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Last Night in Soho

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  • Last Night in Soho

    Are we excited for this one or not? It looks pretty interesting. Giallo vibes. 60s fashion. And yet.... Wright has burnt some bridges with me over the years. Shaun and Fuzz and Spaced were a great way to to get a career going but I haven't been able to stomach anything of his since. More than any movie ever Baby Driver confuses me with the difference between the critics reaction and my own. As far as I was concerned it was unwatchable but the reviews were amazing. Usually even if I despise a film I can see why it would get good reviews. With BD I'm drawing a total blank. Scott Pilgrim awful. The third corenetto movie? Death.

    So there's not much Wright could do to draw me back to a TV these days but, damnit, i think this movies going to do just that. I do like Matt Smith...

    "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

  • #2
    Yeah I'm curious about this one too.
    Rock! Shock! Pop!

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    • #3
      Doesn't appeal to me. There are plenty of genuine 60s thrillers out there I'd rather watch. His films are mostly way too long as well, and from various reviews, it seems that this outstays its welcome and gets repetetive too.
      I'm bitter, I'm twisted, James Joyce is fucking my sister.

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      • #4
        I m sort of intreagued, but i keep thinking about Baby Driver and how utterly lame and worthless that was. (A driving film without much driving for millenial snowflakes) Still I might sneak off to my local cinema to see this, as its plot really does appeal to me.
        "No presh from the Dresh!"

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        • #5
          It sucked. Hard!
          https://www.instagram.com/moviemorpho83/

          Oh, not on Cauliflower! Oh, not on Broccoli!

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          • #6
            Looks like this might be hitting UHD in January.

            https://highdefdiscnews.com/2021/11/...u-ray-january/
            Rock! Shock! Pop!

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            • #7
              Best to go in with the right expectations. I was hoping for something surreal and psychological with some 60s kitsch. I was disappointed. What I got was a) a Suspiria/Inferno homage and b) a ghost story. Go in for a Carnival Of Souls style ghost story with Argento trimmings and you might have some fun. But it feels small for a film that takes 120 minutes to tell its story.
              "Never let the fact that they are doing it wrong stop you from doing it right." Hyman Mandell.

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              • #8
                I will likely skip this, but will probably buy the soundtrack because this dude has movies with great soundtracks.

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                • #9
                  Man, I had such mixed feelings about this film.

                  On the one hand, I really liked the story. It's full of themes and ideas which are very appealing/personally resonant for me, the way the supernatural/horror elements are gradually introduced to (and eventually take over) the narrative is quite nicely done (on paper at least), and the performances are strong enough to make most of the characters likeable and interesting.

                  It's lovely to see Rita Tushingham, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg all getting one last(?) chance to revisit their old cultural stomping ground (though a bit heart-breaking too to observe their craggy visages and realise that nearly sixty years have now gone by since their glory days -- which is precisely what the fim wants us to reflect on, of course).

                  For the film's first half hour, I was completely on board. But then -- dear god, I wish someone other than Edgar Wright could have directed this movie.

                  It's been a good few years since I watched one of his films, so I think I'd forgotten how utterly obnoxious his approach to his craft is, but I has floored by how fucking unbearable this in-all-other-respects fairly good motion picture becomes as soon as the big dream/vision sequences start to kick in.

                  The man cuts his footage like an ADD-crazed chimp! He can't stay on the same image for more than 2.5 seconds without blasting it off the screen with some crazy wipe or crash zoom and some shrieking WHOOSH noise. The whole second hour of the movie is like some endless, ham-firsted montage sequence, banging our head against the wall again and again and showing us things that carry no narrative/emotional significance AGAIN AND AGAIN, as looped dialogue from earlier in the film, mad Wagnerian strings, '60s pop music and on-screen characters yelling and screaming are all layered on top of each other on the soundtrack, creating a cacophonous, headache-inducing mess...

                  Then when the horror element emerges, he adds CGI zombies - loads and loads of CGI zombies everywhere, all yammering and repeating the same lines again and again, CGI blood spurting all over the place, screaming faces, slashing knives....and oh yeah, fire! Lots of fire! Melting records! Sirens! Fire engines!

                  Whole sections of the movie just become this meaningless drone of shit, dragging on for two flipping hours...

                  I just don't get it. This guy take this really rather nice, humane, mainstream-ish story about an introverted young woman moving to the big city and getting all mixed up when her latent clairvoyent powers kick in. Great cast, lots of nice characters, some really potent/emotive themes, lots of really strong visual/aesthetic elements already baked into the material..... and then he insists on directing it in a style that makes Ken Russell look like fucking Ozu.

                  Why do you do it, Edgar? It doesn't suit you, and it doesn't suit the things you like to make films about. Just.... stop it. Calm down. Lay off the Red Bull. Whatever.

                  If 'Last Night in Soho' had been directed by someone with an ounce of subtlety, someone who'd let the thing breath and given us a bit of time to soak in the atmosphere of the locations and production design, someone who'd given the character relationships a bit more time to naturally gel and develop.... (someone like Neil Jordan, ideally).... well, it would have been a great movie almost by default. A minor classic perhaps.

                  But as is? No.

                  ---

                  Sorry for ranting, but just needed to get that out of my system before bedtime. : )
                  BW Haggar
                  Senior Member
                  Last edited by BW Haggar; 04-03-2022, 03:59 PM.
                  https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/
                  http://stereosanctity.blogspot.com/

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                  • #10
                    Also, the good-natured boyfriend character was perfectly sweet and everything, but his claim to have moved "from South London to North London" is clearly absolute bullshit on several levels:

                    i) I've lived in South London for fifteen years, and I've never heard anyone describe Soho / The West End as "North London"; it's Central London. The stuff a mile or two North of there is North London.
                    ii) The idea of a family in "South London" paying a vast quantity of money to send their son to live in student halls half an hour's train journey away seems highly unlikely to say the least.
                    iii) Later on, he claims that car ownership is "the only way to get from South London to North London", which is quite possibly the most preposterous thing anyone has ever said in a film.
                    Even before the introduction of the congestion charge, I think anyone who has lived in this city for more than two days will recognise that driving from South to Central in a private car is marginally less efficient than lying on the pavement and paying someone to push you into town with a stick.

                    I'm not saying those lines were pasted into the screenplay by an uncredited script doctor who's never set foot outside of L.A., but...

                    Also, Terence Stamp did not need to be hit by a car. That was just cruel and pointless.

                    Also, the tacked on happy ending was atrocious.

                    Ok, I'm done now.
                    https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/
                    http://stereosanctity.blogspot.com/

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                    • #11
                      I liked it. It's Wright's most serious film and it's actually a pretty sad story.

                      Matt H.
                      Senior Member
                      Last edited by Matt H.; 04-04-2022, 08:41 AM.
                      Why would anybody watch a scum show like Videodrome? Why did you watch it, Max?

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                      • #12
                        I caught up on this this weekend. First half was excellent. Felt this was possibly Wrights best work up until that point. The second half was quite poor to say the least. And the ending was just so weak. A shame. This was really shaping up to be something until it collapsed.
                        "No presh from the Dresh!"

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                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Matt H. View Post
                          I liked it. It's Wright's most serious film and it's actually a pretty sad story.
                          Despite all my negative words about the film above, I completely agree with you Matt. The story and the characters really struck a chord with me, and the concept of the movie draws on so many interesting & potent ideas...... but I just couldn't get with Wright's directorial approach at all. Maybe it's just me, I dunno - it just felt like a grown up script directed & edited by a sugar-crazed kid or something.

                          Originally posted by The Silly Swede View Post
                          I caught up on this this weekend. First half was excellent. Felt this was possibly Wrights best work up until that point. The second half was quite poor to say the least. And the ending was just so weak. A shame. This was really shaping up to be something until it collapsed.
                          Agree with this also. In fact that's a good summation of what I spent about 500 words trying to say in my earlier posts - thanks Mr Swede.
                          https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/
                          http://stereosanctity.blogspot.com/

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                          • #14
                            I finally got round to watching it. Makes George Lucas look like John Cassavetes. There's the germ of a good low budget flick in there but it just goes so over the top it seems at odds with the basic premise. It's like a room full of producers all saying 'you know what would be cool?...' or 'you know what the kids like today?'. I got interested towards the end, I thought there was going to be a nice low key finale and a fitting end to Diana Rigg's career, but nope, got to have more fire and zombies.
                            I'm bitter, I'm twisted, James Joyce is fucking my sister.

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                            • #15
                              this was way better than expected! I was surprised he even managed to included some psycho biddy/hagsploitation elements into the plot. the ghostly apparition holding the telephone receiver begging the girl to call for help made me giggle though.

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