Last Night in Soho

 Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Edgar Wright

Screenplay:  Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, from a story by Edgar Wright

Starring:  Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Diana Rigg

Running Time:  117 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Teenager Eloise Turner (McKenzie) moves from rural Cornwall to the bright lights of London to study fashion design.  Fascinated by the music and the style of the Swinging Sixties, Eloise moves to a bedsit in the Soho area of the city, and finds herself haunted by visions of Sandie (Taylor-Joy) an aspiring singer in the 1960s.  At first Eloise is delighted by these journeys back in time, and uses her experiences to fuel her creativity.  However, as Sandie's story becomes increasingly dark, Eloise's dreams quickly turn into horrific nightmares, which begin to bleed into her waking life.

Probably many people have visions of some fantasy "Golden Age" when everything was cool, wonderful and glamorous, even if it was a time long before they were born.  For modern day teenager Eloise it's the 1960s, but she soon comes to discover that despite the glamour, cool clothes and fantastic music, there is darkness and cruelty.  She comes to London to pursue her dreams of fashion design but almost as soon as she steps off the train, she has a disturbing experience with a creepy taxi driver, and is bullied by the fellow students in her halls of residence, causing her to move into a bedsit.  One of the hallmarks of Edgar Wright films is the visual inventiveness, and this is on full display here, particularly the sequence where Eloise has her first dream which is throughly intoxicating, as Sandie is revealed as her mirror images, and we see Anya Taylor-Joy, with Thomasin McKenzie as her reflection, and vice versa.  Thomasin McKenzie is heartbreaking as the romantic, tormented Eloise, haunted by the past in more ways than one, Anya Taylor-Joy is striking as Sandie, at first seeming the personification of sixties glamour, but who increasingly falls apart.  Former Doctor Who Matt Smith plays handsome, charismatic but dangerous Jack, and Smith is very effective in a throughly villainous role.  Michael Ajao plays Eloise's classmate John, pretty much the only sympathetic male character in the film, and he does invest what could be a very bland part with some real emotion.  There are slo appearances by several Sixties icons: Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham and, in her final performance, Diana Rigg.  As with all of Edgar Wright's films, music is crucial here, with the stream of sixties classics almost another character.  The film does fall apart somewhat in the final third when it moves into more gruesome giallo horror territory, and at the end there are a few too many coincidences and shocking reveals, but for the most part it works very well, and the film is constantly intriguing, entertaining and sometimes genuinely shocking.  It's about the perils of nostalgia and "Golden Age" thinking, the dark side of glamour and most of all how men prey on women, which is the real horror in the film.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomasin Mackenzie in Last Night in Soho

Hot Fuzz

Year of Release:  2007
Director:  Edgar Wright
Screenplay:  Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Starring:  Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, action

Police Constable Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is one of the best officers in London's Metropolitan Police.  Fed up with Angel constantly outshining the rest of the force, his superiors transfer him to the sleepy, rural village of Sandford.  Angel reluctantly resigns himself to a life of turfing underage drinkers out of the local pub, collaring shoplifters, mediating disputes over garden hedges and occasionally finding lost swans.  However, it soon turns out that Sandford suffers from a disproportionately high number of fatal accidents.  Angel soon suspects that there is something deeply sinister going on in the village, but the only one of Sandford's lazy and incompetent police force who believes him is eager, childish Danny Butterman (Frost), whose idea of policing seems to largely come from American action movies, and who also happens to be the son of the head of the Sandford Police, Inspector Frank Butterman (Broadbent).

This film forms the second of Wright, Pegg and Frost's "Cornetto Trilogy" (the others being Shaun of the Dead (2004) and The World's End (2013)).  It can best be envisioned as being like a big Hollywood action movie plunked down in the middle of a quiet, Miss Marple style English village.  The film constantly references action movies, frequently spoofing the cliche's of the genre.  It's consistently funny, and the jokes keep running thick and fast throughout.  The sometimes graphic violence and over the top action are played as almost slapstick comedy, and Wright is a great visual director, and he choreographs the carnage very well.  Pegg and Frost perform very well together and their bond provides the emotional core of the film.  However the film feels about ten minutes too long and lacks the resonance of Shaun of the Dead and The World's End.  Also female characters barely get a look-in.  The eagle-eyed may spot cameos from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson (as a man dressed as Santa Claus) and Cate Blanchett (as a forensic investigator, with her face alomst completely concealed by a mask).

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost bring the noise in Hot Fuzz 

Shaun of the Dead

Year of Release:  2004
Director:  Edgar Wright
Screenplay:  Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Starring:  Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield, Dylan Moran, Lucy Davis, Penelope Wilton, Bill Nighy, Peter Serafinowicz, Jessica Stevenson
Running Time:  99 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, horror

29 year old Shaun (Pegg) is an electronics salesman with little to no ambition or direction in life.  his free time is torn between the two great loves of his life: his girlfriend Liz (Ashfield) who is increasingly frustrated by what she perceives as his laziness and lack of ambition, and his best friend Ed (Frost) an even bigger loser than Shaun, who prefers to spend all his time in the local pub or playing video games.  Finally losing patience with Shaun, Liz dumps him.  Heartbroken, he determines to win her back.  However, the course of true love never did run smooth, and Shaun's romantic quest is hampered, not only by the fact that Liz's friends, obnoxious David (Moran) and his dippy aspiring-actress girlfriend Diane (Davis), obviously hate him, but also by the fact that London is overrun with flesh-eating zombies.

Following their success with the cult sitcom Spaced (1999-2001), writer-director Edgar Wright reteamed with writer-actor Simon Pegg and actor Nick Frost, with this lively, dark and hilarious blend of comedy and horror.  The film opens as an almost conventional romantic comedy, with only slight hints initially of what is to come, and the characters are so wrapped up in their own lives, they don't notice the disturbing signs around them until it is too late.  Comedy and horror are two deceptively difficult genres to make work - it's hard to make people laugh, and even harder to scare them.  Combining the two successfully is like catching lighting in a bottle.  However this manages it.  The comedy is genuinely funny, and the horror elements are genuinely disturbing; the zombies are threatening, and when characters die, there is real weight to it.  The film shows off Wright's hyper-kinetic style of film-making, full of pop-culture references.  Fans of British comedy will no doubt recognize cameos from Martin Freeman, Reese Shearsmith, Tamsin Greig, Julia Deakin and Matt Lucas among others.  It is a hugely entertaining film that will appeal to hardcore horror fans, but also to general audiences.  It forms part of the so-called "Cornetto Trilogy" along with Hot Fuzz (2007) and The World's End (2013).

     Dylan Moran, Kate Ashfield, Simon Pegg and Lucy Davis prepare to battle the undead hordes in Shaun of the Dead

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Year: 2010
Director: Edgar Wright
Screenplay: Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Hader
Running Time: 112 minutes
Genre: Comedy, romance, fantasy, action

Summary: In present day Toronto, Canada, Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is an unemployed 23 year old slacker who plays bass in a struggling band called Sex Bob-Omb, lives with his sarcastic gay best friend Wallace (Culkin) and is dating a 17 year old high school student named Knives Chau (Wong). Scott's life is shaken up when he meets mysterious American delivery girl Ramona Flowers (Winstead) and falls madly in love with her. However, in order to win her heart, he must encounter and defeat each one of the seven members of the League of Ramona's Evil Exes.

Opinions: This movie is based on the six-volume series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley and, like the graphic novels, it blends comedy, romance, coming of age drama and surreal fantasy with references to video games, indie rock music, movies and Japanese animation and comics into a hilarious and heart-warming whole. The movie utilises a whole range of cinematic techniques including animation, on-screen captions and stylish camera angles which perfectly replicate the look and feel of vintage video games and Japanese anime. The movie is very well performed by a talented cast, and brilliantly directed by Wright.
This is a superb and stylish comedy.

"Scott, if your life had a face I'd punch it."
- Kim Pine (Alison Pill) in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World