HOW blessed audiences are to have Woody Allen still after 49 years providing films that, whatever their shortcomings, continue to remind us that cinema of merit doesn’t need to go extra-terrestrial or futurist or pseudo-scientific or ultra-violent.

Philosophy lecturer Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) drinks on the job. His muse has deserted him, rather like his wife Rita (Parker Posey) who’s beginning to regret her second marriage and yearns to share Abe’s life again. Student Jill (Emma Stone) shows interest in him. Resurrection comes when he and Jill get it together in bed. He cuts down on the booze and the anti-depressants. He feels motivated to do something anonymously that will benefit a deserving stranger. His lectures examine how writers and thinkers try to explain the world and the gap between theory and practice.

There is a murder. It has a moral justification. The whole town discusses it. Gossip slowly reveals fragments of information that allow another person beside the killer to work it out. Allen puts the pair together in a cracker of a finale that defies convention and sent me away smiling inwardly. I wonder what his 51st film will do.

At Palace Electric, Dendy, Capitol 6 and Limelight