Yesterday Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman called Joe Wright‘s The Woman in the Window one of the worst films of the year. The fifth worst, to be exact. I agree for the most part, although I did find the first 45 minutes fairly engaging. Poor Tony Gilroy — producer Scott Rudin brought him in to rewrite portions and try and save the film, but at the end of the day critics blamed Gilroy as much as the others.
Anyway, re-reading my review triggered a nearly 40 year-old memory. Sometime in the late summer of ‘82 I was heading uptown on the IND and somehow missed my 96th street stop. I was daydreaming. I got off at 116th street and went up top and crossed the street to go back downtown. Almost immediately I was challenged by a youngish dude of color who angrily wanted to know what I was doing in that neck of the woods, or, as he put it, in “our” neighborhood. I shrugged and kept walking.
Racial climate-wise the ’80s were a bit flinchy. Plus that part of town wasn’t as attractive. Today the Central Park West and 110th street neighborhood has its own this-and-that flavor. At the same time it feels less traditionally Manhattan-esque. Columbus and Amsterdam avenues aren’t as sexy and boutique-y in that region, especially with those towering project-style apartment buildings. Ditto 125th Street, but even 125th (which I visited a couple of weeks ago) feels a bit lacking in terms of cultured Manhattan coolness.
The general thing these days is that you can’t have mixed opinions about any West Side nabe north of 100th street. If you do you’re a racist. Residence-fantasy-wise, my favorite Manhattan nabes are still West Village / Soho / Tribeca, Chelsea, East Village, Murray Hill and the Madison Square Park region. Just like the old days.
The Woman in the Window begins with Amy Adams, Julianne Moore and Gary Oldman living in nice brownstone apartments on West 124th Street — apartments that face each other. But even with Harlem gentrification having begun around 15 or 20 years ago (much to native dwellers’ discontent) I simply didn’t believe that those three would live on West 124th.
The Harlem thing struck me as “woke precious” — playing it politically safe, Wright and Gilroy and Rudin performing for their woke colleagues in the film industry, etc.