Water (1985)

Michael Caine plays the Governor of the (fictional) Caribbean island of Cascara. The generally quiet, happy life on this remote British colony is interrupted when it’s discovered that there’s a potentially lucrative natural supply of mineral water beneath the ground. Suddenly, everyone from US oil magnates and the British Prime Minister (Maureen Lipman as Margaret Thatcher) to Cuban guerrillas and a French water business want a stake in Cascara’s future. 

The cast features many actors known from TV roles, including Billy Connolly, Leonard Rossiter (in his final performance), Fulton Mackay, Ruby Wax and Fred “Herman Munster” Gwynne. 

I’m not a fan of Connolly, but thankfully he’s fairly restrained in this part – partly because his character has vowed to communicate only via song. On the down side, there’s a long, cringeworthy scene in which he plays on stage with a band including George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton. Half of the Beatles and the world’s most famous living guitarist, and all they could come up with was a snug, dreary, tepid mess. 

That aside, it’s a playful, good-natured comedy that’s both intelligent and very silly. I like the way the various plot threads come together. At its best it recalls a less subtle and sophisticated version of Local Hero, particularly for the strong sense of community it develops.

Billy Liar (1963)

The hilarious yet heartbreaking story of a young man who lives in his imagination to escape the pressures and tedium of his daily existence. Billy Fisher simply isn’t ready for the sensible, grown-up world that surrounds him. Caught up in a web of his own fabricated stories, he has promised to marry three different girls and has managed to “lose” the calendars he was meant to post out for his undertaker employer.

It’s an unbeatable character study and Tom Courtenay is spellbinding in the main role. Julie Christie is wonderful as Liz, the most free-spirited and modern of his three sweethearts. Leonard Rossiter and Rodney Bewes are excellent as his bods (Mr. Shadrack) and friend/colleague (Arthur Crabtree) respectively. I usually dislike fantasy scenes in films (they ruined 9 to 5, for example), but here they are integral and work especially well. Billy machine-gunning the people who enrage him is an extremely vivid depiction of his inner world. There’s so much humour and intelligence in the script (adapted by Keith Waterhouse from his own novel), and real poignancy builds as the single-day plot unravels. A masterpiece, pretty much. Watching this again after seeing Cemetery Junction, I realise just how much that film borrows from this one.