Last Night in Soho (R)
A present-day young woman with a romantic view of 1960s London suddenly finds herself traveling there nightly in Last Night in Soho, a not-the-best but not-the-worst ghosty story from director Edgar Wright.
Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) loves 1960s London fashion and the 1960s music her grandmother Peggy (Rita Tushingham) listens to. Stories of London are also tied up in Eloise’s mom (Aimee Cassettari), who died by suicide when Eloise was little but whom Eloise still appears to communicate with, such as when Eloise sees her smiling mother just before Peggy brings Eloise the letter saying she’s been accepted into a London fashion school.
Peggy doesn’t know that Eloise is still seeing her mom, but she she worries that the stress of the big city will get to Eloise. Eloise does get a little freaked out when the taxi driver’s chatter gets a little too friendly and she doesn’t quite fit in with her roommate at the school dorm, Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen), who instantly establishes herself as a queen bee.
When Eloise sees an ad for a studio apartment, she decides to move out on her own and is, at first, delighted by the space. In addition to an in-the-thick-of-things location, the apartment gives Eloise a psychic connection to a young woman who lived there decades earlier. When Eloise goes to sleep, she finds herself entering the life of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a blonde with ambitions to be a singer. She goes to swanky clubs, wearing beautiful clothes, and she meets Jack (Matt Smith), a handsome man who offers to help her get gigs. Eloise is quickly enamored with this new life, even if it is somebody else’s that she’s sort of virtual-reality-ing her way into. In the waking world, she buys herself a coat like Sandie’s at a vintage shop, starts designing a dress for a class similar to one of Sandie’s cocktail dresses and even gets Sandie’s haircut. Some of Sandie’s flirting abilities even rub off on Eloise, who is slowly making a friend in classmate John (Michael Ajao).
But then Eloise sees some darker scenes from Sandie’s life and starts to wonder if all of these “ghosts” really are in the past or if there are dangers that have carried into the present — and if a mysterious older man (Terence Stamp) who hangs out at the bar where Eloise works is one of those dangers.
Many of the elements of Last Night in Soho are extremely fun — from Eloise’s whole 1960s mod thing (which reminded me of the 1990s swing revival) to everything about the catty Jocasta character. I like the relationship Eloise has with whatever her abilities are — she just sort of accepts that she is seeing ghosts, but she doesn’t entirely know yet how to interpret what she’s seeing. This character could have seemed extremely daffy and fragile but McKenzie makes her seem more just uncertain and sheltered but also aware of her naivete.
The movie also has a delightful-to-see supporting character, which I won’t spoil except to say I was both happy to get to spend time with this person and then sad when I realized it might be the last new role I see that person in.
Other elements of Last Night in Soho feel underbaked. Sandie’s story builds to high drama, but then it resolves sort of too fast. Am I saying I wished the movie had been longer? No? But maybe added to and then edited down again, with some of the choppier bits of the story smoothed out. B-
Rated R for bloody violence, sexual content, language, brief drug material and brief graphic nudity, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Edgar Wright with a screenplay by Edgar Wright & Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Last Night in Soho is an hour and 56 minutes long and distributed by Focus Features.
Army of Thieves (TV-MA)
A group of quirky criminals attempts to crack three of the toughest safes ever created in Army of Thieves, a prequel to Army of the Dead focused on Matthias Schweighöfer’s Dieter.
In this movie, the zombie apocalypse has only just begun in Las Vegas, so while Dieter is worried about zombies and even having nightmares about them, he’s still working his boring job in an idyllic-seeming German town and eating his sad work sandwich under a tiny awning in an alleyway. Then he meets Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel), who has watched his YouTube videos about safe-cracking and believes he just might have the ability to tackle the safes built decades earlier by a man named Hans Wagner. Like the Gotterdammerung, the safe Dieter faces in Army of the Dead, Wagner built three other safes named after parts of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle. These safes are supposed to be impossible to crack and if someone tries and fails, the safe is supposed to lock forever.
Gwendoline wants to hit all three safes, which are set to be decommissioned soon. Tens of millions of dollars await all the members of the team if they succeed; those members include hacker Korina (Ruby O. Fee), getaway driver Rolph (Guz Khan) and muscle/crazy guy/Gwendoline’s boyfriend Brad Cage (Stuart Martin). But for Gwendoline and for Dieter, the real prize is in being about to meet the challenge of Wagner’s creations.
For Interpol agent Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen), his grand challenge is finding and catching Gwendoline. He quickly realizes that her plan is to go after all the safes and he is determined to catch her in the act — even though, as his fellow agents point out, there’s this whole zombie apocalypse thing, which might arguably be a bigger deal.
Maybe having absolutely no expectations for this thing after the “good ideas but long and sort of scattered” Army of the Dead helped because I kind of enjoyed this. Not loved it, not “wheeeee!” the whole time, just had some fun, some of the time. As this movie itself points out, the machinations of a heist in a heist movie, with its sleight of hand and misdirection and wigs, is always fun and we get a couple of examples of those in this movie. I also enjoyed the group dynamic. Everybody on this team is some kind of oddball and portrayed as such but with a light touch. Dieter is an excellent “talented dork” character, having gained his criminally useful safe-cracking skills from a love of puzzles and a childhood spent as an outsider.
The performances here also bring a good energy to this endeavor, which is peppy despite an over two-hour runtime. Emmanuel is the movie’s big star; I know her mostly from supporting roles on Game of Thrones and in the Fast and Furious movies but here she shows her ability to really carry off the blend of action, humor and general bad-assery that is needed for an action movie lead. Surely there’s some spy thing, some Marvel movie that can capitalize on this.
Army of Thieves feels like a perfect “let’s just watch something fun” movie that doesn’t require too much attention or brain power and delivers a reasonably good time. B-
Rated TV-MA. Directed by Matthias Schweighöfer with a screenplay by Shay Hatten, Army of Thieves is two hours and nine minutes long and is available on Netflix.
Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin (R)
A young woman makes a documentary about her search for her biological mother in Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin, a universe expansion sidequel/reboot thing.
It also took me a minute to remember that the intentional documentary as setup for a horror film was the premise of 1999’s The Blair Witch Project, not 2007’s original Paranormal Activity, which was largely home video camera footage. Here, Margot (Emily Bader) and her friend Chris (Roland Buck III) are making a documentary about an Amish family that she believes is related to her. Margot was adopted and all she initially knows about her birth mother comes from some hospital security footage showing her leaving baby Margot in a doorway. Now, 25-ish Margot has found Samuel (Henry Ayres-Brown), a 20-something Amish man that 23andMe says is related to her. Samuel, living apart from his family during his rumspringa, agrees to meet up with Margot and travel with Margot and Chris to the Baylor family farm, where Margot can learn more about her mother. The film team is joined by Dale (Dan Lippert), a big doofy sound guy, and a van loaded with equipment.
At first the family, represented by Jacob (Tom Nowicki), who we eventually learn is Margot’s biological grandfather, doesn’t want these outsiders hanging around. But he decides to let them stay and Margot and Chris try to uncover more about Margot’s mother from the fairly tight-lipped community. But along with the usual cultural differences between these filmmaker kids and the Amish farmers, Margot and Chris start to notice oddities — a middle-of-the-night meeting of torch-carrying farmers, odd noises from the supposedly uninhabited attic — that hint at something spookier.
At one point late in the film, Dale and Chris debate whether the Baylor family really is Amish at all, or just using it as a cover. But to what end, Chris asks. And that was kind of my feeling about the whole movie: to what end does the movie make any of the choices it does — from elements as large as the use of the documentary to set the plot in motion to smaller details, like specific creaks and “there was something else in the room” that don’t make much sense once you find out the nature of the Scary Thing.
Especially earlier on, the Paranormal Activity movies did a good job of letting its characters use video technology to freak themselves out; I remember watching (in the second one maybe?) footage of a pool cleaner for a while. Scary pool cleaner footage. Next of Kin feels like it has a lot more “things” happening, not just one small element of spookiness per scene, but the result is that the movie often gets in its own way and doesn’t offer a clear idea of why it’s showing us what it’s showing us. C
Rated R for violence and bloody images and language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com (actually, the rating seems largely swear-word based, with some goriness shoved in at the end). Directed by William Eubank with a screenplay by Christopher Landon, Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin is an hour and 38 minutes long and is distributed by Paramount Pictures on Paramount+.
FILM
Venues
Bank of NH Stage
16 S. Main St., Concord
225-1111, banknhstage.com
The Music Hall
28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
436-2400, themusichall.org
O’neil Cinemas
24 Calef Hwy., Epping
679-3529, oneilcinemas.com
Red River Theatres
11 S. Main St., Concord
224-4600, redrivertheatres.org
Shows
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (R, 1984) part of the Film Frenzy $5 Classics series at O’neil Cinemas with multiple daily screenings through Thursday, Nov. 4.
• French Dispatch (R, 2021) on Thursday, Nov. 4, at 7 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 5, through Sunday, Nov. 7, at 1:30, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres.
• Spencer (R, 2021) on Thursday, Nov. 4, at 6:30 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 5, through Sunday, Nov. 7, at 1, 4 and 7 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.
• The Bolshoi Ballet — Spartacus, a broadcast presentation captured live, Sunday, Nov. 7, at 12:55 p.m. at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord. Tickets $15.
• The Big Parade (1925), a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Thursday, Nov. 10, at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey. Tickets start at $10.
• Hot Water (1924) starring Harold Lloyd, a silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis, on Sunday, Nov. 14, at 2 p.m. at Wilton Town Hall Theatre. Admission is free; $10 donation suggested.
• Warren Miller’s Winter Starts Nowat The Music Hall in Portsmouth, Thursday, Nov. 18, at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 19, at 6 and 9 p.m.; Saturday, Nov. 20, at 4 & 7 p.m. Tickets start at $28.
• National Theatre Live No Man’s Land,a broadcast of a play from London’s National Theatre, screening at the Bank of NH Stage in Concord on Sunday, Nov. 21, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students).
Singin’ in the Rain
See Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse and Rita Moreno in 1952’s musical film Singin’ in the Rain on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 10 a.m. at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. in Manchester; palacetheatre.org, 668-5588), a Senior Movie Mornings screening. Tickets cost $10.
Featured photo: Last Night in Soho. Courtesy photo.
