Blue Jasmine

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is not herself lately, not since her husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), went all Bernie Madoff. Jasmine is suddenly broke, back on the pills, and on her sister’s couch in San Francisco. It sounds a little like a mid-’80s sitcom, but Woody Allen’s latest, Blue Jasmine, effortlessly plays the heavier drama of slipping mental acuity with the comedy of the rich getting poor. Blanchett is superb—shocking!—and she gets help all the way through from Sally Hawkins (playing her adopted and lower-middle-class sister), Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K. and, of all people, Andrew Dice Clay. If you can believe it, Dice is kind of the soul of the picture, the one person who sees the reality at every turn. It’s not Woody Allen’s best, but it is more original than he tends to be these days, and it’s certainly worth seeing for Cate Blanchett.