It’s easy to separate the good recent Woody Allen films from the bad ones. If the film you’re watching features dialogue that you know good and well real people (or even representations of real people) would never say, you’ve walked into a bad Woody Allen movie. The writer-director’s latest is You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which goes downhill fast from the alluring title. Even Allen’s best cast to date can’t stop the bleeding, or the bleating: Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, and Antonio Banderas are simply bowled over by Allen’s directionless dialogue, a collection of words devoid of emotion or dramatic intelligence. It’s the same stuff he’s been doing for years—love, affairs, and the like—so how could the subject give Allen such fits at this stage?