(On TV, November 2018) Twenty-first-century cinephiles may be forgiven the occasional pang of synthetic nostalgia for some periods as depicted by the movies. 1960s London, for instance, has been portrayed in exuberant ways by an entire sub-genre, celebrating the excesses of the time while downplaying its less playful aspects. Ironically, it takes another movie to deconstruct the archetype of the 1960s London playboy: Alfie, made at the height of the Swignin’ Sixties, pulls no punches in depicting the kind of flawed personalities that would embrace such a lifestyle, and the consequences that come with it. One of Michael Caine’s earliest claims to fame, Alfie follows a young man with more “birds” than a pet shop, and with enough charisma to turn to the camera and tell us, the viewers, what he’s thinking. Alas, the charm grows thin and the self-deception becomes impossible to ignore the longer the film goes on as his romantic problems grow bigger, he’s afflicted with health issues and distances himself from his own son. It gets much, much worse. And even then the protagonist tries to make light of the situation by trying to get the audience on his side. It doesn’t work, though, not in the film’s second half. It’s difficult to realize today how groundbreaking the film was by the standards of the time, not only in showing the playboy lifestyle, but also the darker side of it. But seen from today, it feels like a near-contemporary commentary (much like Saturday Night Fever) on something that later movies have attempted to romanticize beyond recognition. Alfie remains a good movie … but don’t be surprised to realize at the end that you will never want to watch it again.

(In French, On TV, October 2018) Oh, Michael Caine, how could you? I suppose that every long and distinguished career has its duds, but it’s still rare to associate such a great performer with a project as ill-advised from premise to polish as Blame it on Rio. It’s bad enough that the film has a fortysomething man having an affair with his friend’s 18-year-old daughter—the script does no one any favour as treating it as a sort of life-affirming comic experience for everyone involved. (Conveniently enough, the protagonist’s wife is later revealed to have had an affair with his friend … and the film thinks that explains and forgives everything.) For once, you can’t blame 2018-era viewers for revulsion as something that was de rigueur back in 1984—contemporary reviews of the film were just as horrified by the premise and nonplussed by its execution. Taking the form of a farce, Blame it on Rio compounds the wrongness of its premise by treating it as a source of wacky hijinks. How droll that the friend talks about killing his daughter’s unknown lover right in front of the protagonist! Even worse is the obvious approach of the film, which seems designed to cater to fortysomething fantasies rather than a realistic (or, heck, an empathetic) examination of the situation. No—in this film, the teenagers are merely fantasy figures actively looking for middle-aged lovers. (Try not to retch when the film makes a point of highlighting that the protagonist has known his teenager lover since she was a baby.) There is a remarkable disconnect between what the film assures us is normal, even light-hearted behaviour and what we suspect would happen if that scenario played in real-life. The whole thing feels dirty, and not the good kind of dirty—the kind where I can’t even bring myself to mention the name of the actress playing the teenager for fear of perpetuating the film’s voyeuristic exploitation of her nudity. To be fair, Rio is beautiful, there’s some material here that is mildly funny, and Caine gives it all he’s got—but the jokes fall flat considering the context, and we feel sorrier for Caine-the-actor than the character he’s playing. As a final indignity, the soundtrack is also too terrible for words. I thought last week that OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus was the worst film I’ve seen about Rio (and that came soon after Moonraker), but that title didn’t last long. Don’t blame Rio. Oh, Michael Caine, how could you?

(Snagfilms Streaming, October 2018) Social standards of acceptability change over time, and movies such as Zulu can illustrate these shifts with blinding clarity. It is, after all, a film in which a small band of British soldiers defend an outpost against a far more numerically numerous groups of Zulu warriors. Featuring Michael Caine in one of his earliest roles, it’s a war movie with an expansive scope: The battle sequences are inspired by American westerns (which bring up a whole other bag of issues to consider), and they take up the full widescreen. Of course, from our perspective, the film is about something else that we’re not quite as fond of seeing: imperial forces killing native populations. Yet at the time of its release, fifty-five years ago, Zulu was perceived as both a stirring tribute to British imperialism, and as unusually respectful depiction of the Zulu warriors: They are portrayed as clever, organized and deadly. Alas, the film does show its clear allegiances later in the film as the Zulus pay tribute to the resisting Englishmen, once again going back to the increasingly ridiculous trope of having marginalized characters affirm the nobility of our (while, male, etc.) protagonists. This being said, Zulu still plays rather well for most of its duration. Modern sensibilities about seeing groups of humans slaughter each other don’t quite manage to dampen the stirring combat sequences, the heroic sacrifices of the English-speaking characters and the good old last-stand theatrics. I do have a number of issues with the result, but Zulu is what it is.

(In theatres, June 2010) The best reason to see this art-house exploitation film is to watch Michael Caine, visibly showing his age, reprising some of his stone-cold killer mannerism.  There isn’t anything more about this film, after all, than a revenge fantasy featuring a freshly-widowed pensioner taking revenge on a bunch of teenage hoodlums.  Starting from a paranoid view of the world, Harry Brown doesn’t spare a tut-tut while describing the depravity of today’s youth.  It does get quite a bit more enthusiastic, however, in showing its protagonist use his old Marine training to take down the worst of the local teens.  Caine with a gun is always fun to watch, even though the movie around him remains an uneasy blend of art-house drama and genre shoot’em-up.  The flaccid pacing, sure-footed cinematography and attention paid to Caine’s center-stage performance are more in-line with Oscar-baiting movies than the sudden bloody violence, squalid setting and unintelligibly profane characters.  Like many modern vigilante-justice films, Harry Brown remains stuck between condemning violence and indulging into the sheer thrill of it: Different kinds of viewers will have different ideas as to what are the film’s best sequences.  While the result doesn’t escape a few flaws (including a finale that seems to reach for unnecessary connections between characters), it’s a watchable film that is perhaps most interesting in comparison with other vigilante films, other British crime dramas and other Michael Caine tough guys.