Tag Archives: Michael Caine

Movie Review

The Italian Job (1969)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">The Italian Job</strong> (1969)

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2018) If you thought that having seen the 2003 remake of The Italian Job negated the need to see the original, think again, because the original is about twice as inventive and ten times as cool as its remake. It’s off to a roaring start as its protagonist (played with impeccably charm by Michael Caine) gets out of prison and straight into London’s Swingin’ Sixties: In-between the cool car, cool clothes and entourage of beautiful women, he’s living the dream and sharing it with us. The film gets more ordinary as it explains the subsequent caper and assembles the team of specialists to see it through. Noteworthy is the script’s emphasis on a primitive form of computer hacking, as traffic signals are trafficked as part of the caper by a computer expert (played by no less than Benny Hill). Cool scenes abound (“You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”), culminating in a demented car chase through Turin featuring three of the original Cooper Minis and a spirited singing of “Getta Bloomin’ Move On.”  The only real flaw of the film comes at the ending, which famously ends on a literal cliffhanger and deprives the audience of a truly satisfying ending—although it does trade it for a heavy dose of irony. It doesn’t matter all that much, as The Italian Job remains great good fun from beginning to end. Heck, writing about it makes me want to watch it all over again. 

Movie Review

Going in Style (2017)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Going in Style</strong> (2017)

(On Cable TV, December 2017) If Going in Style feels familiar from the first few moments, it’s not just your imagination: there’s been a glut of “old guys going wild” movies in the past half-decade, and they often feature the same actors. Alan Arkin can play old crusties like the best of them, and he almost reprises his The Stand-Up Guys character here to good effect. Morgan Freeman also reprises another character (from Last Vegas), while Michael Caine regrettably doesn’t go full Harry Brown as a pensioner seeking revenge. This is all very familiar stuff, going back to the idea that Hollywood, having maintained those great actor personas for decades, would rather reprise them (with laughter) than dare anything new. Still, under Zach Braff’s direction, Going in Style may be generic stuff but it’s well-made generic stuff. Even knowing where it’s going, the film plays at a pleasant rhythm, the expected set-pieces all falling into place in a comforting rhythm. The actors know what they’re doing, the audience know what they’re doing, and the critique of the excesses of modern American society is carefully kept to a merest whisper as so not to give anyone any ideas. Going in Style is as average as any other Hollywood release these days, but it gets back most of its points on actor appeal and rhythm of execution. 

Movie Review

Hannah and her Sisters (1986)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Hannah and her Sisters</strong> (1986)

(On TV, March 2017) As I’m watching Woody Allen’s filmography in scattered chronological order, I’m struck by how his works seems best approached sequentially—there are definitely phases in his work, and they partially seem to be addressing previous movies. Hannah and Her Sisters does echo other Allen movies—Manhattan (which I saw between watching this film and writing this review) in tone and setting, I’m told that there’s something significant about Mia Farrow’s casting, and there’s a continuity here between Allen’s nebbish hypochondriac and the rest of his screen persona. Absent most of those guideposts, however, Hannah and her Sisters feels a bit … slight as a standalone. It’s nowhere near a bad movie: the quality of the dialogue, twisted psychodrama of unstable pairings and Allen’s own very entertaining persona ensure that this is a quality film. But in trying to find out what makes this a lauded top-tier component of Allen’s filmography, answers don’t come as readily. Part of the problem, I suspect, is that Hannah and Her Sisters does things that have since then been done more frequently—Northeastern romantic dramas about a close-knit group of friends and family? Might as well tag an entire sub-genre of independent dramas … at least two of them featuring Jason Bateman. Familiarity, of course, is trumped by execution and so Hannah and Her Sisters does go far on Allen’s script. Allen himself is his own best male spokesman, although Michael Caine and Max von Sydow both have their moments. Still, the spotlight is on the sisters: Mia Farrow is terrific as the titular Hannah, while Barbara Hershey remains captivating thirty years later and Dianne Wiest completes the trio as something of a screw-up. There’s a little bit of weirdness about the age of the characters—although I suspect that’s largely because Allen plays a character much younger than he is, and I can’t reliably tell the age of the female characters. It’s watchable enough, but I’m not sure I found in Hannah and her Sisters the spark that makes an average film become a good one. I may want to temper my expectations—after all, not every Woody Allen movie is a great one, even in the latter period with which I’m most familiar.

Movie Review

The Man Who Would be King (1975)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">The Man Who Would be King</strong> (1975)

(In French, On TV, February 2017) Maybe I’m seeing the wrong movies, but it seems to me that the large-scale adventure film is a lost art in Hollywood. Those seas of extras, trips through treacherous remote locations and against-all-odds stories seem to belong to another time. Maybe that’s for the best, considering the iffy colonial content of The Man Who Would be King. It’s one thing for noted imperialist Rudyard Kipling (a man of his time, and I’ll be forever grateful for The Jungle Book) to write a cautionary tale about two British soldiers becoming god-emperors in a forgotten part of the world; it’s quite another to see this story today through post-colonial lenses. The Man Who Would Be King does have the considerable benefit of a decent third act in which the so-called civilized men are punished for their hubris, but much of the film’s first hour plays uncomfortably, as white men scheme their way to an empire. Still, as a white guy, I have the implicit privilege of being able to picture myself in the lead role, and once I manage to do that, what’s not to like? Michael Caine and Sean Connery together in a single movie, with Connery sporting glorious handlebar facial hair! Shakira Caine (Michael’s wife) in a pivotal role! Christopher Plummer playing Kipling himself! The film does get substantially more interesting in the third act as the façade of the white men’s deception falls away with real consequences. The ending is very good and justifies the framing device. John Huston’s direction is clean and makes the most of the means available to pre-CGI filmmakers. With a scope and sweep that defies even modern films, The Man Who Would Be King is remarkable even today, and the slight discomfort that the first three-quarter of the film may cause to a modern audience is more than redeemed by a conclusion that must have been sobering even to the original short story’s Victorian readers.

Movie Review

Youth (2015)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Youth</strong> (2015)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2016) I’m not normally a fan of elliptic artistic films driven less by plot than by contemplation of deep themes, but there is something about Youth that makes the experience entertaining, even gripping at times. Benefiting from the acting talents of Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as veteran creators struggling with the accumulated weight of their lives, Youth ponders issues of life and death, loops into vignettes that have little to do with the plot, veers into dream sequences, and discusses the pitfalls of the creative process and fame. It is alternatively grandiose, pretentious, intimate, funny, surreal, tragic and oblique. On paper, it sounds like a terrible mishmash of everything that the writer/director Paolo Sorrentino has thought about in making the film. And yet it works. I’m not sure why. The humour helps a lot, of course, and the way the film uses Madalina Diana Ghenea’s assets gleefully feels like exploitation. But there’s also a suspicion that Youth talks about life in a blunt way, using experiences that most of us will never have (being solicited for knighthood, being unable to secure a famed actress for our newest screenplay, even resting a few weeks in a five-star hotel in the Alps) to talk spectacularly about universal issues. The quality of the images, as incongruous as they can be, also contributes to a renewed interest in the film. No matter why, Youth does succeed at creating a memorable viewing experience. Not bad for a film that many, including myself, would have thrown dismissively in the “made for Cannes” bin.

Movie Review

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Journey 2: The Mysterious Island</strong> (2012)

(On Cable TV, April 2013) One of the most damaging assumptions in film reviewing is the idea that kids’ movies are allowed to be dumber than films aimed at adults.  Never mind the long list of great kids’ movies that can be used as counter-arguments: the “dumb is OK for kids” mentality encourages an acceptance of bad screenwriting that should not be allowed to go unchecked.  So it is that much of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island stands amongst the shoddiest, most poorly-justified pieces of screenwriting I have seen recently.  It doesn’t matter if the original film didn’t cry out for a sequel: this one stands alone and should have been put down until a better script came along.  Parts of it are as insulting to common sense as to defy explanation.  Could I ever manage to convey the inanity of the “three maps” superposition?  The bees segment?  The submarine thing?  The list of gross offenses against elementary logic grows long, but not as long as the unconvincing character dynamics and dumb dialogue.  But here’s the thing: Even if Journey 2 makes little sense from a narrative perspective, it’s pretty good in bits and pieces, as the special effects, set-pieces, charismatic actors and sense of adventure occasionally manage to paper over the dumb parts of the script.  Dwayne Johnson is preposterously charismatic as a lead: the “pecs pop” sequence would have been intolerable with any other actor, but he manages to anchor the film into a grander-than-life reality.  Josh Hutcherson (returning from the previous film) is a dud as a protagonist, but Luis Guzmán is amusing enough as the comic relief, Vanessa Hudgens is cute as the love interest and Michael Caine doesn’t embarrass himself too much despite the sub-par material given to him.  Fortunately, the special effects are there to take the slack and provide some interest in-between the preposterous writing.  Still, a few pretty sequences aren’t much to compensate for a dangerously stupid script.  The usual “kids’ movies are dumb” argument usually ends with a variation on “it’s fine for kids, but adults may want to do something else”.  Well, never mind that: adults should be able to watch films with their kids.  If even you find yourself bored or insulted by Journey 2, stop watching it immediately, and watch something better instead.

Movie Review

Harry Brown (2009)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Harry Brown</strong> (2009)

(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.

Movie Review

Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

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<strong class="MovieTitle">Austin Powers in Goldmember</strong> (2002)

(In theaters, July 2002) As a big fan of the original film’s low-budget spy parody, I was let down by the scatological humor of the sequel and this impression only worsens with this third entry. The jokes become increasingly self-referential, up to a point where there isn’t much here that doesn’t refer to the Austin Powers mythology itself. Spy parody? Forget it! It doesn’t help that the “writer” is working with a palette of roughly five jokes, which are repeated time and time again way beyond the point of diminishing results. What’s worth saving are the first five minutes, which feature a series of celebrity cameos and a high-energy opening sequence. The rest goes downhill fast, even though I think this film is better than the second one if only because the gross-out humor is toned down in comparison. The only latter flashes of humor, though, are a G*dz*ll* reference and a gag on reading white subtitles on white background. (Alas, as with all the other jokes, this last joke is stretched for about a minute more than it ought to be.) On the other hand, it’s still good to see the familiar gang of Powers characters come back. Among the new character, though it’s mixed bag: Michael Caine is particularly good as Nigel Powers. Beyonce Knowles is positively adorable in one scene (in Power’s pad) and simply wasted in the rest of the film; she deserves better material. As for the title character, Goldmember is one of the lamest thing about the film, a character who doesn’t elicit one single laugh. The rest of the film plays as a parade of wasted opportunities; why don’t you go see Undercover Brother for a film that not only does disco-blacksploitation right, but is also considerably funnier to boot?