Last Night in Soho: Absolutely exhilarating

Last Night in Soho (2021) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for drug use, violence and considerable profanity

Available via: HBO Max

By Derrick Bang

Director Edgar Wright’s new film is an exhilarating, boldly audacious slice of cinematic razzle-dazzle: a breathtaking experience with a true sense of wonder.

 

Last Night in Soho barely achieved theatrical release late last year, which is a shame; it screams to be seen on the big screen.

 

Sandie (Anna Taylor-Joy, left), resigned to the direction her life has taken, prepares for
another evening at the club, while Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) watches from the
other side of a mirror.

Wright is no stranger to boldly imaginative fantasies — often laced with a cheeky sense of humor — with an oeuvrethat stretches from 2004’s Shaun of the Dead to 2017’s Baby Driver. Thanks to a cunningly crafted storyline co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Last Night in Soho constantly confounds expectations, plunging its young heroine into a most unusual journey.

Wright also is known for making savvy use of music, and at first blush his new film seems a sweet love letter to 1960s pop tunes. A lengthy prologue introduces Eloise “Ellie” Turner (Thomasin McKenzie), a sweet but unsophisticated young woman who lives with her grandmother Peggy (Rita Tushingham) in rural Redruth, Cornwall. Ellie adores the music and fashion of the Swinging Sixties; the title credits appear against Peter & Gordon’s “A World Without Love,” as she capers about her bedroom in a handmade newspaper dress.

 

Wright augments this nostalgic atmosphere by casting 1960s icons — Tushingham, Diana Rigg and Terence Stamp — as supporting characters. (Sharp-eyed viewers also might recognize Margaret Nolan, who memorably played the voluptuous Dink in Goldfinger, and who pops up here as a wise barmaid.)

 

Ellie has long dreamed of studying at the London College of Fashion, and her eyes go sparkling wide upon receiving an acceptance letter. Peggy is concerned; she knows that Ellie’s mother — also a fashion designer — killed herself for reasons unspecified, and that the impressionable Ellie has a tendency to occasionally “see” her mother, like a watchfully lingering spirit.

 

Peggy’s apprehension is justified, because nothing could have prepared Ellie for the cacophonous hustle and bustle of her late-night arrival in London, against the deafening opening bars of John Barry’s jazz/rock title theme to 1960’s Beat Girl. Her rowdy college dorm is even worse, when she’s immediately targeted by a posse of “mean girls” — led by her new roommate, Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen, impressively bitchy) — who feign friendship just long enough to more accurately mock Ellie’s country-mouse innocence.

 

Knowing that she’d never survive in this unrestrained atmosphere of alcohol, drugs and casual sex, Ellie flees to a charming upstairs room in a bedsit run by the elderly Ms. Collins (Rigg, in her final role). Naturally, this abode is located on Goodge Street, popularized in a 1965 song by Donovan (which, I was surprised to discover, is not included in this film’s retro soundtrack).

 

That night, Ellie wakens into a participatory dream; she wanders down a shadowy corridor until — just as Cilla Black’s “You’re My World” hits its crescendo — she stumbles into 1960s Soho. The transition is breathtaking; Wright, production designer Marcus Rowland and costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux fill this streetscape with sparkling vintage vehicles, nattily attired men, gorgeously dressed women, and all manner of period-specific décor.

 

Sean Connery presides over everything from a massive marquee poster for Thunderball, atop a handsome movie theater.

 

The authenticity notwithstanding, the result is an opulently stylized, somewhat larger-than-life London: much the way Quentin Tarantino re-imaged Los Angeles, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; and Jean-Pierre Jeunet gave us an impossibly perfect Paris, in Amélie.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Enchanting fantasy

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and quite scary fantasy violence
By Derrick Bang

It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect marriage of imaginative picto-fiction and eccentric filmmaking sensibilities.

All dressed up and ready for ... we know not what: from left, Olive (Lauren McCrostie),
Claire (Raffiella Chapman), the invisible Millard (Cameron King), the Twins (Thomas and
Joseph Odwell) and Emma (Ella Purnell).

Author Ransom Riggs’ neo-gothic Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was released to acclaim in the summer of 2011, spending well over a year on The New York Times’ Children’s Best Sellers list. It occupies a niche that blossomed with the 2007 arrival of Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, brought to the big screen with panache by director Martin Scorsese.

Tim Burton has just done the same with Miss Peregrine, and if the results aren’t quite as impressive, it’s a beguiling near-miss. This new film also plays to one of Burton’s career themes: the importance of responding with kindness and grace to the misfits in our world, as opposed to shunning or fearing them.

Scripter Jane Goldman — boasting oodles of fan cred for her handling of Kingsman, Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and two of the X-Men films — has faithfully retained both the core plot of Riggs’ unusual narrative, as well as its mythical, off-kilter and slightly morbid atmosphere.

That’s no small feat: As with The Invention of Hugo Cabret, much of Miss Peregrine’s appeal lies in the manner in which the story unfolds, and how Riggs chooses to tell it.

Both books also cleverly exploit actual world history, transporting readers to pivotal eras that are both simpler and more dangerous.

And, perhaps best of all, both books evoke the imaginative blend of words and images that was much more common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by fantasists such as Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. It would be nice if modern readers — of all ages — grew more tolerant of books with pictures.

Rather drolly, both film adaptations share the same young star.

Miss Peregrine begins in present-day Tampa, Florida, as teenage Jake (Asa Butterfield) discovers that his beloved grandfather, Abraham (Terence Stamp), has died — or been killed — under sinister circumstances. Jake finds the body in the woods near Abraham’s house, and is horrified to discover that his grandfather’s eyes are missing. Worse yet, Jake briefly glimpses a huge something lurking nearby, in the mist.

The Adjustment Bureau: Well adjusted!

The Adjustment Bureau (2011) • View trailer for The Adjustment Bureau
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for profanity and sensuality
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.4.11


Oooo ... this one’s way-cool.

Catching a preview screening of The Adjustment Bureau several weeks early, before the inevitable media blitz had a chance to ruin any of the clever story’s surprises, reminded me of a similar happy encounter with The Truman Show, back in 1998.

Most guys would be rather startled to find an attractive woman hiding in an
otherwise deserted hotel men's room. David Norris (Matt Damon) is surprised,
to be sure, but he and Elise (Emily Blunt) immediately feel a spark of attraction:
a connective jolt that suggests their lives are destined to be intertwined. But to
what degree? Ah, that's the core of this film's tantalizing mystery.

Paramount must not have known how to handle that atypical Jim Carrey film, because the studio screened it more than a month before it opened. As a result, nobody in the packed theater – Carrey was at the height of his popularity, at the time – had the faintest idea what to expect. I still remember the collective murmurs of surprise, right at the beginning, when the skylight fell with a clank onto the “stage.”

Being part of that crowd, as everybody gradually realized the nature of Andrew Niccol’s marvelous script, was quite a buzz.

My point: We live in a tell-all-now society, which works against stories that derive much of their juice from unusual concepts or unexpected plot twists. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most people don't turn to the final page of a mystery first, to see if the butler did it; we truly do like to be startled and astonished. Why else would films such as The Crying Game and The Sixth Sense have made such a huge impact?

All of which brings us to The Adjustment Bureau, and the cheeky surprises to be found in director/scripter George Nolfi’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s short story, “Adjustment Team.” Merely mentioning Dick’s name is something of a giveaway in itself; truth be told, I’d prefer that my loyal readers stop reading right here, take my encouragement on faith, and go see the film before, inevitably – despite the care with which the subsequent paragraphs will be constructed – I reveal too much.

Then come back and read the rest of this commentary.

No? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you...

On the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, ambitious New York politician David Norris (Matt Damon) sees his carefully choreographed plans shot to bits when a scandal rag unearths and publishes – on election eve – an indelicate photo from his rowdier college days. The blowback is swift and catastrophic, as David’s friend and campaign manager, Charlie (Michael Kelly), understands full well. The two go through the motions on election day, but with poll results coming in, the bleak result comes to pass.

Alone with his regrets in a men’s restroom at the fancy hotel where he had hoped to celebrate his victory, David instead works his way through a “Well, gang, we tried” speech. He’s unexpectedly interrupted by a decidedly female voice, which belongs to a vivaciously sexy ballet dancer named Elise (Emily Blunt), who has been hiding from hotel security because she crashed a wedding elsewhere in the hotel. She’s flustered and apologetic on David’s behalf, having heard what he has been doing, during what he thought was a private moment.

David is bemused, but certainly not irritated.

Wanted: Not so much

Wanted (2008) • View trailer for Wanted
Three stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity and relentless violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.26.08
Buy DVD: Wanted • Buy Blu-Ray: Wanted [Blu-ray]

The good news: As hoped, coupling Timur Bekmambetov's adrenalin-fueled, hyper-stylized flourishes with a reasonably linear script results in a movie that's somewhat more approachable than the Russian director's absurdly over-praised Night Watch and its sequel, Day Watch.

While Fox (Angelina Jolie) watches impassively, Wesley (James McAvoy, left)
accepts a pistol from The Gunsmith (Common) and tries to believe — to really,
truly believe — that he can make bullets "bend" around obstructing objects
after having been fired.

The bad news: Wanted ain't that much better.

Fans of The Matrix and its mystical, too-cool-for-the-room characters probably will devour this stuff and nonsense, and fairness demands that I acknowledge having found portions of Wanted amusing and occasionally clever. But the physics- defying CGI stuntwork and perpetual gunplay become tiresome, as do Bekmambetov's crazy-quilt visuals.

This guy makes movies for people who find MTV's smash-cut editing a bit too leisurely.

The other potential problem concerns the fact that screenwriters Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan have screwed around with the plotline as presented in the Mark Millar/J.G. Jones graphic novel on which this film is based, and not to the property's improvement. Arrogant scripters who insist on leaving their own leaden footprints do so at their own risk: Chances are, the original writer(s) did just fine on their own, thank you very much.

And by so drastically mutating the character dynamic, Brandt & Co. have completely compromised our ability to identify with some (all? none?) of the players in this highly warped fantasy.

The result, therefore, is more comic book than the original comic book. Bekmambetov does pretty well with sheer momentum — he's particularly adept at that — but the vehicle sputters and eventually sinks beneath the weight of its own metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

None of which can be blamed on the cast members, who give it their all. Star James McAvoy, in particular, holds things together far longer than the film deserves; he's a perfect nebbish who blossoms into a fully credible reluctant assassin.

Angelina Jolie is similarly ideal as one of McAvoy's mysterious mentors; she has the smirky, amused superiority that this film desperately needs ... a sense that she knows this is all over-revved nonsense, but she's game for a good time, and we should do no less.

And, for awhile, the invitation is tantalizing.

McAvoy stars as Wesley, a cubicle-dwelling drone who pushes papers in some insignificant office, where he's harassed on a regular basis by a tyrannical boss (Lorna Scott, wonderfully dreadful) who throws her considerable weight about while terrorizing everybody under her command. Wes gets little relief at home, where his skanky girlfriend seizes every opportunity to do the nasty with our hero's office mate and supposed best friend.

Wes' life, in short, is an unrelenting nightmare of brow-beaten insignificance.