Review: Last Night in Soho

As a director, Edgar Wright is good at holding an audience's attention. Whatever his movies' flaws - and you could argue his Hollywood films (Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver) have their issues - he never forgets to make his films entertaining. But sometimes being an entertainer works against you. Some stories need a bit of a edge if they're going to have an impact.

Eloise Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) - Ellie to her friends, of whom she seemingly has none as she lives in a small town 60's timewarp with her gran - has just been accepted into the London College of Fashion. It's a dream come true... though no sooner has she arrived than she begins to realise she has been living in a dream, as the youth of today are brash, noisy, and consider her 60s affectations somewhat naff. 

Fortunately she discovers a surprisingly cheap bedsit apartment in the heart of Soho, promptly moves in, and suddenly starts having nightly dreams in which she's transported back to the actual 60s, where she haunts wannabe singer Sandie Collins (Anya Taylor-Joy). It's everything she hoped London would be, and a marked contrast to the dour real world around her - until things start to go wrong.

Writer-director Wright establishes early on that Ellie is either psychic or nuts (she sees her dead mother, who killed herself after the stress of London life became too much - uh oh). The main thrust of the story is Ellie's rapid unraveling once Sandie's swinging 60s life turns grim under the "guidance" of her "manager" (Matt Smith). Wright has the visual skills to pull off a psychological thriller-slash-urban fantasy-slash-horror film with ease and this is never less than fun, but the story he's telling stumbles more than once.

This is the kind of film where there's plenty of careful foreshadowing to answer the audience's questions once the (many) twists play out, but little effort put in to creating a realistic protagonist we can care about. Even for an isolated country teen, Ellie's remarkably uninterested in asking basic questions, let alone using google to get answers about what's going on around her; her shock at the realisation that Soho in the 60s was actually a grimy den of sleaze leaves her seeming fatally naive (especially as "nostalgia is bad" is the closest thing to a theme this has), while her extended real-world breakdown features at least one public freak-out too many.

Wright's always been a director interested in style over substance - when there's been substance - but here his drive to keep the twists coming actively undermines the story going on underneath the shocks. The message in 2021 that men are abusive sex pests is both predictable and impossible to argue against; Wright tries to use that to blindside the audience, but whatever he gains in surprise he loses in impact.

Fortunately, the cast are entertaining throughout, with McKenzie's performance going a long way towards making Ellie seem like someone who might actually exist. Wright's visual skills create a series of always entertaining scenes, especially early on in his recreated 60s Soho, and while there's never any real suspense on offer it's still a gripping roller coaster ride. Twists and turns this has; heart, not so much.

-Anthony Morris

Review: The Many Saints of Newark

Don’t be fooled by the trailer; while this does feature a young Tony Soprano (played convincingly by James Gandolfini’s son Michael), he’s a minor player in this Sopranos prequel. The real focus here is the trials and tribulations of Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), mid-level player in the New Jersey mob during the late 60s and early 70s; Tony's a looming background presence, slowly drawn into the mob life.

 

While there’s plenty of Sopranos characters lurking around the in the background – some vividly re-created, others verging on parody – it's Dickie who's the star, both of the film and on the streets of Newark. But his troubles with his mobbed-up father "Hollywood Dick" Moltisanti (Ray Liotta), who’s just returned from Italy with new wife Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), hint at deeper issues.

 

Over the course of the next five years or so Dickie is seen by those around him as a stand-up guy – an image that is far from accurate in his private life - while a series of race riots and social unrest provide an opportunity for black crime figure Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.) to move out from under Dickie’s shadow and start up a rival syndicate. If you've never seen a mob movie before, rest assured that this is not the kind of thing the Mafia is going to just let happen.

 

Written by Sopranos’ creator David Chase, this is a solid but rarely spectacular film that probably would have worked better if it had been turned into a miniseries (or lost a few supporting characters). Individual scenes often stand out and Dickie’s character arc is a strong central theme, but multiple callbacks to events mentioned in the original series leave the film feeling more aimless than it needs to be.

 

Director Alan Taylor and his team do a vivid job of recreating the feel of 60s and early 70s New Jersey, giving this a historical veneer that really makes the turmoil of the era pop. Coupled with a range of spot-on musical choices, the setting feels almost too real for the occasionally cartoony mobsters strutting through it - though this contrast only highlights the brutal fates of some of them.

 

For those interested in this purely as a prequel the film's excesses will be easier to take, though even there some of the big moments feel a little rushed. Tony’s scenes, especially with his mother (vividly played by Vera Farmiga) are excellent and yet still feel like they belong in another project entirely; this a film where you leave the cinema excited about the prospect of checking out the deleted scenes.

 

 

 

- Anthony Morris