Last Night in Soho, 2021.
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, and Diana Rigg.
SYNOPSIS:
Edgar Wright’s latest, Last Night in Soho, arrives on 4K UltraHD with a solid batch of bonus features. It’s a film that loses its way in the third act, but fans of the director will probably want to check this one out anyway.
I’ll confess that I never jumped on the Edgar Wright bandwagon. I have nothing against him – I just never happened to see any of his films, at least until now. I’m sure his fans will say that Last Night in Soho isn’t representative of his talents, so I’m willing to give him another shot, though.
This film centers on Ellie Turner, who not only loves music and fashion but happens to love the music and fashion of the 1960s. She wants to design clothing and gets her big chance to study at the London College of Fashion, where she quickly finds herself not fitting in with her classmates, who are of course into modern trends.
Ellie leaves the dorm and rents a room in a house owned by an elderly woman, where she begins having vivid dreams about a woman named Sandie, who aspired to be a singer in London’s Soho neighborhood during the 60s but was pimped out by a man claiming to be able to make her a star. Those dreams start spilling into her personal life, and since she sometimes saw her dead mother before leaving for college, the assumption is that Sandie and the others around her are all dead now.
Last Night in Soho sets itself up as a light, frothy piece of entertainment before taking a dark turn into psychological horror territory. That’s not a bad thing, but the story starts to come apart at the seams during the third act and lands with a thud by the end. That’s a shame, because this is a beautiful movie, especially the 1960s era visuals, but great set design can’t make up for serious story problems.
On the acting front, Thomasin McKenzie turns in an acceptable performance as Ellie, while Anya Taylor-Joy chews the scenery as Sandie with the same kind of aplomb she displayed as Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit. Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg both turn in the kind of excellent performances you’d expect from them; it’s a bummer that this was Rigg’s final film.
The film is included on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray platters in this package; both present the film in the best possible way, especially since no restoration had to be done, like with an older movie. You can always nitpick a movie’s visual quality on home video, but I couldn’t find anything to fault here.
As far as the bonus features go, here’s what you’ll find:
- Two audio commentaries: Wright shows up in both of these tracks, one with his co-writer, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and the other with editor Paul Machliss and composer Steve Price. The first commentary is focused more on the story while the second one delves more into the nuts and bolts of making the movie.
- Meet Eloise (10 minutes): This is a look at the main character.
- Dreaming of Sandie (9 minutes): Sandie gets her own focused featurette too.
- Smoke and Mirrors (12.5 minutes): This featurette is an examination of the film’s visual change as it progresses, as well as the digital and practical special effects used to bring it to life. It can be fun to try to guess which effects are done digitally in any movie, but as this bonus item shows, it can be very tricky to figure out.
- On the Streets of Soho (8.5 minutes): The film’s setting could be considered a character too, so here’s a look at it.
- Time Travelling (10.75 minutes): I suppose this is a time travel movie, from a certain point-of-view, and this featurette digs into the part of the film set in the 1960s.
- Deleted scenes (9 minutes): Given the film’s nearly two-hour running time, it makes sense that these bits of footage were excised.
- Animatics (13 minutes): Here’s a look at some of the storyboards rendered as crude animations, which is pretty standard operating procedure for a film like this one.
- Extras (20 minutes): This is a batch of shorter featurettes that look at the preliminary work done for the film, including hair and makeup tests, lighting and visual effects tests, the wide angle lens used for part of the story, and two steadicam pieces.
- Music video (5.5 minutes): The full version of Anya Taylor-Joy singing “Downtown.”
A pair of trailers for other Universal films, as well as a code for a digital copy, round out this release.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
