Wonder Wheel

Wonder Wheel (2017) is Woody Allen's period drama, available to watch online on iFILM. Coney Island, early 1950s: a fading carnival of neon, clattering rides and a Ferris wheel turning over the beach.

Four lives knot together under those lights. Ginny (Kate Winslet) once dreamed of acting and now waits tables at a clam house, quietly smoldering with regret. Her husband Humpty (James Belushi) runs the carousel and drowns his troubles in drink. Then Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a young lifeguard with ambitions to write plays, drifts into Ginny's orbit and reignites something she thought was long dead. Complicating everything, Humpty's estranged daughter Carolina (Juno Temple) shows up hiding from her gangster husband. Jealousy, longing and betrayal pull the four toward a reckoning.

Allen stages it like an open-air stage tragedy: cinematographer Vittorio Storaro drenches every frame in molten sunset gold, and the characters speak as if reciting monologues. Winslet pours herself into the lead, and the whole thing rides on her performance. This one's for viewers who like slow, melancholy retro melodrama with a bitter aftertaste. Stream Wonder Wheel (2017) online on iFILM.