BEFORE: Another small milestone, film #250 for the year, which means that Movie Year 14 is 5/6 over, just fifty films to go, covering Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then I'll have to spend a week crunching the numbers for 2022, and then give out some awards - I've got all those real awards shows beat, they have to wait for the year to end, ask all their members to fill out ballots, then they have to hire an accounting firm, count everything, recount the ballots, dispute the hanging chads, and then like THREE MONTHS LATER, hand out trophies. I get all of that done in the last week of December, so take that. Anyway, it's coming, I can feel it, cold weather and hot cider, snow days and sick days, first we just all have to make it through hurricane season and horror films.
Every Movie Year is different, obviously, every year kind of finds its own rhythm - last year's 250th film was "A Cure for Wellness", and it was October 7 by then, and I was already six films deep into the official horror chain. But in 2021 I think I kind of slowed things down even more in September, and this year I didn't do that, mostly because I'll be on vacation for a week in October. This time I've got to get my films in now, so I can relax for a week then. But in early October I did watch a few films with Anya Taylor-Joy, which were "The Witch", "New Mutants" and "Marrowbone", and now I've circled back to her at just about the same time of year.
Matt Smith carries over from "Charlie Says".
THE PLOT: An aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s, where she encounters a dazzling wanna-be singer. But the glamour is not all it appears to be, and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker.
AFTER: You know, I just realized I didn't program any "back-to-school" films this year - I've still got "Eighth Grade" on my list, also "Dear Evan Hansen", "Boys and Girls", "The Wolfpack", "Apollo 10 1/2", "Senior Year", any of those would have worked, but the linking rules didn't allow me to get to them. So I suppose tonight's film will have to do, as Eloise Turner moves to London to study fashion design at college. (The London College of Fashion is part of the University of the Arts London, I assume it's like the British version of F.I.T.). But looking back on the other films this month, I could make a case for "King Richard", where Richard Williams made sure that Venus and Serena focused on their schoolwork, and not just tennis, and maybe even "Concrete Cowboy", which took place on a high-schooler's summer vacation, and I don't know, "Minions: The Rise of Gru"? Gru was seen going to school, before studying to be a super-villain. OK, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I like to stay topical, according to the calendar.
I'm a bit of a late-comer to the films of Edgar Wright, I was like the last person in my social circle to watch "Shaun of the Dead", and if it hadn't been for my Halloween programming, maybe I never would have gotten to it. But then I did watch "Hot Fuzz" and "The World's End", but still I dragged my feet on getting to "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World", it looked kind of stupid and exploitative of the comic book thing, and it is, of course, but maybe that's OK. But "Baby Driver" was just fine, and then of course earlier this year I watched "The Sparks Brothers", but not because I was a big fan of the band, mostly because I know people who were interviewed in it. SO, there you go, now, just like with Wes Anderson, I have to be a bit of a Edgar Wright completist, going forward.
But I think what some of his movies have in common is that they cross a lot of genres, like how "Shaun of the Dead" is both comedy and horror, hell, throw in action as well and it's a triple-threat movie. "Scott Pilgrim" is comedy, romance and comic-book, and "The World's End" isn't really locked into being one thing either. It's a bit weird, but at least it's not one-note. And so maybe that's why "Last Night in Soho" is many things at once, too - it's a coming-of-age drama, it's a murder mystery, it's a horror film... Hey, life is rich and complicated, and nobody likes to be pigeon-holed, so why should we do that to our movies? I mean, you can't go TOO crazy or a movie then feels like it's all-over-the-place, but tonight it's a slow descent into...horror? I don't know, where does this one feel like it wants to land and live?
Eloise sees ghosts, let's get that one out of the way - or at least one ghost, that of her dead mother, who committed suicide when Eloise was very young, and so Eloise was raised by her Gran, and when it's time for Eloise to go off to university, that means saying good-bye to her mother's ghost, who obviously is location-specific to that house. Whether this is just a metaphor for her memories of her mother, I suppose that's up to the viewer...
Only it's not, because once Eloise moves out of the dorm, due to a bad roomate situation, she finds a flat on the upper floor of an older lady's house, and suddenly starts having dreams of the 1960's. Somehow she can see scenarios from the swinging go-go club days, and even inhabit the body of Sandie, an aspiring nightclub singer who wants desperately to be the next Cilla Black or Dusty Springfield.
At first, this all seems like a lark for Eloise, she also gets caught up in the romantic side of the Soho nightclub scene, and eventually realizes that Sandie's manager/boyfriend is content to just get her gigs in burlesque shows, and then pimp her out to seedy men from the entertainment industry, supposedly to further her career, but it's probably just to line his own pockets. With everything we now know about the Harvey Weinsteins and Matt Lauers and Charlie Roses of the world, all that shit had to start somewhere, and so naturally it's rooted back in the 1950's and 1960's, the casting couch was a real thing at so many levels of the entertainment industry, so this feels quite believable, that fame came at a cost for so many women, because if they didn't sleep their way to success, there were other women who were willing to do so. It was just how things were done, which is a damn shame, but some female singers and actresses who went along with it also bear a bit of the responsibility...not a lot, mostly it's the horrible men, but a bit.
Anyway, at first there's a benefit, because Eloise is getting a first-hand look at some killer fashions from the 1960's, and wouldn't you know, it's high time to bring them back. So she's doing well at school, but then she has to get a bartending job in a pub to afford those antique clothes, and this puts her on the radar of a mysterious older man, who's been hanging around the scene ever since those old days, and he starts asking questions about Eloise, who she is, where she came from, who her mother was. I'll admit it, my mind started connecting the dots here, because naturally I figured maybe Sandie would turn out to be Eloise's mother, and then maybe this creepy guy in the pub would be her father, but no, I was WAY off base. No spoilers here, but just maybe the film was trying to lead me in this direction as a red herring, but no, that wasn't to be. Maybe I just read the clues wrong.
The dreams (visions?) become longer and more vivid, also more dangerous as Sandie's descent into madness continues, and it seems like Eloise is being brought along for the ride. They're both tormented by an endless parade of faceless gray men, Sandie's "clients" who are horrificly anonymous figures, but may also be lost souls themselves. Finally, at the worst possible time, just as her relationship in the real world with John, a fellow fashion student (who is somehow straight?), is going well, she has her most horrible vision yet, and that spills over into the real world as she tries to solve a 50-year old murder after the fact, with only her dreams to guide her. She's in over her head, that's for sure. But this all kind of reminds me of a film called "Dead Again", which pulled a similar rug out from under the viewers at the last minute. We all made some assumptions, based on the information we got from the flashbacks, and we were all wrong. Or the director tricked us, it's all in how you look at it - but I don't usually like it when a director intentionally tricks me.
But dreams are funny things, and even memories are unreliable. So maybe I have to give this one a pass and be kind in my ratings, and just move on. So far, this makes TWO Halloween parties seen on film, and it isn't even October yet. Yeah, I know I'm rushing things, but the giant bags of candy are already being sold in the drug stores, so the season is here, like it or not. My next film is about a vampire, and then I'm going to watch the "Purge" films, and by then it should be October 1 and we'll start the horror chain for reals.
Also starring Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "The Power of the Dog"), Anya Taylor-Joy (last seen in "Barry"), Diana Rigg (last seen in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"), Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Sam Claflin (last seen in "Their Finest"), Rita Tushingham (last seen in "Doctor Zhivago"), Synnove Karlsen, Jessie Mei Li, Kassius Nelson, Rebecca Harrod (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga'), Elizabeth Berrington (last seen in "Nanny McPhee"), Pauline McLynn (last seen in "Iris"), Michael Jibson (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Lisa McGrillis, Aimee Cassettari, Beth Singh, Margaret Nolan (last seen in "Goldfinger"), James Phelps (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Oliver Phelps (ditto), Paul Brightwell (last seen in "The Voices"), Will Rogers, Terence Frisch, Andrew Bicknell, with a cameo from Mark Gatiss (last seen in Operation Mincemeat")
RATING: 6 out of 10 images of deserted London streets (filmed during the pandemic, clever!)
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