Last Night in Soho (2021)

Director: Edgar Wright

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

 

At this point, I'm feeling a bit out of the loop. I adored Edgar Wright as a director in decades previous, but his last two films - including Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho, have left me oddly cold. I think it’s because I feel like Wright has started to write his scripts to match visuals versus crafting visuals to fit the depths of the script. It's a small and nuanced change in approach, but one that I feel undercuts many of the interesting elements in his latest film, Last Night in Soho. 

 

With his love letter to giallo and the murder mysteries of the 1960s (some serious Mario Bava vibes here which is always a plus), Last Night in Soho is a gorgeous piece of cinema, and its direction and editing are impressive. The use of dream-like flow and fading with the narrative is artfully done. If anything, Wright is definitely soaring with his visual pops, use of mirror tricks, and creating that sense of "parallel" timelines that evokes a sense of fantasy that slowly seeps into nightmares. 

 

Glass (2019)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Notable Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne Woordard, Luke Kirby, Adam David Thompson

Even five years ago, Glass was an unthinkable film. If you told me that we would be on the third part of an Unbreakable trilogy and the third film in M. Night Shyamalan’s renaissance with a theatrical audience just five years ago I would have probably laughed myself into a heart attack. Yet, here we are in 2019 with Glass, M. Night’s third superhero film and the third film of his in a row to see a significant box office success. It’s unexpected and, while I often think M. Night’s early career can be a bit overblown, something of a welcome return to see him return to genre films and produce interesting pieces of cinema. Glass was something that I ended up being very excited to see.

Oddly enough, I’m not the biggest fan of Unbreakable, the first part of this trilogy. It’s seemingly anti-superhero style to delivering a superhero origin story is both wildly bold and awkwardly disconnected which, while massively respectable, doesn’t inherently hit me the way it did for so many other critics. Split, the surprise sequel/side-quel, is another story. Split was a film that I adored. It was rooted in a fascinating blend of genre concepts and intimate character work. Glass is strangely enough very much a sequel to both Unbreakable and Split in tones, delivering some oddly cold material, but stemming from a punchy genre concept that once again massively benefits from a riveting performance from James McAvoy. While the mixture at times can be a bit different than expected, actively avoiding some of the tropes of the genre while taking a flank to embrace others, Glass is a massively entertaining film that ends up being much more of a hybrid and natural progression of seeing its previous two entries melded together. It’s easy to see why many critics are lambasting the film for that mixture, but by the time the end credits rolled it felt like it was exactly where this series wanted to go even if some of the choices can be outlandishly hit or miss.

Split (2017)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Notable Cast: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Brad William Henke, Sebastian Arcelus

The M. Night Shyamalan story is going to be one for the books. At one point in his early career he was being called the next Steven Spielberg, but those diehard fans accumulated and endless amounts of praise started to waver with The Village, came into question with Lady in the Water, and were extinguished by The Happening. Since then, he’s almost been a blight on his own movies as his twist heavy writing and direction was called heavily into question by critics and fans and it fell as far as to even see his name mysteriously disappear on all marketing for After Earth. However, 2015 saw him go back to his roots with the comedic horror film The Visit and it indicated that perhaps his career wasn’t completely dead. By the time the credits had ended on his latest feature Split, I felt like perhaps he will be a phoenix rising from the ashes. This is because Split, for all of its gimmicks, is a remarkably effective thriller, fringing on horror and yet remaining impressively thoughtful at how it approaches its sensitive subject matter. It’s a film that delivers on its promises, going beyond that with strong characters and fantastic narrative, and establishes Shyamalan as a director who still has the touch to sucker punch his audience like he was known to do in his early career. Split is a rebirth.