August 12 movie: Alfie. This was not at all what I expected. I heard it was Michael Caine as a "charming cad," and I thought it would be like The Italian Job with more romance. But apparently "cad" means "dickhead." I never realized that before. Most of the movie is a series of sad women debasing themselves to Alfie while he uses them for sex and then discards them. He's so cruel, even while he's with them, that it's hard to understand why they keep falling for him. He doesn't even use human pronouns to refer to women; they're all "it" to him.
The last third of the movie is even darker, but at least it's intentionally so. Shelley Winters has a nice part as an older, sexually confident woman who turns the tables on Alfie, and there's a heartwrenching scene involving an illegal abortion (but not Shelley Winters).
I wish I could say I enjoyed this, but I really didn't. I'm not surprised the Jude Law remake did so poorly. Even if they changed the particulars, the mentality behind this movie doesn't play well in today's world.
i couldn't bring myself to watch the jude law remake after seeing this. i couldn't imagine any way that they could change it in a way that it could be enjoyable, even though i love jude law.