Skip to main content

Last Night in Soho (2021)

 




Last Night in Soho is a horror movie, surprisingly. It's also directed by Edgar Wright. Is this a dream? Someone, please make sense to me how this got made.

Written and directed by Edgar Wright, Soho is about a fashion designer who without spoiling the film starts to uncover a murder mystery from the 1960s and has to make sense of it all. It has everything you want from Wright's transitions and self-references but missing the comedy of his previous films. I feel like this movie was made on a dare much in the same way American Graffiti was made. 

Thomasin McKenzie has really developed as an actress both in her ability to convey emotion but also with how she loses herself in the role. The last time I saw her was in Jojo Rabbit and True History of the Kelly Gang and I look forward to The Power of the Dog later this year. She plays the main character and does a wonderful job with her accent too. I can't go into detail about what happens to her without spoiling the film but she's certainly an actress to be on the lookout for from now on and carries this film. It would not be the same without her.

Anya Taylor-Joy has been great in so many films that it's easy to see her in this role as a 1960's aspiring singer. You might know her from The Queen's Gambit, but I know her from The Witch and Split. She's been in so much and yet she's so young and people don't give her enough credit. I can't wait to see her take on the role of Furiosa.

The film has a lot of themes and in a way is a feminist movie but written and directed by a man. The character does things that fly in the face of what a man would do in the same situation which might be the help from the screenplay writer  Krysty Wilson-Cairns and I'm curious how much she changed from Wright's original story. That might sound scary calling this horror film a feminist movie but it's not in your face or shaming the audience in a way that many other films have in recent history. I'm looking at you Birds of Prey. It takes a tactful approach towards handling the mistreatment of women, especially in 1960's London.

There's no other film like it to compare it to and my closest feelings on it lie somewhere between Red Sparrow (2018) and Ex Machina (2015) both of which earned an A- in my book. I can say this is a great film with only one minor flaw in the convoluted way the movie ended.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No Other Choice (2025)

No Other Choice (2025) is directed by Park Chan-wook , the filmmaker behind Oldboy and Snowpiercer . His signature style is all over this film, with moments of completely bizarre dialogue and acting choices that feel intentional rather than accidental. While it doesn’t reach the heights of his most celebrated work, it’s still unmistakably his, strange, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous. I still need to see The Handmaiden , which many consider his best film, and this only reinforced that curiosity. Lee Byung-hun , who many Western audiences may remember from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and KPop Demon Hunters , plays the lead role as a desperate father trying to secure a job. His character’s decision to literally eliminate the competition is where the film fully leans into its absurdity. I barely recognized him at first, which speaks to how fully he disappears into the role. His performance walks a fine line between grounded desperation and unhinged logic. Son Ye-jin , known for Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

  Avatar: Fire and Ash is the third film in the James Cameron sci-fi epic.  What can be said about Christopher Nolan can be said about James Cameron , except Cameron makes billions of dollars while Nolan makes hundreds of millions. Oppenheimer came close though. Generation Z will not understand how impactful Titanic was but so many of them understand and went to see the first  Avatar. Sam Worthington  and Zoe Saldaña  return as the king and queen warlords of the Na'vi. This time they got whales and squids on their side. That might sound an awful lot like the second movie and you'd be right. This film adds more to the lore but pretty much tells the same story.  Oona Chaplin , of Game of Throne fame, is on fire as Varang. She's beautiful and joker level crazy with her pyromania. Her existence is really just to sell the dichotomy of this film and the second, but she was still enthralling never the less. Also the soap opera love between her and the main vill...
Post a Comment
Read more

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Call Me By Your Name  is about a young Italian boy who falls in love with his father's research assistant who is also Jewish. Directorially the film has a few flaws, camera angles, positioning, lighting. This makes me worried about Luca Guadagnino doing the remake of Suspiria. There are dialogue direction problems that are textbook beginner problems, not that anyone will come out and criticizes this film, for fear of being called ignorant. He takes advantage of Italy's beautiful landscape to attempt gorgeous shots but anyone with an iPhone could recreate those shots with a passport. Timothee Chalamet plays the young Elio. I recognized him from Interstellar for which his role was minor. This is really my first time seeing him as the main character. At first, I disliked his character and then I started to just dislike the writing of his character rather than his acting. Some of the actions his character does are just unrealistic for a character like his. Armie Hammer pl...
Post a Comment
Read more