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

Insidious: Out of the Further (2026)

Insidious: Out of the Further is written and directed by Jacob Chase , who has made some solid shorts in the past but is making the first major motion picture of his that I've seen. There is very little to criticize about his direction, particularly when it comes to setting up scares. Chase understands how to build tension and makes especially good use of the film's more claustrophobic scenes, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere without relying entirely on cheap jump scares. The direction and horror setup are the film's strongest elements, even if the overall story doesn't quite reach the level needed for a full recommendation. Amelia Eve delivers a performance that feels reminiscent of Naomi Watts in The Ring . She channels that same exhausted and increasingly desperate energy, making her character feel convincing as the supernatural events escalate around her. The performance fits the tone of the franchise well and helps ground the film's more unsettling momen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Creator (2023)

The Creator  is a film that once again tries to warn the audience of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Director, Gareth Edwards, seems to only write movies where it's a band of military folks, freedom fighters, or terrorists who against all odds get the job done see: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator, and Monsters.  John David Washington was quickly becoming a Hollywood go-to actor, but after the mediocre response to Tenant and now the lack of an audience for The Creator  his bankability is going down. Sure he was great in the Blackkklansman, but it wasn't his acting that made that movie what it was. He has a hard time showing emotion other than stoicism. This might be why he's leaving the action/sci-fi scene and going back to Oscar bait with his next movie: The Piano Lesson. The film suffers from victim mentality, hitting you over the head repeatedly for the first fifteen minutes with how the main character is a victim of artificial intelligence. The film s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tony (2026)

  Tony is written and directed by Matt Johnson , and while I haven't seen Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie , this film has definitely made me want to. I've heard good things about it, and after seeing what Johnson does here, I'm curious to check out more of his work. Tony is filled with little details that I enjoyed, particularly in the way its characters mirror the relationships and careers of the actors playing them. The film doesn't quite reach greatness, but Johnson's direction and attention to those smaller details give the drama enough personality to stand out. Dominic Sessa  continues to find himself cast as the likable but uncharismatic underdog that audiences naturally want to root for. He was excellent in The Holdovers , and he's good here as well, but this is starting to feel like a type of character he could easily become stuck playing. Sessa has enough talent to become more than that, but he'll need to branch out soon if he wants to avoid ...
Post a Comment
Read more