Review: LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

Ellie is dancing to Peter and Gordon in a puffy paper dress of her own design when her nan calls her downstairs. The post has just come. She's got into fashion school in London. London looks and feels just as she imagined, lights, life and colour (and creepy cabbies) but when she gets to the dorm it's all bitchface girls thankful for a non volunteer leper. So, she gets a job and moves into a bedsit and all is well. Well, she starts having dreams that she is back in her beloved sixties, strolling in a hoodie through streets of Aston Martins, dolly birds and black tie clubs. 

At one of the latter something strange happens. The attendant takes her hoodie, referring to it as a cloak and she's in. But when she looks in the mirror a blonde stunner in the haute couture is staring back. When that girl, introducing herself as Sandy to one of the megasleazy tuxedo oldies in the club, moves about her mission to start her shobiz career at the top, we see Ellie in mirrors. When Sandy starts getting too deep into Soho's Babylonian underworld things get darker and nastier as Ellie first observes but increasingly gets involved.

That's much more plot than I usually give but the setup is fairly complicated at first so the rest can flow with ease. Writer/director Edgar Wright speaks of the1960s as the decade he just missed out on and invests a lot of this longing for a former era into Ellie. So, whether it's on an old portable record player in the bedroom or bluetooth headphones in the train we get a wall to wall '60s jukebox. No complaints from me, there. But the other nostalgia on show here is for the tough thrillers like Repulsion and Don't Look Now (which Wright himself cites as influences) but the whole raft of Italian Giallo thrillers with its hallucinatory dreamscapes, lysergic colour, violence with blades rather than bullets, and transported Hitchcockian paranoia.

That nostalgia is going to keep returning to centre screen the way real nostalgia does to each of us, but not just in design or sourced music but in the characters themselves. Ellie missed the '60s by about four decades and to her it is a vision whose life is one of unattainable longing. When she enters Sandy's world the logic of what Sandy is trying to do bumps up grossly against her own vision. She doesn't get to go on stage after Cilla Black in the first '60s scene but she does get to audition at a lesser club. Her sultry rendition of Downtown (Anya Taylor Joy's own unaccompanied rendition, and it's sensational) is squashed into a caryard cube when we see the part she really gets. 

In a striking scene a performer costumed as a marionette mimes Sandy Shaw's Puppet on a String in an outfit so oldie it's gold. Around her, a line of dancers with chairs perform robotic burlesque moves, gyrations, leg spreads, with doll-like expressionless faces. They are clapped on by a group of men done to the nines for a night on the town, all blue suits (you can almost smell the cocktail of cologne and sweat). Sandy is not even the lead mime, she's one of the dancers, looking, as they do, like she's coping with shock. This scene is pure Kubrick. It's not a copy of any of his scenes, mind you (although you could think of it as a reversal of the end of Paths of Glory) it's just that the collision of Sandy's ambition and what her world prefers her to be have a visibly brutalising effect. The detail and icy precision of it hammer that in. This is a bridge between Swinging London and the Soho of the Krays and holding on to nostalgia is going to feel druggy in the ugly sense, loss of control and amped-up threat.

While these themes are given rich time on screen by Wright 'n' the gang he curiously falls short in the thriller department. Halfway through the middle act there is a drag as the action that tightens the bonds between now and then, Ellie and Sandy starts to get repetitious. The film starts to feel long rather than deep. I wish the trope of the ghostly figures (not that much of a spoiler) had more eeriness to it. A case of less is more on that one.

But I wonder if I'm on the wrong track there. Part of what is going on here is another mix of old and new that reinforces all the themes around it: the casting. Thomasin MacKenzie as Ellie and Anya Taylor Joy as Sandy give plenty of evidence that the art of screen acting is far from lost, both delivering well crafted physical and vocal performances throughout as they have to compliment each other as characters but also remain distinct (and Wright really does push the physical resemblance hard). Terrence Stamp as a tough old Cockney is a natural. He gives only as much as he needs to keep us guessing his identity in the '60s world. 

But it is Diana Rigg who really shines. She was required viewing in the '60s as half of the team in The Avengers, the groovy spy-fi X-Files precursor. Her character name in that was Emma Peel and it was a construction: m(an) appeal. If anyone knew what both being in control of their career involved and the strength needed to keep herself out of the downward pull of the culture felt like it was she. It's a strong performance that contains the poignancy, pathos and comedy she was always so strongly capable of. If that started sounding like a eulogy then it should. This film was her swansong, she died last year (not of Covid).

So, while more middle-heavy than it should be Last Night in Soho leaves a good impression. A fable about the dangers of nostalgia (especially when it isn't your own) folded into a trippy urban thriller, it is one of the better fates that await the unwary ticket buyer now that cinemas are open again. Bring a little patience to the screen and it will do pretty well by you. The lush to gaudy pallet will dazzle, the music will spark interest in one of pop's greatest decades, you get two of the most promising young talents in cinema to watch and also get to say farewell to Diana Rigg in style. Good value right there.

Review: IN THE EARTH

Martin, a young botanist, travels to a remote scientific station near a large wood in order to perform some checks in the forest. After a COVID-like series of health checks (there is a pandemic in the cities) he takes in some of the local folk art still evident in the ex-lodge and takes in some of the legends. All very colourful but he does have a job to do. He packs up with fellow scientist Alma and they set off into the woods on foot. Coming across an unoccupied tent, they note more examples of the local wood spirit seen in the art at the lodge. That night they are attacked in their own tents and wake to find their equipment trashed and their shoes stolen. City-bod Martin gashes his foot almost immediately and has to limp with a branch for a crutch through the bush until they both stop at the sight of the wild looking Zac whose tent is huge and houses enough room for them, some druggy fruit wine and shoes, glorious shoes. But if the relief of any of this is sending alarm bells it might already be too late to run.

There is so much spoilable plot after this that I'm going to stop it right here. There's still a fair bit to say despite that, though, and this new Ben Wheatley film is the kind that might take a few viewings to get quite right. This, will be a first impression.

Bearing immediate resemblance to earlier Wheatley films Kill List and A Field in England, In the Earth steers its own course towards an older tradition of sci-fi horror. Unlike the bait and switch of Kill List that goes from severe geezer gangster to folkhorror or Field that adds trippiness to its costume horror, In the Earth with its use of rainy day woods and the thing at their centre (a standing stone with an eye-like hole gouged from its head) plugging into something ancient and powerful, reminds anyone with a special interest or just memory of old BBC sci-horror like The Stone Tape or Children of the Stones. There are scenes where the expository dialogue approaches self awareness and it's a reminder of the days of Nigel Kneale and the need for clear statement of ideas driven by their density and weight. And there is the durable spookiness of those old shows that pervades here. Wherever you step, on the path or away from it, you are going to encounter something you hadn't bargained for.

But Wheatley is not playing a cover version. The pandemic surrounding the location like a force field is the reason for the scientists to be in the woods in the first place. The notion of the forest giving up a treasure of immunity is so close to pharmeceutical history as to be assumed by the viewer, but the link between asprin from bark and penecillin from mould and this complex living thing is well to the fore. But this is a horror tale and what starts as a simple expedition will have to become a nightmare trek as the science gets sidetracked and the anti-science plays for mystique and ritual. That's the thing that appeals to a world burdened by almost two years of pandemic, the craving for a treatment and the wildly ignorant myth creation on the fringes. This film was conceived and produced in time of COVID-19. Wheatley appears to have finally created an allegory that is almost indistinguishable from its model.

As I say, I probably need to see this again.

I missed it at the protean MIFF this year and it hasn't made it to cinemas so I rented it last night through Prime.

DONNIE DARKO @ 20

One of the 2000's definitive films was a one hit wonder. Stepping up for the under-thirties, Richard Kelly gave us a film of strong ideas, great compassion, perfect casting, was easy on the eye, whose CGI effects still work effortlessly, broke a future A-lister and balanced on a tightrope of genre tropes that do not always knot easily: teen movies, psychiatric condition stories, Tim Burton style candy gothic, accents of sci-fi and more all form part of a smooth pattern that brings in a three act story on time and with great craft. Since then there have been a quirky epic that was universally reviled, and a retelling of an old Twilight Zone episode which was ok. Ok.

Then there was the director's cut, a bloated reprise that lengthened the screen time, messed with the sourced song list and all but fatally extracted the organ that made the original so robust: ambiguity. The swinging door that took the viewer from a time travel movie to a suburban gothic Beautiful Mind was barely noticeable the first time around. Kelly nailed it shut on the sci-fi side and made it feel ordinary. It left me and many others wondering if he knew what he'd done in the first place.

Teenaged Donnie Darko is woken by a weird voice that draws him into one of his sleepwalking episodes. The voice belongs to a human-sized rabbit with an evil grin, who tells him in precise language that Donnie's world will end in less than a month. Weird enough, but when he wakes on the golf course the next day he finds that his house took a hit from the falling engine of a jet airliner, his room is now several flavours of dust. When he tells his psychiatrist that he made a new friend she asks him if it's a real or imaginary one, he says flatly, "imaginary". At this point you know that you are in for a peculiar ride.

But it's peculiar in the best way. From the snapping table talk by the family at dinner to the conversation with Frank the Bunny, to the expansion and compression of time as the kids at school speed up or slow down in their movements, we are looking at a world through the eyes of someone whose every glance or stare is one of wonder. It's not all whimsy and fairy floss, though. Donnie knows that Frank drawing him out of the house that night saved his life. He finds it hard to connect to a world that feels like it's always going at the wrong speed and punishes any attempt to stop it (as his gym teacher does when he opposes the cringeworthy inspirational training she's brought in). If the surrealism of his dreams and day visions introduce a kind of epic beauty his encounter and courtship of Gretchen the new girl has all the awkwardness of genuine adolescent life. This and the stranger territories this film enters are navigated with such a confidently delicate helm that we really only notice after the credits that we've travelled so far.

And two decades have not wearied it. While in Australia it was a good performer for the art house circuit its true entry into the culture was on home video, particularly the then new and wondrous DVD which could offer alternative soundtracks (like a director's commentary), making-ofs or anything that could fit to give a feature film some extra context. An internet that had already fashioned meta-verses from tv shows (The X-Files had rewarded its Usenet fans by mentions or adoptions many times over) met the richness and promise of Donnie Darko with open arms and clinging embraces. This film is as much a part of the popular cinema canon as any classic you want to mention (I'm not going to as it will always leads to life-draining disputes) and will be there as long as we acknowledge the cinema of this century. The presentation I watched to write this article was the extended edition from Arrow in 4K, featuring both cuts and a host of swag. When it was announced I marked the calendar.

Watching it last night for the first time in many years I was again rivetted, watching it without interruption for the whole running time. The jokes work, the tragedy works, the performances impress and the movie bids me welcome the same way it did when I saw it at the Nova those decades ago (it wasn't released in Australia outside of Festivals until 2002, though). While I watched I couldn't help noticing something I didn't give much thought to at first watch. 

This film was made in 2001 but set in 1988. At the time I thought of this as a writer/director simply falling back on his own adolescence. Most of the post punk songs sourced as score extenders are from the other end of the decade (from memory only Under the Milky Way would have been recent) but good songs have a way of hanging around. Nevertheless, it comes across to me as more time stretching, not so alien to its setting as to be hauntological but still out of time. The contemporary presidential election between Dukakis and Bush has play in the family discourse and might serve as a reminder of more recent difficult elections like 2000's between the high profile Al Gore and Bush Jnr and how it was down to workers going cross-eyed to work out who the vote was for. It's release and conception put it way out of the loop of fictional commentaries on 911 but if it appeals to any era it's the close of the cacophanous '90s with its grunge and its Gulf War I and its Contragate and mass character assassination by internet post to a time when two rivals had to fall back on public discourse to run their campaigns. The aching wish for time travel to go back and stop it from going wrong was no less potent a thought then than it was when the towers fell and the wars were declared. No one who has lived on Earth for the past two and a bit years would need nudging on what they'd do if they could get in a Tardis.

And then there are the performances: Mary McDonnell brings a range from sharp intelligence, to pain to a crushing acceptance of what the world doles out as Donnie's mother Rose (she would be the centre of gravity in her every scene in the Battlestar Galactica reboot); Drew Barrymore brings the understanding that her acting royalty status and child stardom had given her to the teacher who might never make a difference to the minds she faces daily and the worse ones in school administration; Patrick Swayze's magnanimity in playing the glitzy lifestyle coach after a decade and a half of A-listing turned colourless is impressive; Maggie Gyllenhaal has fewer scenes than her screen and real life brother Jake but owns her young adulthood, holding it somewhere between diehard brattyness and  brash incipient growed-up-ness (it's her announcement that she'll vote for Dukakis that starts the family argument at the beginning). 

But, of course this film runs on its title character. This was not Jake Gyllenhall's screen debut but it was the role that broke his career so that he has not only never been out of work or the gossip magazines since but he's also a highly regarded member of the craft. He carries Donnie Darko because his intensity leads him to both inspiration and shattered communications and it feels authentic. The scene that really made me take note was Donnie's first real dialogue with Gretchen. He fights back his glee at getting the attention of a beautiful young girl but his enthusiasm keeps chest-bursting, the language variously rolls around his mouth or takes wing. He reminded me of Travis Bickle's early scenes with Betsy in Taxi Driver, the ones where he's too confident to notice how awkward he is being and the way this registers as a weird kind of charm in Betsy's eyes. Travis didn't have the benefit of psychiatry, though, and Donnie's dialogue's with Katherine Ross's Dr Thurman give him the opportunity to discuss the darkness that he fears is his fate. Ross's gentle gravitas contrasts with Gyllenhaal's unmasked pain and the scenes are electrified by the contrast between the pair. It's to Gyllenhaal's credit that lines that might have rested on the adequate shelf by a lesser player are elevated to unforgettable by his delivery and fluid physicality. His keynote is intensity and if  this means just plays himself each time it also has allowed him access to big mainstream Oscar bait like Brokeback Mountain, bizarro fable movies like Enemy, a Marvel Comic Universe character and the unforgettably creepy sociopathic human eel in Nightcrawler. All that started here.

So, did Richard Kelly just stumble on to a cult classic only to ruin it by changing his mind? That's a lot of confident and sensitive direction of actors and accomplished visual skill for a stumble. Maybe he just got sick of people coming up to him and telling him the "truth" of what his movie was about. His commentary on the director's cut includes a straight up claim that he only ever wanted to make a sci-fi movie. Maybe, but then why all the philosophy, why the real tragedy in the last act if you just want to do a time travel tale? Although I didn't rewatch the later cut for this article I wasn't inclined to as my memory of it was that the extra material either contributed nothing of genuine interest or only added more mysticism. What happens when you remove the ambiguity from a story like this is the removal of the audience's reason for staying. This happens too often with extended edits. Amadeus is rendered interminable with its extra scenes. Apocalypse Now Redux was worth seeing once (the "Final Cut" isn't much better). The 2000 cut of The Exorcist is still subtitled with "The Version You've Never Seen" even though it's practically the only version anyone can see now, despite the extra material making it drag and the added CGI just makes it look idiotic. 

But that's the thing, I guess. The best thing is to offer the choice. Almost every release of Donnie Darko since the Director's Cut has included both. For me this is just a reminder of a movie that was right the first time, one whose continued freshness and power make a new friend of its viewers every time. One hit wonder? So what? I don't have to be in the fan club to like Pop Muzik when I hear it. Same with this.

Review: ANTLERS

Twelve year old Lucas all but witnesses his father attacked by a wild animal in an abandoned mine. His teacher doesn't know this but picks up symptoms of abuse in the violent fairy tale Lucas presents as homework. It sounds less like a kid's story than a screen memory. A victim of her father's monstrous dominance she bristles and worries until she follows him from school one afternoon and, over a shouted ice cream learns the strange order the boy has made of his home life. We've already seen that there is a monster in the basement. Soon we are seeing Teacher Julia voice her concerns to her brother (town sherriff) and the school principal to little effect and we also see her fight her own stress by saying no to the alcohol at the local grocer. 

A few loaded guns right there and all this movie had to do was discharge them in act three as Uncle Anton commanded. But this Del Toro production of Scott Cooper's film (of Nick Antosca's story in the court of King Caracticus) has other plans. On the surface of it Antlers is the Stephen King style tale of a lonely outlier boy, bullied by a thickhead for his difference while monsters who might just bet on Lucas in a fight are roaming the Oregonian woods. We get the generic classroom lesson that makes the theme plain early on and we are apprised of how folklore however fantastic, has its origins in human misdeeds. 

Ok, all is well in horror movie land but Scott Cooper wants us to feel some of the humanity of the people he pushes into the room with us. Julia's PTSD is triggered but her strength is keeping it at bay for long enough to see it in reason. She knows she's one of the lucky ones as her brother Paul intimates later. Lucas is a believable twelve year old, meeting his extraordinary situation with a blend of fear and wonder, not entirely sure what he should be feeling at points of stress. And then you get the monster and the monster is not just a thing from the woods but has an origin and it's none too wholesome. A welling dread builds in the cold and dripping forests and mossy old houses and we know that when the action happens we will need to know that our tongues are tucked away form our incisors.

The very best horror is heavily flavoured with tragedy or at least sadness which can serve to stretch the violence and the mayhem into often unbearable extents. The mother/daughter bond is horribly racked in Dark Water. Even in 1941's The Wolf Man with its reluctant monster touches with melancholy. This is where Del Toro's influence is clearly felt. This is not to take away from Scott Cooper for fashioning a modern folkoric nightmare for these times of folklore in the breath of everyone outside. I put that bit in because I'm just back from seeing this at a morning session at Hoyts in Melbourne, the first real cinema screening since Supernova in April. It felt so calming and relieving being in a beautiful big movie palace with a massive screen and immersive sound. It's a testament to this film that my relaxation was shortlived. Perhaps it was this sense of relieving normality that influenced me away from some quite harsh review of this one but, dammit, I enjoyed it.