisters
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Radio Days
Deconstructing Harry
Bullets over Broadway
Zelig*

*or maybe Mighty Aphrodite or, to be obtuse, Shadows and Fog...

Not that I'm not partial to the (other) earlier, funny films, like Love and Death, and it's easy to find considerable merit with the later works, after the press fell out of love with him. I also enjoy Martin Ritt's The Front and Clive Donner's What's New Pussycat. The latter may degenerate into farce for the last 10-15 minutes, but the rest is a pretty accurate portrayal of the life of one of the founding fathers of the FNB. And, like Woody, he's still going.