“I don’t think anyone has ever not come to a film of mine that they thought they would enjoy,” Woody Allen tells N.Y. Times contributor David Itzkoff in a piece about Magic in the Moonlight (Sony Classics, 7.25). “Nothing keeps them away if they think they’ll enjoy the film. And if they don’t think they’ll enjoy the film, nothing we can do ever brings them in.”

In other words, people can always smell the hits and the flops before they see them, and so they do what they want to do, often regardless of reviews and marketing (or in defiance of them). I don’t fit that mold, of course, but I have instincts like anyone else. Except I often don’t want to see a lot of the hits I can smell coming because I know they’ll be coarse and assaultive and probably infuriating. And then sometimes I’m surprised, which is what I live for.

I wasn’t sure about Magic in the Moonlight at first — I tend to like contemporary Woodies more than his period pieces — but I realized early on it’s very clearly about something (i.e., the natural default of agnostic skepticism vs. the curious pull of wanting to believe in magical forces) that has nothing to do with any particular time period. No review until 7.18 but I can at least say that.

Who really wants to see Zach Braff‘s Wish I Was Here (7.18)? Or I Origins? Or Rob Reiner‘s And So It Goes? I’ve wanted to see Anton Corbijn‘s A Most Wanted Man for the last six months (i.e., since Sundance ’14) and I finally get to see it tonight. I don’t want to know about The Fluffy Movie. I’ve seen Joe Swanberg‘s Happy Christmas but now’s not the time. Hercules? Forget it. Luc Besson’s Lucy…the word from France isn’t good but I haven’t seen it so another time.