One of the most annoying things about being a writer is that I’m best able to process things with my pen or at my keyboard when I’ve had a moment to let things sink in. I’m a big believer in note-taking, especially in film criticism because automatic writing allows some pools of unrealized creativity to eke out. Sometimes I discover things of which I’d been previously unaware until I read back the barely legible sentence fragments I’d scribbled out on a tiny notebook in a darkened theatre. Yet, as a writer first and foremost, I have a harder time with extemporaneous speaking.

The wonderful PR agencies and studio representatives who are kind and courageous enough to screen their films for us wait expectantly with notebooks in their own hands in well-lit lobbies, hoping to get our immediate reactions. Often I struggle to come up with something that’s not only intelligent but balanced. If I hate a film, as a polite Midwesterner (or it could be just feminine instinct), I always find that I want to find something — anything — to say about it that’s positive before I apologetically express my dislike.

Yet, intriguingly, when I’m blown away by a film, often I’m nearly equally at a loss for words. Case in point: Vicky Cristina Barcelona. On the surface, it begins as a typical Woody Allen film with a European feel including a voice-over narration which in this case works well since the setting is Barcelona as we follow two American female tourists on summer holiday. Predictably, issues of love, sex, infidelity, and artistic temperament come into play, per Allen’s most frequently visited themes.

Yet, as a huge Allen fan who’s seen every one of his films (including some I can practically recite from memory), I couldn’t get over the feeling that had I walked into the theatre after his traditional black and white credits had rolled. Just five minutes late and with no prior knowledge of the piece, I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that it was a film made by Woody Allen.

And admittedly some of his works — even the light, entertaining trifles of the past few years — have felt self-conscious and claustrophobic, which make his epic tragedies like Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream far greater by comparison. However, I'm thrilled to write that Vicky Cristina Barcelona is breezy, earthy, intoxicating, and frankly, sexy as hell.

And yes, I’m aware that as a professional, “sexy as hell” isn’t the most astute observation yet as the only female critic in attendance with a small crowd of men no doubt hoping to ogle Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz’s much-discussed “threesome” (which ultimately consists of a passionate kiss and discussion), I felt a need to represent how the film played to a female audience and one of the first phrases out of my mouth to the eager representative was in fact “sexy as hell.”