Not quite a great film, per se, but still just about a perfect movie. A square-jawed explorer in a 1930s studio comedy becomes smitten with a woman in the audience and magically steps off the screen to meet her. This sparks problems for the other characters, for the theater owner and his patrons, for the up-and-coming actor who plays him and, most of all, for the object of his affections -- a bullied and beaten-down naif who uses the movies to escape both of her depressions. Woody Allen's funniest and most successfully realized supernatural riff works on a variety of levels, most importantly in the way it celebrates the power of fantasy but also subverts it. The ending is like a terrible punch to the heart, not softened in the least by its obvious inevitability.
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