"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" ***1/2 (out of four): Woody Allen's breezy comic fable is his most effortless and insightful in years - and nothing short of a love letter to love itself, in all its maddening glory.

I've said it before. To be a life-long Woody Allen fan you have to be something of a masochist. The writer-director has relentlessly, stubbornly, unthinkably churned out a movie a year for over three decades. To see them all (and yes, I have - even 2003's "Anything Else"), you have to take the good with the bad. Of late - particularly in the post-scandal years - there've been more bad than good. But once in a while, every so often, the Woodman can still churn out a gem. The last great Allen movie was 2005's "Match Point", before that you'd have to look back to 1999's underappreciated "Sweet and Lowdown". Two good movies six years apart is nothing to sneeze at...unless of course you've watched the five others that came in between.

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