Wonder Wheel

Wonder Wheel is a crime drama written and directed by Woody Allen (Café Society, Irrational Man). The prolific filmmaker continues his pace of making a film a year that dates back to 1982. This one stars Jim Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, and Kate Winslet.

WONDER WHEEL tells the story of four characters whose lives intertwine amid the hustle and bustle of the Coney Island amusement park in the 1950s: Ginny (Kate Winslet), a melancholy, emotionally volatile former actress now working as a waitress in a clam house; Humpty (Jim Belushi), Ginny’s rough-hewn carousel operator husband; Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a handsome young lifeguard who dreams of becoming a playwright; and Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s long-estranged daughter, who is now hiding out from gangsters at her father’s apartment.

“I try and cast actresses who have enormous range and enormous depth and intensity and I want to try and provide them with opportunities to exercise their great gifts,” Allen says. “I knew I needed a tremendous actress to play [Ginny]. There are only a limited number of actresses in the English language that are that deep and that great. Kate Winslet is one of them, and when we started casting, her name came up quickly.”

“Woody wanted to hire me,” adds Winslet, “and I had to step up to the plate and be the goods that he’d hired, and be the best possible version of those goods that I could find within myself.”

Wonder Wheel is rated 14A.