I am thrilled to have finally gotten to see this film, what with the unfair shunning of all things Woody Allen by the trendier-than-thou PC morality police. (By the way, Woody is innocent!) Anyway, the film has really good writing, with a lot of laugh-out-loud funny lines. Elle Fanning is charm itself and could not be more engaging; Selena Gomez is delightful; Timothee Chalamet is uneven, sometimes being a neurotic character that did not fit him at all and sometimes being interesting and complex. It is a little uncomfortable watching these three very young looking actors drinking, smoking, and talking about sex. The rest of the cast is fine. The only real problem with the movie is that it is shot in a bright palate in high definition, which lacks the warmth and depth of film as it used to be. It is not that it is unattractive, exactly, but that it is hyper clear and flat. It also lacks the beauty of real rain since it is perpetually sunny. I fear that real film is gone and that I will not enjoy the future of movies.

As to the German Blu-Ray, it plays on U.S. players. Subtitles can be turned off with the remote "Subtitles" button; the menu only has the choice of German or English with German Subtitles.

Sometimes Woody Allen has something on his mind. For example, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Husbands and Wives and Deconstructing Harry left me thinking. This is not really that kind of movie. And sometimes Woody creates imaginative or fantastic plots, as in Midnight in Paris or Purple Rose of Cairo. This is not really that kind of movie, either.

This is a bunch of Woody Allen characters in a bunch of Woody Allen situations, and if you're a Woody Allen fan you'll probably watch for a couple of minutes and have no trouble seeing where all of this is headed.

But man, did I laugh. For me, the experience of this film was something like the experience of Manhattan Murder Mystery. The plot was interesting and kept me paying attention, and then every couple of minutes, in a flash, someone's words would register and I would just burst out in a loud laugh.

It makes the non-Woody-Allen people look at you, puzzled. But there it is.

Perfectly enjoyable. Too bad Amazon cancelled Allen. I hope he made a lot in the settlement.

Obviously this is an opinion. I love Woody Allen. And to me, this movie is right at the top of his game. I could hear every word uttered in this movie coming out of Woody's mouth, or more specifically, off of the keys from his Olympia typewriter.

The plot is easy to follow, and keeps unfolding until the very end. And of course, the dialogue is where the gusto is. Woody's love for Manhattan is showcased very well in this movie. Definitely worth waiting for. I'm glad it finally got relased to the general public. It's very hard for me to choose "My Favorite" Woody Allen movie, but this one is definitely in the hunt.

Really disappointed in myself for not having looked up Woody Allen's history and sexual allegations of his daughter against him. Most of the actors have publicly vowed to donate their salary from the film to RAINN after this was resurfaced and honestly not sure where I missed that in the news. Also disappointed in Amazon for continuing to stream the movie after all. AND if that doesn't convince you, I got through 30 minutes of the movie and honestly don't know how I made it that long as it is dry, completely unrealistic, and really has no point at all. If I could give negative stars for feeling like I've been depraved of my previous time, I would.

A very tired rehash of old Woody Allen themes and characters. I was so looking forward to this and it kind of broke my heart. Feels like he’s filming first drafts of his scripts these days, tossing them off without much care. How I miss his classic touch!

Sometimes there’s no dignity in a director working too far past his prime. If Charlies Chaplin continued to make movies after “A Countess from Hong Kong,” they would likely have come off as creaky and crudely dated as Woody Allen’s last several films, and just as embarrassing as this one, a disaster on so many levels – the directing, the acting, and especially the writing, the one area of Allen’s attempt at creativity that never reached competency. This script seems to come from someone too isolated, too old and yet too short on actual experience to know how we live today. And Allen certainly doesn’t know how we talk. That’s because Allen isn’t a writer; he’s a recycler of sentimental plots and character from the films of his youth. Those antique twists and plot points are woven into his scripts like those quaint old jazz tunes that decorate his soundtracks. Every single actor who has a speaking part in this film humiliates him or herself, flaying around without apparent direction, delivering Allen’s ghastly, over-written dialogue with no one sensible enough to halt the excess. When some of the actors disappear from the story, as many do, it’s a merciful escape. But the damage is already done. We don’t miss them, and we shudder when they return. Those who must reappear more frequently, because the hold the plot together, are merely subjected to another round of degradation. And we don’t want them back either. Timothee Chalamet, the Woody Allen stand-in, becomes especially more reprehensible with each reappearance. But poor Elle Fanning, a remarkably game actor, does the best she can in a role designed to mortify her in every scene. How I despised Woody Allen’s mean-spirited treatment of her character! Nothing about the background of this vacuous dimwit, who somehow made it from Arizona to a prestigious private college in Upstate New York, makes psychological or even sociological sense. Allen wants us to share in his revulsion for her, but he overreaches to such a bullying extent that I was actually pulling for her throughout.

I know he’s made a few film in Europe, but the experience hasn’t made Allen any more of an artist. His famous confinement to his home base has only deepened and made off-putting his New York chauvinism. His script never wastes an opportunity to say something disparaging about Arizona or any community beyond his own shrinking society. Snobbery can be forgiven, even pleasing, if it’s delivered with conspiratorial wit. But there is no real wit in these anti-rube jabs – just oafish bigotry. And age has seemed to increase Allen’s bitterness towards hyper-Wasp characters, particularly women, probably because he has known them only as the tony types who appeared to him in a lifetime of movie watching, a habit that somehow never made him the artist he longed to be. In my mind, Cherry Jones, playing Chalamet’s ultra-patrician mother, will never recover from that disastrously hokey self-disclosure scene with her son. Listen closely to her story. It’s the kind of clumsy plot twist that only the dullest or most derivative imagination could come up with, the kind that gets a callow student author laughed out a writer’s workshop.

Allen is at his best in interviews, where he is shockingly honest and accurate about his achievements. By his own admission, whatever ambitions Allen sought as a filmmaker remain far from fulfilled. Despite this, I’ve adored many of his films and revisit them often. I am completely oblivious to the shortcomings he insists are there, so I continue to enjoy his movies, nonetheless. But I felt no joy in this one, and I take no pleasure in acknowledging that this charmless and inept film has convinced me that Woody Allen is a filmmaker in serious decline – too old, too out of touch with life, and perhaps to bitter to produce anything humorous, enjoyable or believable. Chaplin knew what to do when he reached this point. And it saved him from further humiliation, while preserving his legacy. But with “Rainy Day in New York,” and a few before it, Allen has gone beneath his nadir. Whatever legacy he earned may be well past preserving.

So, this Blu-ray took a LOOONG time to get here and the tracking information wasn't great. But all is forgiven:

--the movie is a lot of fun. Not perfect and certainly not Mr. Allen's best, but highly entertaining;
--this German Blu-Ray plays on my standard North American player (the German subtitles are removable, too)
--the HD presentation is gorgeous.