Even the most highbrow of highbrows needs to relax and, on certain days when a retreat to the solarium in a favorite alpaca sweater while sipping on a red from the Bordeaux region simply doesn’t cut it, there is another outlet. The comedic offerings of film from across the ages to relax the wary mind burdened with the world’s problems.  The highbrow thinkers of  the world can indulge in film entertainment between solving global warming by using algorithms from a Harvard library window and discussing why James Joyce hated punctuation over tea at 4 o’clock Greenwich time. 

Woody Allen’s films — 40 in all, from 1971’s Bananas to 2011’s Midnight in Paris — compose one of the most astonishing sequences of cinematic expression in American movie history. For a filmmaker who is often accused of making the same picture over and over, Allen is remarkably adept at reinvention. Who expected Interiors after Annie Hall? Or Zelig after A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy? Or Match Point after Melinda and Melinda?