This summer’s release of Whatever Works marks Woody Allen’s return to New York, where his most well-known and highly-regarded masterpieces take place. Since 2005, Allen has released four movies shot in Europe, and they came with a mixed bag of results.

The first three films from Allen’s European tour took place in London. For my money, and seemingly by general consensus, the best of these three was his 2005 release, Match Point. Match Point treads within many of the same territories as Crimes and Misdemeanors, my personal favorite Allen film, yet offers some interesting contrasts as well. Mainly, the writing doesn’t fit his younger characters as well and there is little humor. It does, however, do an excellent job of creating real suspense and is a solid entry into Allen’s library. Scoop and Cassandra’s Dream seem to be mailed-in efforts. The jokes seem like leftovers from his better films, the drama is not engaging, and the story lines are much less inspired versions of a topic that Allen has commonly visited.

Last summer, Allen’s fourth consecutive Europe-based film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, was released to his best critical reception of the decade. It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture: Comedy or Musical, and Penelope Cruz won an Oscar for her excellent supporting performance. For me, one of the reasons that the film succeeds where the London films don’t is the way that Allen films the city, showing as much interest in it as he does for his wonderful characters. A trademark of his work is that New York is alive in all of his best films, and Barcelona feels much the same in this effort.

Along with the change in scenery, Allen cast Scarlett Johansson in three of the four European movies. While they may not make as many movies together as Allen created with Mia Farrow (thirteen) or Diane Keaton (eight), the collaboration is hopefully one that will yield more solid results in the future. Johansson’s Scoop performance feels very odd overall, but she shines in both Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Overall I found his European excursion an intriguing and refreshing period of his career. It appears that he found it rewarding as well, because yet another London film is set to be released in 2010 with an all-star cast starring Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins, among others. Woody Allen is perhaps my favorite director and I hope that Whatever Works is better than the majority of initial critical responses would indicate.