We are the Self-Preservation Society

 THE ITALIAN JOB (1969)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is nothing particularly thrilling about the caper in "The Italian Job," other than the complications in setting it up. At the point this caper comedy was released in 1969, and we already had the standard set by the wonderful 1964 heist picture "Topkapi." The truth is that "The Italian Job" is a hysterical, partly wacky comedy that is more concerned with the aspects of escape than the caper itself. 

Michael Caine is an affable crook just out of the pokey named Charlie Croker, who is ready for a new heist job just as he's being released! The heist includes robbing a truck containing 4 million dollars worth of gold in Turin, Italy and part of the plan involves replacing computer data reels to cause a traffic jam and knock out surveillance cameras so the thieves can escape with the loot. Benny Hill (yes, Benny Hill) is the Professor who is something of a computer expert...and a sexual pervert! We also have the Mob on hand who materialize out of nowhere on the cliffs just as our robbers travel through dangerously curvy roads. 

"The Italian Job" contains many laughs throughout and the extended chase finale involving mini Cooper vehicles is comically zany and enticing on many levels (literally). Unfortunately, the thieves are nondescript at best with no color or variety to them except for Benny Hill as the beaming Professor who just has to grab a woman's behind. Michael Caine comes off best of course and dominates the proceedings, especially the brief interlude that involves having a romp in the hay with a few women (Swinging 60's after all)! But even Caine's relationship with his dutiful girlfriend Lorna (Maggie Blye) comes off stale - there is not much chemistry there and hardly any close-ups. However there is Noel Coward as a crime lord still serving time in prison who finances the plot - he has a patriotic bent to him as if this heist was a political statement of England winning one over Italy.  

"The Italian Job" is a nutty 99-minute entertainment with a nerve-frying cliffhanger of an ending that is just about perfect. The characters are colorless yet it is Caine who gives it enough maximum vitality to maintain interest. No movie this zany is worth passing up.  

Getting Away with Murder

 A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Michael Caine's smoldering anger and witty charm can easily go hand-in-hand with black comedy. "A Shock to the System" is the perfect film to encapsulate his gifts because Caine can do just about anything - he is at your disposal to entertain and boy does he deliver.

Something is already off at the beginning of this lacerating black comedy. Caine's Graham Marshall is fixing a light bulb in the basement and almost gets electrocuted as he holds onto a lead pipe. He starts laughing, thought not maniacally. Boom, he has an idea but we don't know what that is. Graham and his semi-annoying wife (Swoosie Kurtz) are hoping for Graham's promotion as boss of the marketing firm in Wall Street. Lo and behold, he doesn't get the job. It angers him to such a boiling point that he accidentally pushes a homeless person onto a speeding subway. Graham gets away with it, and that light bulb in the basement? Well, geez, imagine if his wife were to touch the bulb and the pipe! Once, it doesn't work, second time's the charm? 

Graham has a snarling contempt for his boss (Peter Riegert) who got the promotion and has a wealthy lifestyle that includes a speedboat, a ranch and a stunning girlfriend named Tara, not the plantation! Yet Graham is old-school since he has no use for such wealth, he only wants to rewire his house! Graham knows he is older than the yuppies at the firm and possibly on exit mode soon enough. Yet the murders keep him young and alert. Oh, yes, more murders and twists and turns are to be expected. Elizabeth McGovern plays the caring account executive who falls for Graham in a time of need yet slowly becomes suspicious of his behavior. It all comes down to a gold lighter and a smart, knowing detective (Will Patton), though nothing that happens can be anticipated. Boom and Bravo!

"A Shock to the System" is neither too sardonic nor too satirical - think of it as "American Psycho," in retrospect, without the bloodshed. Director Jan Egleson sometimes refuses to show certain violent acts committed by Graham - the director often quickly cuts away from a murder that is about to happen. When Egleson shows a violent act, it has black-humored impact. One superbly-timed explosion in the film will rattle your nerves not to mention the clickety-clack music score to provide extra tension. And sometimes you think Graham is ready to show how much power he has, and he doesn't use it. "A Shock to the System" is shocking in how clever the film plays with us. Michael Caine is the movie and has a great supporting cast to keep him and us on our toes. Boom!

Half-baked gumshoe plot

 PEEPER (1975)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Michael Caine has always had the uncanny ability to make us notice him, his every move, his every gesture. Caine makes the most of it in "Peeper" and for the first forty minutes or so, he's got us glued to the screen wondering what playful excursion he will be embroiled in next. "Peeper" unfortunately loses ground and can only keep its flimsy plot aloft for long.

Caine exudes the mannerisms of a private detective way in over his head as Leslie Tucker. His name comes with some derisive laughter and, naturally being a noir story to some degree, he is the narrator and since that it is Michael Caine with his dry delivery, this works for a while. An irascible client (Michael Constantine) wants Tucker to find his long-lost daughter who may been adopted and could be the potential heir to a fortune. Enter the less than pleasant Prendergast family, who have a wealth of riches, and there are two key sisters in the family who might fit the bill of the adopted daughter. Kitty Winn is one daughter and there is the resplendent glow of Natalie Wood (all apologies to Winn, an exemplary actress in her own right, but Wood steals the movie from her). There is also the kooky Uncle Prendergast (Thayer David), a grumpy old man who seems to hate everything and everyone, including Tucker. Oh, lest we forget there are two goons after Tucker and Natalie Wood, both well-played with pizzazz by the reliable Timothy Carey and Don Calfa.  

"Peeper" has a smooth handling of itself at first, poking fun at the noir trappings of a silly plot and investigation but it ultimately doesn't lead to much. But that is only part of the problem: as good as Caine is as a bumbling detective, we only believe it for so long. The screenplay doesn't give him or the plot any real spin or find any real twists. The finale aboard a cruise ship is so flat and poorly edited that it is difficult to figure out what happened to the two goons who have been hounding Tucker throughout the movie. There is a vicious, snarling dog at one point threatening Tucker and his ability to outsmart the dog lacks basic comic timing. The scenes do not gel or provide much payoff. Only Caine gives it his all because the guy is that damn good an actor. It also needed a damn good screenplay. 

Footnote: Why start the film with a Bogart impersonator and not end it that way as well? 

Unpatriotic spy business

THE WHISTLE BLOWER (1986)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

In the first half-hour of the often riveting and disquieting "The Whistle Blower," we witness what looks like a  funeral procession for someone though we are not sure who - Queen Elizabeth II is seen at the procession. It turns out it is Remembrance Day in Whitehall, London as war veterans march past the Cenotaph, a monument to fallen soldiers which is sort of like the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in D.C. Then we see a domestic drama of sorts with Michael Caine as Frank, former naval officer who once worked for intelligence talking to his son, Bob (Nigel Havers, who really looks he could be Caine's son) who works as a linguist for the same intelligence headquarters (GCHQ) and is revealing top-secret information to his dad. We know something is afoot when vans are seen following them, recording their conversations including when they are in Bob's apartment. Disquieting indeed.

I will not reveal much except to say that Bob is killed - there is an apparent accident where he fell from the roof of the apartment. Frank knows something is up, and he starts making inquiries including his son's colleagues. It all eventually to a truly nail-biting sequence where Caine is in front of what could be a British echelon of leaders who control the spies and the information leaks, not to mention talk of Soviet moles and how people are expendable. The film does more than imply that the British spy circuit have a fondness for Soviet Russia, more so than the capitalist might of the United States or Great Britain. Some of these utterances by reliable pros like James Fox and  Sir John Gielgud give the film a greater credibility - they ooze the power of maintaining their secrecy over treasonable actions.

As I said, I can't divulge much more though many will see the parallels to spy novelists like John Le Carre. "The Whistle Blower" is not refreshing in its storytelling or plot, more so with its laid-back tone, restrained performances and its muted moments of violence with gravitas added by the cast and director Simon Langton. It is ultimately Michael Caine who envelops the film with his heartbreak over his son's death and Great Britain's patriotic death as well - it is not the country he thought it was since his early days of fighting the Korean War and working for GCHQ. I would not call "The Whistle Blower" a great movie -some will have issues with the slightly uneven pacing and the ending, which works beautifully I thought - but it is an exceptional chapter in the cinematic spy business and how deeply rotten to the core it can be. 

Grumpy Old Thieves

GOING IN STYLE (2017)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Remakes are more than a dime a dozen now, they are a penny a dozen. Everything is being remade now, including films you never imagined would face a makeover or re-imagining. "Endless Love," anybody? I had my doubts about a new "Going in Style" but my doubts went south and my enjoyment went way north. Enjoyably urgent in its own way and smoothly crafted, "Going in Style" is merely an excuse to showcase three acting elderly giants having some fun. Good excuse.

Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin are the three elderly, retired Brooklyn men who are losing their pensions from the steelworker mill they used to work for. The bank has bought the mill, and is taking their jobs to Vietnam (I am amazed that this plot detail, a fact of life for many in 2017, did not get more traction in the press.) Caine forges a plan to rob a bank (after being in the middle of a bank robbery in the film's opening scene) so they can live comfortably, after all, there are no more pension funds and Caine's house is facing eviction. Freeman is behind the plan, hoping to see his out-of-state granddaughter more often, but Arkin wants no part of it. The threesome try to steal from the local grocery store but such small-time thievery proves they are not ready for a bank heist. Well, this is a movie so...things change.

Gone is the bittersweet reality of the original 1978 Martin Brest film where tragedy eventually befell a couple of the older men. 2017 invites some measure of hope and asks that we sympathize with these 3 codgers, and the beauty of the film is that we do (or at least I did). I was hoping that they would be able to accomplish their heist without a hitch (well, there is one little hitch having to do with a wristwatch). The reason being that no one in their right mind (who faces pension troubles or are worried about their future pensions) would not identify with their all-too-real plight. The Grumpy Old Thieves feel justified in committing this heist and we agree with them.

Directed by Zach Braff with conventional whimsy ("Garden State"), there are no real surprises in "Going in Style" and just about anybody can guess what will happen from one scene to the next. I was still taken in by the cast, including a wily Michael Caine; an exhausted Morgan Freeman who needs a new kidney and shows a level of uncertainty at his birthday party, and an exasperated Alan Arkin who is grumpy to the 10th power. Arkin's character loves watching TV's "The Bachelor" and yet keeps resisting the charms of an adoring grocery clerk (played none other than by Ann-Margret who is as bewitching as ever). The movie is simply charming and never overdone, and has a few decent laughs. I've said it before (and I think I made the same comment when reviewing "Last Vegas") but what the heck, I'll say it again:

"Some movies that offer a few laughs and an appealing cast is more than you can expect in the current cinematic landscape that often can't be bothered to offer the minimum."

Thankfully this Scrooge's Heart is in the right place

MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (1992)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

You can't help but notice that Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge is not that angry, not too aggressive, not too wrapped up in dismissing Christmas altogether. That is certainly welcome in this 1992 adaptation of Charles Dickens' seemingly anti-Christmas novel that aims to bring us down only to lift our spirits at the end. The difference this time is that the Muppets have fun with Dickens, they basically keep the spirit lively throughout without sacrificing Scrooge's emotional catharsis.

As I noted, Caine's Scrooge is not depicted as a miser in the strictest sense - there is something playful about Caine in this movie. There is almost a slight gleam in his eyes, a sense that he is not that miserable, just fed up. We all know Michael Caine can play a fed up individual like nobody else, that is the inherent charm in all this. Not to mention Gonzo the Great as Charles Dickens, an inspired stroke in this oft-told tale, as he breaks down the fourth wall and narrates the story. Rizzo the Rat is the Greek chorus, as he is frequently in front of too many windows peering in before getting slammed in the face when the windows are flung open. Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit but with less Cratchity nuance and more Kermit wincing and hoping to please his employer as only Kermit can play him (would we want it any other way?) Less memorable are Miss Piggy as Emily Cratchit and Fozzie Bear as Fozziwig - somehow their scenes don't sizzle and that may be due to them underplaying their roles. Most enjoyable are Statler and Waldorf (the Muppet hecklers) as the Marley Brothers (one brother is of course named Bob. Ha!) Sam the Eagle is very funny as the Headmaster during Scrooge's flashbacks as a boarding school student - his double takes had me roaring with laughter.

I have to say the songs are terrific and play well amidst the occasionally (and purposely) tough material ("Thankful Heart" is my favorite song of the bunch). It is Michael Caine though who is the star of this show. Never once does he play the character for laughs or parody - he plays it seriously yet just this side of nuanced playfulness. The emotions are strong but not too overplayed. This is still the Muppets after all. 

Hunt Down the Witch Queen, B-movie style

THE LAST WITCH HUNTER (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Movies about witches, sorcery and medieval settings updated to modern times are a dime a dozen, maybe two dozen. I went in to see "The Last Witch Hunter" without knowing one thing about it, though the title isn't exactly mysterious. The movie itself is an old-fashioned B-movie with a welcome sense of humor, something to be appreciated in this day and age of craptacular low-grade entertainment.

Vin Diesel is Kaulder, the bearded Witch Hunter we see in the opening scenes during a medieval snowy setting where he and his cohorts infiltrate a mass of twigs and branches in the middle of a mountainous pass. Once inside, Kaulder confronts the powerful Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht), a truly demonic creature that looks like she is straight out of an "Evil Dead" movie - she has vague notions of creating a worldwide Black Plague. Kaulder's cohorts are almost all killed but he manages to impale the Witch Queen, who in turn curses him with immortality (Why would that be a curse?)

Cue a modern setting, New York City (played by Pittsburgh) where Kaulder is now a member of the Axe and Cross, an assembly of witches who imprison evil witches by summoning an actual wooden creature that sucks them in and carries them out to some invisible prison behind rocky formations (I have mentioned this before, as evidenced by "Gangs of New York," but there are caves and underground lairs in NYC so this is perfectly plausible). Michael Caine (in a strangely sleepwalking role, a euphemism for an easy paycheck) is a priest known as the 36th Dolan, in a long line of Dolans, who is Kaulder's trusted companion that keeps track of all captured witches. After another powerful witch practically kills the Dolan (who was retiring), Kaulder seeks out the perpetrator along with the help of a newly assigned Dolan (played rather unconvincingly by Elijah Wood). Problem is that all this witch-hunting may lead to the resurrection of the Witch Queen and visions of what really happened 800 years ago when Kaulder gained immortality. After so many centuries, memories can be a little rusty.

"The Last Witch Hunter" has several action sequences with Kaulder armed with axes and flaming swords; witch bars (no humans allowed) in flames; a Witch Queen that turns into a locust of nasty bugs; many montages of what Kaulder sees from his past, including his wife and daughter; and yet another image of New York City in an Armageddon state, this time surrounded and covered in branches! Not all of it makes 100 percent sense, nor should it. What makes it tolerable is Vin Diesel's charm and commanding voice - he may not have been in many good films but the guy has got unbeatable magnetism. Also worth noting is a witch bar owner and purveyor of potions, Chloe (Rose Leslie), a good witch who can help Kaulder see his past clearly. As for Michael Caine himself, well, he appears in a relatively subdued manner with little of the heft he brought as Alfred in the "Dark Knight" trilogy.

For good old-fashioned fun and a reminder of the good-bad and truly rotten B-movie fantasies of the late 80's and early 90's, "Last Witch Hunter" can give you goosebumps and it has some startling special-effects that are sparingly used (the airplane scene is highly effective for how little it shows, though that scene suggest witches can control the weather). Vin Diesel makes it fun to watch, an ingredient often missing from today's modern fantasy fare, and makes you believe what is happening no matter how absurd.