Film

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Woody Allen at his most morally serious: two braided New York stories, one a nervy comedy about a documentary filmmaker chasing the wrong woman, the other a chilling drama about a man who has his mistress killed and discovers, to his horror, that he can live with it. Funny, cold-blooded, and quietly devastating — this is Allen asking whether the universe notices what we do.

TMDb rating7.4

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Match Point2005

Allen himself returns to this exact question years later — can you murder your way out of a mess and simply continue on? Colder, sleeker, and just as unwilling to hand out justice.

But It trades New York's neurotic warmth for London's chilly gloss, and some find its bleakness airless rather than bracing.

Match Point poster

Hannah and Her Sisters1986

The Allen ensemble at its most generous — three sisters, tangled loves, and the same restless mix of comedy and dread about what makes a life feel worthwhile.

But It's gentler and more forgiving than Crimes and Misdemeanors; if you want the moral gut-punch, this one pulls back.

Hannah and Her Sisters poster

Husbands and Wives1992

Handheld camera, real marriages fraying at the seams — Allen's most emotionally raw film, with the same unflinching eye for self-deception dressed as charm.

But Its jittery, verité style, plus the off-screen tabloid backstory, makes it a rougher, less composed watch than his usual work.

Husbands and Wives poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Rope1948

Judah's late-night musing about whether God is watching is straight out of this film's premise — that some people are simply above conscience. Rope pushes that idea to its logical, horrifying end.

Two friends murder a classmate to prove they're superior beings, then host a dinner party over the body — Hitchcock's real-time chamber piece runs the exact Nietzschean argument Judah leans on, decades earlier and even colder.

But The single-take gimmick shows its seams by modern standards, and the theatrical staginess can feel more like a stunt than a story.

Rope poster
More like this (8)

A Simple Plan1998

Ordinary, decent people make one bad choice and then have to keep making it — the slow moral rot plays out with the same dread as Judah's story, just with snow instead of skyline.

But It's a genre thriller at heart, tenser and pulpier, without Allen's comic relief valve to break the tension.

A Simple Plan poster

Fargo1996

Crime unravels ordinary lives while the Coens keep a wry, almost tender humor running underneath the brutality — dark comedy and consequence in the same breath.

But Broader and quirkier than Allen's cool intellectualism; it's more absurdist folk tale than moral interrogation.

Fargo poster

The Talented Mr. Ripley1999

A charming sociopath gets away with murder and seduces the audience right alongside him — glamorous, unsettling, and morally slippery in exactly the way Allen likes.

But It's lush travelogue glamour, more interested in Ripley's nerve than in the psychology of guilt itself.

The Talented Mr. Ripley poster

American Beauty1999

Suburban moral rot examined with the same dark, ironic wit — a life picked apart in voiceover while everyone around it quietly falls apart too.

But More stylised satire than character study, and less concerned with actual crime or its consequences.

American Beauty poster

Michael Clayton2007

A quiet, adult drama about a man realizing exactly how compromised he's become — corporate guilt standing in for romantic guilt, same slow dawning horror.

But It's a slower burn with no comic subplot to lighten the load — all seriousness, no relief.

Michael Clayton poster

Deconstructing Harry1997no page yet

Allen turns the same interrogation on himself — a writer forced to face the wreckage his selfishness left behind, fractured and funnier than it has any right to be.

But More self-indulgent and fragmented; it feels like late-period Allen rummaging through his own sins rather than building a clean story.

The Thin Blue Line1988

Where Judah gets away with murder and the world shrugs, this film shows an innocent man nearly executed for one — same indifferent universe, the injustice running in the opposite direction.

Errol Morris's documentary about a wrongful murder conviction plays like a thriller and asks the same question Allen does — what does justice actually see, and what does it conveniently miss?

But It's a real case with real stakes, not a moral fable; the dry procedural tone is a world away from Allen's wit.

The Thin Blue Line poster

Dexter2006

Both put you inside the head of someone who's killed and has to keep living with it — Dexter just stretches that unbearable interior monologue into a decade of bingeable entertainment.

A serial killer with a code, a badge, and a genuinely loving family — the show spends years asking you to keep rooting for a murderer, which is exactly the discomfort Allen engineers with Judah.

But It's pulpy prestige-TV melodrama with increasingly baroque plotting; the moral question gets buried under seasons of soapy escalation.

Dexter poster

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