The Last Wave, Mona Lisa

Well, everyone, I am now once again among the employed. While it feels great, it sadly does mean I may not update as frequently, or watch nearly as many movies. But it also means that soon I will be able to afford to buy Blu Rays again, a luxury I haven't had in some time, and let me tell you, my wish list has been piling up. So keep an eye out, I'll still be around. Just maybe a little less.

The Last Wave, by Peter Weir, 1977


In 1975, Australian director Peter Weir gained worldwide attention with his eerie, hypnotic, and primal horror film Picnic at Hanging Rock. In 1977, he followed up that success with another horror film, which, though updating its setting to the present, still maintained many of Hanging Rock's core attributes. That film is The Last Wave, and though lesser known than its predecessor, it is no slouch itself.

The Last Wave is the story of David Burton (Richard Chamberlain), a lawyer assigned to defend a group of aborigines accused of murder. Burton, normally a rational man, is drawn to the aboriginals, as he begins having apocalyptic visions involving a recent spate of extreme weather.

The movie is actually kind of hard to describe, but The Last Wave does share some thematic and tonal similarities with Picnic at Hanging Rock. Certainly the sense that nature itself is an overwhelming force, trying to push us away. It seems in these two movies that Australia itself deems people (white people, particularly) unwelcome on its land. Also like Hanging Rock, Weir offers few solid answers for the supernatural phenomena, only implications that the viewers must piece together themselves. That just makes it all the more creepy, of course.

The Last Wave is another fascinating, unique film by Peter Weir. If you've seen any of his films, from Picnic at Hanging Rock, to The Mosquito Coast, The Truman Show, or Master and Commander, you know he has a talent for fascinating, unique films. Check it out!

Mona Lisa, by Neil Jordan, 1986


Bob Hoskins is one of those actors I never realized I was going to miss until he was gone. Not dead, I mean, but recently retired due to Parkinson's Disease. Of course, to me, he was always Eddie, the gruff detective in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but he really did have a lot of great roles. His little role in Terry Gilliam's Brazil is a favorite of mine, and I just recently watched The Long Good Friday, which he was awesome in (just watch the subtle changes of emotions on his face in that final shot).

Neil Jordan's film noir, Mona Lisa, is another high point in Hoskins' career. He earned an Oscar nomination for best actor for his performance as George, an ex-con hired as a driver for Simone, a high class call girl (Cathy Tyson). The two eventually befriend each other, and he she asks of him the favor of tracking down a friend of hers, a teenaged heroin addicted prostitute of the street walking variety, who is in too deep. He is also keeping an eye on one of Simone's clients, trying to dig up dirt on him for one of his associates (Michael Caine). George soon finds himself immersed in the seedy underworld of London, and runs afoul of all sorts of bad people.

This is a really cool movie, man. I do not believe I have seen any of Neil Jordan's films before (though I do know the ending of The Crying Game), and I am quite impressed by Mona Lisa. It's dark and grimy, and the characters are interesting, and the performances are great all around. I could have done without the montage of Hoskins checking looking for Simone's friend in all the local peep shows and sex clubs, but that was only because I had to listen to Phil Collins. And hey, it was 1986. If Phil Collins hadn't been playing on that montage, he would have been playing in someone else's really good movie. What I'm saying is, I recommend Mona Lisa, but be warned: Phil Collins.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase

I was going to just skip writing a review for this movie. It's actually okay, but nothing to write home about. But guess what? I am obsessive compulsive. I don't think it's that bad a case, but it's bad enough that my brain absolutely will not allow me to skip over a movie for my dumb little blog! So I reached a compromise with my broken-record brain: This is a secret review. Kind of a hidden Easter Egg. I'm not going to direct anybody to it through links on Twitter or Facebook, because I have nothing of value to talk about with this movie. But if you happen to be a regular reader (mostly friends and family) or you stumble across this while searching for something else, well, here's your reward!

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase is based on an old kid's book that my wife says is really good. It's directed by Stuart Orme, who I have no knowledge of. It's about two little girls who are left at their family manor in the care of a distant cousin. The cousin turns out to be evil, and takes over the house and claim to the manor, forcing the two girls into hard labor. With the help of some of the friendlier servants and some kid who lives in the cave, the girls journey to London to get their crazy distant cousin lady off their lawn. There are also wolves.

That's the long and short of it. Okay, that's really just the short of it. There's some kind of spooky stuff for kids in there. You know, in that age-old Dickensian British way, with the mean aunts mistreating kids and all that. I bet this freaked out some little English kids in the 80's.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was watchable, but I guess that fact is going to remain our little secret. I wish I had a prize for whoever finds it, because that would be fun. Good bye!

The Italian Job (1969)

Peter Collinson's The Italian Job is one of the coolest movies ever made. Almost everything about it is "cool", or at least embodied what was "cool" in 1969. It's a slick, funny heist movie, a smart comedy, and an action movie all rolled into one. It has a score by Quincy Jones, one of the coolest composers ever. And let's face it, you don't get much cooler than 1960's Michael Caine (or now Michael Caine, for that matter).

Caine plays Charlie Croker, a career criminal just released from prison, who catches wind of a big heist in Italy from the widow of a deceased friend. He had the heist all planned out, but was executed by the Mafia in Italy before he could pull it off. Croker, with the help of a crime lord still in prison, assembles his own crew of specialists and getaway drivers to finish the Italian Job.

The heist involves them starting a traffic jam in Rome and robbing an armored car full of gold bricks in broad daylight. And they have to do it from right under the noses of the local authorities and the mafia.

Michael Caine is the greatest. He is so fun to watch in this movie, he gets tons of great one liners and exchanges with the other characters. Even though his character is a criminal, he's so charming and likeable that you want him to succeed.

The one weak link for me in the movie is the casting of Benny Hill. Now, I understand that even Benny Hill was considered cool back in England, 1969. But I just can't find him funny. He doesn't work for me. For what it's worth, I think he was really well cast, as the computer guy they enlist from a sanitarium. They imply he was a rapist or at the very least a sex offender, which is pretty appropriate for Benny Hill. But then they try to make him lovable, like these are just some wacky quirks he has. And yes, there is a scene where he squeezes a fat lady's butt and chases her around in fast motion.

The car chase at the end is one of the best ever, not far behind the one in The French Connection. It wins a lot of points for having the three getaway cars be mini coopers. The final scene is hilarious, and I'm not going to spoil it, because it's such a treat. I will say, I think it owes a little something to Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear.

The Italian Job is such a fun movie. It reminded me a lot of Steven Soderbergh. In fact, though I have never seen the original Sinatra Ocean's 11, I would not be surprised to learn that Soderbergh took more inspiration from The Italian Job for his remake. They have pretty much the same sense of style and humor. Check it out!

Bedazzled (1967)

I've seen pretty much all of the big comedies that you are supposed to have seen, but somehow, Stanley Donen's Bedazzled has managed to elude me until now. I saw the remake back in 2000, and I am happy to the original is much, MUCH better.

Bedazzled is written by and starring the comedy duo of Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. It follows the journey of Stanley Moon (Moore), a lowly fry cook at Wimpy's, hopelessly in love with Margaret (Eleanor Bron), the waitress. Unable to work up the nerve to even talk to her, Moon is approached by none other than the devil himself (Peter Cook), who goes by the name of George Spiggott these days. In exchange for his soul, Spiggott will grant him seven wishes in order to win over Margaret.

Each wish rewrites reality and Stanley attempts to win over Margaret with his newfound advantages; as an intellectual, a rock star, a rich man, etc. Moon quickly realizes that every wish he makes comes at a price, as Spiggott exploits loopholes in his wording to make sure Stanley strikes out every time.

The three leads, Cook, Moore, and Bron, are all really great. Each time Stanley makes a wish, they effectively transform into different characters, so they each end up playing several. My favorite wish was when Stanley turns into a rock star. He dances around the stage, desperately screaming for love. All appears to be going well, Margaret is swooning for him. That is, until the next act begins, and Spiggott comes out and sings a song that comes across as effortlessly cool as Stanley's came across desperate. He wins the screaming girls over, and Stanley the rock star has lost out to the next big thing and fleeting nature of fame.

Also included in the cast are George Spiggott's employees, the seven deadly sins, which include cameos by Barry Humphries as Envy and Raquel Welch as Lust. She's all over the posters and ads for the movie even though she's only in two scenes.

I also love the banter between Cook and Moore. They had such great chemistry, and the movie demonstrates it. The movie is very smart and heavy with well written dialogue between the two of them. It isn't all dialogue, though. Moore shows off his physical comedic chops and there is plenty of silliness to go around. For example, whenever a wish goes bad and Stanley wants out, he has to blow a raspberry with his mouth. This provides for some pretty amazing comedy, as it gets funnier and funnier with each wish.

Bedazzled is hilarious. It's one of the all time great comedies. I thought I had seen them all. I wonder what else I've missed?

Alfie

I didn't know very much about Alfie before I saw it. I expected it to be a swinging 60's comedy about a charming ladies' man blah blah blah. It really wasn't that. It was something so much better. This movie actually comes down really hard against Alfie's choice of lifestyle.

Alfie, played by Michael Caine in one of his career defining roles, only thinks he's a charming ladies' man. He drifts from woman to woman, ditching them without a moment's thought if they show any signs that they're growing attached. His perceived perfect life begins to show cracks when one of his girls gets pregnant. Against his better judgment, she keeps the kid, and he finds himself acting as a weekend dad. He takes to it for a while, but is still unwilling to commit to the kid's mother, and is thus kicked out of the relationship. Not long after that, a health scare gives Alfie his first glimpse at his own mortality, which only persuades him to continue his attachment-free lifestyle with even more reckless abandon.

Caine as Alfie is all bravado. He acts cocky and confident, and addresses the camera like he has all the answers. He is a man without any respect, for women (he dehumanizes them by calling them 'birds' or even referring to them as 'it'), for other men, for social structures, or for himself. He constantly breaks the fourth wall and even basically tells the opening credits to fuck off, showing us that he has no respect for the established rules of moviemaking either.

How can anyone respect a man without any respect? They can't, and it's a slap in the face for Alfie when that fact is bluntly laid out before him. We as the audience can't respect Alfie, either. Instead, he's an object of pity, a shallow man who runs away from everything of substance ever presented to him.

This was the first time I had ever seen young Michael Caine at work. I think the oldest Caine film I had ever seen before this was Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. You can see how he became such a huge star. Just like the women he seduces, Alfie draws you in with his superficial charm and wit, then pushes you away with his crass and insensitive behavior towards others.

Lewis Gilbert directed Alfie, and it's quite an accomplishment, though I find it fascinating and a bit confusing that he would make a movie decrying this sort of lifestyle and follow it up with You Only Live Twice, in which James Bond lives pretty much exactly the same way, but with none of the consequences.

In the end, after hurting a lot of people with his selfish ways, Alfie himself suffers a series of personal blows, and you could say he learns a lesson, but the movie doesn't tell you for sure if he has changed his behavior for good. He's not a young man, and he's pretty set in his ways, and it may be too late for him.

Alfie (the movie, not the character) is funny, thoughtful, and full of compassion. Not only compassion for the women who fall victim to Alfie's charms. There's even a little compassion left over for Alfie himself, who thinks he has all the answers, but really has not a one.

The Innocents

Haunted House movies have seen better days. The trends in horror are ever shifting, but right now we're getting all these shoddy, handheld, "realistic" ghost movies which we're supposed to believe is found footage even though the people in them are clearly acting. Fifty years ago, however, we were getting some quality ghost movies, atmospheric, unsettling, with rich visuals, and loaded with depth and subtext. Movies like Robert Wise's The Haunting, one of my all-time favorites, and this movie, Jack Clayton's The Innocents, which I think just might give The Haunting a run for it's money.

The Innocents is a 1961 adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, with a screenplay by Truman Capote. It stars Deborah Kerr as a woman hired to look over a rich guy's country estate and in particular his niece and nephew. He's too busy living it up in London and enjoying his "bachelorhood" and can't be bothered. On the surface these children seem alright, but she begins to suspect something is amiss with them. When she uncovers some unsavory secrets of the history of the estate, she comes to believe that the children are possessed by two former tenants and the only way to save these children is to force them to confront the ghosts.

The movie sets itself apart at the very beginning, by opening with just a black screen with the little girl singing a haunting song (which recurs throughout the rest of the movie). We all know that little girls singing is instant creepiness. Then as the credits roll on the right, a pair of hands fade in on the left, looking as though they're furiously praying. As the credits end, the owner of the hands is revealed to be Deborah Kerr. Really artfully done.

The two children in the movie are great. They don't feel like kids acting like adults, they really do feel like adults acting like children. When they think nobody is watching they slip back into adult mode. The boy gets especially creepy when he gets the hots for Deborah Kerr.

The screenplay, direction, and cinematography are all top notch, too. The cinematography is by the great Freddie Francis, a guy whose career I find fascinating. I love that he did such beautiful camerawork as a cinematographer with films like The Innocents and Glory, and made fun, goofy horror films, like Tales from the Crypt and Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly as a director. There's some incredible cinematography in The Innocents, including a memorable montage of overlaying images.

There's a fascinating sexual subtext through the movie. They, of course, dance around it for the most part, but we learn that that the people that may be haunting this place may have performed sexual acts in front of these kids. We also are treated to a very unsettling kiss or two. I would, in fact, say that the mature subject matter in this 50-year-old movie and the 100-year-old story it's adapted from would hold up as shocking to many people even today. I couldn't help but wonder after watching The Innocents if Henry James was perhaps sexually abused as a child. I'm sure that has at least been theorized by others, I don't know much about the guy.

The Innocents is a classic ghost movie, certainly one of the best I've seen. It would be great to watch it as a double feature with The Haunting on a stormy October night (hey, like tonight!). I know that the themes and styles of horror are cyclical, and I know that ghost movies will pendulum back in the direction of films such as this sooner or later. We had a decent run of them 10 or 15 years ago. But while we're waiting for that, we'll always be able to fall back on the classics.