Take the Money and Run

He’ll certainly never make a better film than Manhattan, especially considering his output in the last few years. But for pure entertainment, we’ll take Woody Allen as goofy joke-schlepper any day—the Woody in his New Yorker essays, his Standup Comic album, and his first half-dozen films, including this terrific 1969 mockumentary. His first full-fledged directorial effort is a daffy but deft sendup of gangster movies, loosely held together as a biography of incompetent robber Virgil Starkwell, whose poor penmanship turns his holdup note into “I have a gub,” and who argues with his wife about what shirt to wear during a bank heist. (“Beige is in poor taste,” he insists.) Sure, it’s lightweight, but it stole our hearts anyway. (Available July 6)