LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

 Thomasina McKenzie     Anya Taylor-Joy     Matt Smith     Diana Rigg

Synnove Karlsen     Rita Tushingham     Terence Stamp

             The most charming and fortuitous part of this film is the opening when Eloise (McKenzie) is dancing with abandon in her bedroom anticipating her dreams coming true in becoming a fashion designer in London.  She has been accepted into a design school there and has high hopes of being a success.  Her grandmother (Nolan) whom she lives with expresses her concern about Eloise keeping herself together in the big city, but Eloise brushes aside her concerns and rushes off.

            Her first encounters with her new roommate (Karlsen) and her friends are stressful, and Ellie (now) wisely finds her own place to live with Miss Collins (Rigg) who has strict but not unreasonable rules.  She lives near a French bistro and a pub—all set-ups for a ripe imagination.

            An interesting twist is director Edgar Wright (cowriter with Krysty Wilson-Cairns) introducing an alter-ego for Ellie, “Sandie” (Taylor-Joy), one who is more an expression of Ellie’s imagination than Ellie herself. Sandie is bold, daring, seductive, and assertively puts herself forward in getting what she wants.  This creates problems for Ellie who must clamp down on Sandie when she is getting too wild.  Sandie haunts Ellie in her dreams, only to disappear when Ellie’s morning alarm goes off.  This back-and-forth creates many dramatic and interesting moments in the film.

            All this was fascinating for me, expecting that the denouement would be as clever as it is in Wright’s earlier film, Baby Driver.   But no, my wish was not fulfilled.  The ending resembles more Wright’s World’s End.   Last Night in Soho ends up being far-fetched, turning into a fiasco, with a demented mind dissembling into absurdity.  Worse, it slides into the belief in ghosts and their power to continue to haunt the living.  

            The performances of the actors redeem this movie to some extent.  Thomasina McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy are two of my favorite actresses and casting (Nina Gold, Martin Ware) them as two aspects of Eloise is truly clever.  The filmmakers (Chung-hoon Chung, cinematographer) are admirably clever in making their faces appear so much the same.  McKenzie and Taylor-Joy swerving back and forth into each other is a hallmark of expertise on the part of the actors as well as the crafts people.

            Classified as a drama/horror/mystery/thriller, Last Night in Soho meets these criteria, but it goes over the top into something completely unbelievable, I detached from it eventually.  The two-hour run time is part of the problem; after ninety minutes, I was ready for it to be over.  It was like the filmmakers were just spattering us with horrors stacked upon one another just for the sake of extending the time.  Not necessary.

 

Last Night in Soho sets us up for expecting knowledge and cleverness but lets us down by ending in the usual horror movie absurdity.

 

Grade:  C-                             By Donna R. Copeland

RADIOACTIVE

Rosamund Pike     Sam Riley     Anya Taylor-Joy

     In an extraordinary production directed by Marjane Satrapi and starring Rosamund Pike as Madame Curie, we hear the story of an eccentric scientist who won two Nobel prizes through much conflict and a certain amount of public hatred. She was the first woman to win a Nobel, notably being relatively unimpressed with it, but at the same time fighting for her role in it.

     Madame Curie (nee, Marie Slodowska) was having a difficult time holding onto a lab to do her work—both because of her being a woman trying to do science and because of a rather cantankerous personality.  It was most fortunate that her path crossed that of Pierre Curie who recognized immediately that they could achieve much more working together. It was likewise fortunate that he knew how to “handle” her, which included being conscientiously careful in seeing that she received every credit she was due in their partnership. For instance, initially, the Nobel committee was intending to give the prize to him alone, but he would only accept it if they gave it to both of them.

     The story is fascinating in a number of ways; first of all in seeing the hurdles she had to jump over in even being able to be a scientist, but secondly because of a quirky, prickly personality.  She was highly complex in her make-up, having a phobia about hospitals, being ambivalent about recognition yet ferociously insisting on getting credit for her achievements, and giving in completely to the love she had toward her husband.  She and her husband were also unusual in their communication with one another and in the family. Sensitive topics were never out of bounds for discussion, and they could have heated arguments, then easily switch back to a loving relationship.

     Pike is well known for her talent and skill in acting, and here once again she captures what I presume is the essence of who Marie Curie really was.  It should be a career high for her.  (I have not read Lauren Redniss book on which Jack Thorne based the script, but would guess that the film is a fine representation of Redniss’ work, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2011.)  Sam Riley as Marie’s husband makes a good match with Pike, and the scenes they’re in together are electric.

     Another aspect to marvel at in this production is Anthony Dod Martle’s artistic cinematography, which he uses to further the story and accentuate the dramatics. I think it’s a case where one could look at and revel in the pictures alone without the sound.  Transitions, close-ups, and the blending of visuals are striking in their own right.

     Personally, I was very moved by Radioactive in that when I was a psychologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, much of my research was about identifying the effects of central nervous system radiation on children’s ability to learn years after they received it.  Kudos also to the film for showing the positive and possible negative effects of scientific knowledge—about which Madame Curie eventually became all too aware.  Her redemption came partly from the effectiveness of radiation that was helpful even at that time, and in her daughter’s continuing discoveries of its use in medicine and on the battlefield.

     Radioactive is a film I wish all young people could see for its modeling of simple passion for science, the challenges that arise in the tension between family life and career, and the prejudices that can appear from a general public that is not educated or well informed enough to override petty concerns.  The film is most timely in all these aspects.

Now appearing on Amazon Prime, this is a story that will entertain, inspire, and inform anyone who sees it.

Grade:  A                                    By Donna R. Copeland

EMMA

Anya Taylor-Joy     Tanya Reynolds     Josh O’Connor     Bill Nighy     Johnny Flynn

Mia Goth     Miranda Hart     Gemma Whelan     Rupert Graves     Amber Anderson     Callum Turner

     Based on a novel by Jane Austen and set in the nineteenth century in England, Emma. is a view mostly of the upper class. The character Emma (Taylor-Joy) embodies the period as a highly admired lady of the town who has been so indulged she comes across as superficial and vain.  Yet she fancies herself such a good judge of others’ character, she rushes into matching her friends up with one another.  Not only does she introduce them, but takes an active role in furthering their romantic relationships.  

     As one would expect, Emma makes some fateful mistakes along the way, misjudging who will be with whom.  Much of the story plays out like an English country dance with constantly changing partners.  That is, we see presumed partners through Emma’s eyes—until reality overcomes fantasy and all is settled in the end.  The one most surprised will be Emma herself.

     Emma. is so well cast, it becomes the film’s strongest asset, helping keep such a mannered story from becoming rather boring to the modern eye.  Taylor-Joy is beautiful and captures Emma’s personality in its mixture of well-intentioned kindness and condescension that stems from over-protection and indulgence.  Still, she maintains an aura of authority in her role as mistress of her father’s house.  

     Co-starring with Taylor-Joy is Johnny Flynn (as George Knightley), the epitome of a gentleman.  Knightley owns a manor brimming with fine art, but is sensitive and always kind and merciful. A neighbor and in-law of Emma and her father, he sees them daily and is Emma’s only critic.  Flynn is perfect for the role in his looks (not so handsome he becomes suspect) and his low-key, personable manner.

     Other prominent roles are carried by Mia Goth as Harriet, a naïve young woman Emma has decided to take under her wing to “make a lady” of her; Rupert Graves (as Mr. Weston) is an appealing “Mr. Nice Guy”, who is social and charming; Bill Nighy as Emma’s hypochondriacal father proves again his effectiveness in being a character actor; and Amber Anderson as the mysterious Jane Fairfax attracts the eye and plays the piano with flourish (Anderson is an accomplished pianist as well as an actor).

     For me, the music provided by David Schweitzer and Isobel Waller-Bridge (composer for “Fleabag” and sister of Phoebe Waller-Bridge) is a high point, coming in unexpectedly at times, religious choral music at other times, and lyrically sweet songs, such as the duet by Jane Fairfax and Johnny Flynn, “The Last Rose of Summer.”  

     I don’t think we really needed another remake of Emma, but director Autumn de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton have produced a worthy rendition of the Jane Austen classic.  Lovers of Austen’s work will likely be pleased with this update.  Others will not be so impressed.

Emma. is worthy of your attention if you are drawn to period pieces.

Grade:  B                                    By Donna R. Copeland

GLASS

James McAvoy     Sarah Paulson     Bruce Willis     Samuel L. Jackson

Anya Taylor-Joy     Spencer Treat Clark     Charlayne Woodard

     M. Night Shyamalan has written and directed a number of films (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, Lady in the Water) that seem to have a hit or miss quality about them, at least from film critics’ points of view.  Glass is intended to be the third in a trilogy with Unbreakable and Split, neither of which was up to his first success, Sixth Sense.  It is a sequel with promise, but falls short, partly because of a complicated story that contains multiple back stories, but mostly because of the editing, which forces the viewer to spend too much time wondering what is being portrayed in many scenes.  Perhaps devotees of M. Night Shyamalan’s previous two films, Unbreakable and Split, the first two parts of a trilogy, of which Glass is the third, will be able to establish precedence and context to certain scenes, but the general public will be frustrated in trying to figure out what is going on, particularly in the beginning scenes. 

     The main players are:  1) Kevin Crumb (McAvoy), an established master at portraying dissociative identity disorder (DID), who has multiple personalities, one of which is a superhuman hunk capable of, say, overturning cars, another of which is a nine year-old with a lisp.  An abusive mother is the cause of his problems.  2) David Dunn (Willis) has a security business with his son Joseph (Clark), who believes his father has superhuman powers, but knows he is to keep quiet about it.  David is committed to preventing crimes from happening through his tactile sensitivity, whereby he can sense when someone is doing something wrong and goes about trying to stop it.  3) Elijah Price (Jackson) having grown up with a bone disease that makes his bones extremely fragile, decides, based upon his expertise in comics, that there must be the opposite of weaknesses such as his—superheroes, who have extraordinary strengths.  The movie does have a clever way of showing how each of these characters confronts his weakness and develops a superpower, but logic about their existence soon falls away. In a grandiose turn showing his supreme confidence in his belief, Elijah goes about convincing Kevin and David that they are indeed superheroes. 

     Once again in this last of a loosely connected trilogy, James McAvoy is the most interesting aspect of a film about disturbed individuals.  I don’t know if he necessarily captures the actual DID disorder, but he is entertaining in his ability to be so many personalities.  Bruce      Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have roles that they could easily “phone in”, but certainly provide more interest than would be there otherwise.  The addition of a psychiatrist (Paulson) and her staff at the mental hospital once again implies that the care in such places is self-serving rather than to help patients.  Paulson is a fine actress, but she is wasted here.

     In short, Glass is overly ambitious and too reliant on sketchy scenes to provide necessary information to follow the convoluted story, so many times it comes across as a jumbled mess.  Although it has been shown that many people can turn weaknesses into strengths, a man becoming a super-hero as a result is hardly a possibility.

This Glass is less than half full.

Grade:  D                                    By Donna R. Copeland

THOROUGHBREDS

Anya Taylor-Joy     Olivia Cooke     Anton Yelchin     Paul Sparks     Francie Swift

     I wouldn’t call the movie “thoroughbred”, but it is entertaining, and a good show for young writer/director Cory Finley.  It will be criticized for being slow, but I thought that pace worked well for contemplating the two teen misfits, Lily (Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Cooke), and building up the suspense.  Amanda is particularly well drawn as a psychopath-in-the-making, denying she ever has feelings, yet being expert in the perception of others’. 

     Finley is clever in the way he introduces the two main characters, illustrating their upper class upbringing, one presented as prim and proper and the other as a much more interesting character who surprises with every response.  We are given a heavy-handed tour multiple times of Lily’s house, a richly furnished mansion, to show her upper-class status as well as draw us into the allure of a proposition the two girls make to the local drug dealer, Tim (engagingly played by the late Anton Yelchin in his last filmed movie).  This tour and other scenes are enhanced in the talented hands of cinematographer Lyle Vincent (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night).

     In the beginning, Lily is presented as a good student who has been engaged to tutor Amanda, although this is made ambiguous as to whether there are tutoring sessions or just “hanging out.”  The girls are antagonistic to one another, but something in the other also attracts them.  (We find out later how this is not a good thing.)  Lily appears to be prim and inhibited, and Amanda draws her out by surmising her underlying negative feelings, making Lily uncomfortable, yet realizing that Amanda is astute.  Apparently, Amanda is onto something in Lily’s relationship with her stepfather Mark (Sparks). 

     The girls do develop a bond, and engage Tim in a devious plan.  After rather abusive negotiations and a tempting offer, Tim agrees to help them.  Thereafter, nothing much occurs as expected, at least by the girls.  Finley as the writer develops a clever way for all of this to play out, but can be faulted for throwing in a red herring.  Although he does an excellent job in showing how two people can egg one another on, the twist at the end does not ring true/plausible. 

     The acting jobs of Taylor-Joy and especially Cooke are spot-on.  Seldom is an actor asked to be so deadpan for her character as Cooke is, yet she pulls it off with eloquent charm.  Much of the change in Taylor-Joy’s character is shown on the actress’ face and in her eyes.  We see it, but don’t want to believe in what we see.  Paul Sparks is a talented actor, and shows the stepfather to be an a-hole, but he’s more rude than evil.  I think the script should have called for him to more than just rude.  As the film stands, it implies that the girls are “born evil”, instead of responding to their upbringing.

A crime story with a bent different from most.

Grade:  C                                    By Donna R. Copeland

THE WITCH

Anya Taylor-Joy     Ralph Ineson     Kate Dickie     Harvey Scrimshaw     Ellie Grainger     lucas Dawson

             The Witch is a horror film par excellence.  Beginning with the dirge-like cello music that gradually transitions into dissonant screeching of the violins, the opening scenes are ones of dispute in which a family is essentially driven from a shared plantation sometime in the 1600s in New England.  They go willingly, holding to their principles, and have smugly pleased faces when they come upon what will be their own place, a verdant field next to a forest with a stream.  And suddenly a house and barn, crops, and domestic animals appear, and it seems that all will be well.

      William (Ineson) and Kate (Dickie) have five children, Thomasin (Taylor-Joy), Caleb (Scrimshaw), Mercy (Grainger), Jonas (Dawson), and the baby Sam.  They all seem to pitch in with chores, although Mercy and Jonas (twins) clearly favor playing, dancing, singing, and horseplay to work.  Both Thomasin and Caleb are serious, thoughtful children who take their parents’ religion seriously.  It’s a fundamentalist type of belief, in which they must always be praying to have their sins forgiven.  Guilt is rife in the parents who frequently attribute negative occurrences to God’s testing their faith and punishing them for sins, and the two older children have internalized these lessons all too well.

       The forest has a mystical, ghostly appearance to the family, especially to the mother, but of course it is seductive, and several family members cannot withstand its temptation.  This is especially poignant, since Sam suddenly disappears one day, never to be seen again, and it is assumed that a “wolf” has absconded with him.  This is torture for the parents who believe that he might not have gone to heaven.  Perhaps they thought he ought to have had “last rites” before he died, but I’m not sure.  They don’t even know if he’s dead or not.

       Sam’s disappearance is only the first of many progressively horrible experiences the family will endure.  The film, written and directed by Robert Eggers, depicts so eerily well the gradual disintegration of minds into psychosis.  Accusations of sin and witchery abound, particularly focused upon Thomasin.  After this relatively long (but very good) set-up of family dynamics, really strange and horrifying things transpire, culminating in a truly fantastic scene.  Eggers has done an admirable job in managing the tension between reality and fantasy/metaphor, which keeps the viewer transfixed, wondering how it will all turn out, but—until the very end—it all holds together in the realm of plausibility (the place where most horror films lose me).  The horror and mystery here lies more in psychological phenomena than in material destruction—although that’s also present.  Eggers well deserves his award as Best Director at Sundance in 2015.

       The main actors are gifted (and presumably well directed) in playing their roles, with Ineson as the father looking like a Jesus figure, Dickie as the mother a long-suffering wife, and Taylor-Joy as a young woman whose fertile imagination gets her into trouble and makes her the target of accusations.  Scrimshaw, Grainger and Dawson are naturals in their roles as younger siblings trying to understand the world around them.  Mark Korven’s music is uncanny in leading the viewer into scene after scene,  emotionally.

One of the best in the horror genre.

Grade:  A-           By Donna R. Copeland