my Movie

Movie Details

Title:   Last Night in Soho
Director:   Edgar Wright
Year:   2021
Genre:   Thriller
Times Seen:   1
Last Seen:   12.29.21

Other Movies Seen By This Director (6)
- Baby Driver
- Hot Fuzz
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
- Shaun of the Dead
- The Sparks Brothers
- The World's End

Notes History
Date Viewed Venue Note
12.29.21InternetThis Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2021
It was a toss-up between this and Nightmare Alley for the last film but I thought this might be a little trippier and more appropriate for late-night viewing. I think I made the right choice even if I wound up liking Nightmare Alley more.

It's kind of a shame because I'm an Edgar Wright fan and, like Tarantino, love to hear him talk about movies... but I think the balance in this one was a little off for me. At first I thought it would be kind of a thriller version of Midnight in Paris where the modern-day girl investigates the swingin'60s girl's murder, but instead it's more of a psychological thriller that falls into the trap where what seems like 60% of the movie is the lead actress running around afraid/crazy. Some movies can pull that off, but it's easy for it to feel old to me. The mystery aspect is quickly solved on a meta layer because there's only two older actresses cast and Terence Stamp is too on-the-nose. So that's kind of a shame, because I'm sure a lot of the technical aspects of seeing both actresses in reflections all over the place took a whole bag of tricks and the production design of the period stuff is great and the music is top notch. It's really just the story that let me down... but unfortunately that's a critical element.

But you know, It's not terrible or anything. I enjoyed it well enough, and it's a decent enough film to be Diana Riggs' last (who's cast quite well I might add, as is everyone). And the Swingin' 60s bits are every bit as flashy and energetic as they should be. If it was just a tinge more of the beginning part and less of the chased-by-ghosts part I would've liked it 10x more.


And thus concludes another DVRfest! I had more movies locked and loaded but 3 days feels right this year so those will have to get watched another time. It seems like it gets harder and harder to find the time to do these but I'm very glad that I still do. I'm not really sure what the future will hold for me and Fantastic Fest so this very well may be the only "festival" experience I have left!

And to get them out of the way, here are the numbers for the year: 14 in the past week (2/day), 15 in the past month (0.5/day), 47 in the past year (0.13/day), and 3332 since the site started (0.53/day). 47 beats last year as my lowest view count since the site started (for comparison, I watched 61 movies in 2004 just from November 9th onward). The numbers are pretty tough to look at, and I'm not really in the mood to comment on them this year.

Instead, I'm happy to report that I loved Licorice Pizza which helps affirm that great movies are still being made. I'm generally pretty pessimistic about that, not that the Marvel movies are bad but with all the changing factors it seems like we're down to a dozen directors with the ability to make an interesting individual experience anymore and the years where they put stuff out are good and the years where they don't are bad. To bring it around and end on the conversation that started this festival, Jarrette's opinion is that more people need to go to theaters to keep that primary revenue stream open to keep the machine working. Now, he's in the industry so I understand that 100% but I also think streaming is toothpaste out of the bottle. It's a shame that people aren't double- or triple-dipping on movies anymore (paying at the theater, paying to rent, paying to buy the dvd/blu) but just like music, the Internet has facilitated a world in which watching movies has to be easier than pirating them, same as Steam for PC games and Spotify for music. I don't know what that spells for exhibitors but it caused pretty massive change in games and music. I do think creators will still have avenues to show their content, but conventional movies seen together in a theater may not be guaranteed... which is sad but also, how many hobbies do we basically enjoy exactly the same today as a hundred years ago?

Anyway, all this gobbledygook to say... I don't even know. I just figured I needed to end this note on some rambling nonsense :)