THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (1988, Martin Scorsese)

 

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Jesus of Nazareth faces the ultimate existential crisis: being the son of God (and knowing His plans) while having human desires.

Starring  Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Barbara Hershey, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie

Written by  Paul Schrader

Produced by  Barbara De Fina  

Duration  163 minutes     

I’ve argued on this blog that Ridley Scott has never made a genuinely great film, despite the inexplicably elevated position he inhabits for some.

The question that occurs to me now is, has Martin Scorsese ever made a bad one?

Across 26 features, there are six that have most regularly come in for criticism, or are just simply not as well known. So are these 'lesser Marties' deserving of their status as outliers? Let’s see!

– WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR (1967):  The director's debut, an Italian-American New Yorkers' tale and precursor to MEAN STREETS, it's appropriately rough around the edges. But the talent is there up on the screen and as far as first features go, it certainly makes you intrigued for what this young man might do next.

– BOXCAR BERTHA (1972):  Scorsese was one of several fledgling directors to cut their teeth under producer Roger Corman, such as (deep breath) Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe Dante, John Sayles and James Cameron. He made BERTHA for Corman's American International Pictures, and the film is a trashy female gangster flick that’s a lot of sleazy low-brow fun.

– ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974):  Probably Marty’s most unfairly overlooked film. Central is a powerhouse performance by Ellen Barkin (who won an Oscar), and this affecting drama also has memorable turns from the pre-TAXI DRIVER pair of Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel.

– NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977):  I'm never going to be subjective about a musical; a jazz musical, no less. Moving on.

– KUNDUN (1997):  Um ... I’ve seen it. It exists. It's probably most remembered for that bit in The Sopranos where Christopher Moltisanti spots Scorsese-playing-himself and yells out "Marty, KUNDUN! I liked it!"

– GANGS OF NEW YORK (2002):  This one is a bit of a slog. Leo was still maturing from teen heartthrob into proper leading man. Diaz was miscast. Day-Lewis was enjoyably big, but also distractingly so. Ultimately, it was never able to recover from all its production troubles. I do like the U2 song that plays over the end credits, though.

(In addition, THE KING OF COMEDY and AFTER HOURS didn't do much business when they were released but have both since been reassessed; I like the former but have never really warmed to the latter.)

 

So yes, I would say Scorsese has a batting average superior to most big-time directors, even plenty of those names listed above. And LAST TEMPTATION is firmly in the ‘definitely great’ camp.

The film was controversial for its depiction of a flawed Jesus. But anyone who bothered to absorb the opening crawl should have known to proceed with leniency: "This film is not based upon the Gospels but is a fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict."

(They should have put "based on a true story" – that would have really stirred the pot.)

Marty was using Jesus Christ the man as the starting point for an exploration of the struggles we all go through – heightened, of course, by JC's unique internal wrestling match between being both a deity and a flesh-and-blood human.

In short, he's a flawed hero who goes through a journey – an 'arc', to use a term that the KUNDUN-approving, wannabe-screenwriter cousin of Tony Soprano would appreciate. Which should tell you everything: this is a movie, where Jesus Christ is the protagonist. It’s not a sermon; it’s not a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It has thematic depth and spiritual resonance, but it also needs to move and entertain us. And it does.

JC is cut from the same cloth as other Scorsese leading men. He suffers the sexual distractions of RAGING BULL’s Jake LaMotta. He is miffed by a world full of sin, like Travis Bickle in TAXI DRIVER. He appears to die at the climax but then doesn’t really, like Ace Rothstein and his exploding car at the start/end of CASINO ( ... OK, that one might be a stretch).

Let’s talk about casting. First, the obvious question: why not de Niro as Jesus? Ironically, at the time of filming he may have been busy playing the devil for Alan Parker in his movie ANGEL HEART.

Or why the hell not Harvey Keitel? He was on set and everything, playing Judas Ascariot (dyed ginger, for some reason). Yes, he's still second-billed and yes, Judas is pretty much the antagonist and a meaty role in itself. But come on, Harvey would have been amazing! Just look at what he managed to do shortly after as a tormented soul, sometimes in a religious setting, in Abel Ferrara's BAD LIEUTENANT.

Anyway, the final casting choices do work well and are leftfield enough to fit in with the movie's slanted take on its subject matter, as is having many characters talk in anachronistic Noo Yoik accents. Willem Dafoe as the man (of God) Himself is as committed as you’d expect (and surely influenced Ewan McGregor); David Bowie is an icily callous Pontius Pilate; Barbara Hershey a suitably sexy Mary Magdalene. And putting Harry Dean Stanton in your movie (as Saul/Paul) never fails to elevate it.

So, another tick for Mr Reliable Marty. And SILENCE, his questioning-faith companion piece from 2016, is also excellent.

Five stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  On Earth, yes. Up in Heaven? Not sure it’s that kind of place.

What would a movie called THE FIRST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST be about?  Who can be sure that the temptations depicted here hadn't been part of Jesus's life for years already? The Bible is famously light on details about his teens and 20s, after all.

Previously:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Next time:  LAST PASSENGER

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971, Peter Bogdanovich)

 
* * * * * 

Teenagers in 1951 come of age in their dying Texas town.

Starring  Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn

Written by  Larry McMurtry, Peter Bogdanovich

Produced by  Stephen J Friedman

Duration  118 minutes

I can’t talk about THE LAST PICTURE SHOW without starting with Stephen King.

In his novel Lisey's Story, Lisey has recently lost her husband, Scott, and is going through his journals. She learns from them that when her hubby used to stay up late and drop off in front of the TV, he would fall into a catatonic state and be literally transported to a magical alternate universe, where he found peace and healing from his debilitating mental health issues.

But it wasn't any old programming that used to whisk him away. The Shopping Network or repeats of Magnum PI wouldn't cut it – in order to travel to that wonderful healing place, Scott had to be watching his favourite movie, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.

(And if you think I’m going to now delay getting to the actual review by going off on a tangent about Stephen King books, constant reader, you’ve got another thing coming. So not my style.^☆)

Now, I can't be sure exactly why King gave this particular film the power to mentally teleport people to a far away land; he never makes that explicit. But since the reason Scott would embark on those journeys was to recuperate, 1950s-set coming of age classic THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is therefore portrayed as a vessel with which to break free from inner torment.

So, is this movie ‘escapism’? I've always found that a bit of a limiting term, usually eluding to fantastical, good-vs-evil battle stuff, or love-wins-in-the-end fairy tales. Forget your troubles and immerse yourself in something idealised and totally removed from reality for a couple of hours.

But there’s another kind of escapism: a wallowing kind, when you reach out for something that affirms the pain you’re going through. Diversions like the type in the previous paragraph can feel like they’re taking the piss by portraying something unobtainable; what you really want is a Radiohead album on repeat and MELANCHOLIA or REQUIEM FOR A DREAM playing with the sound off.

In the case of PICTURE SHOW, it doesn’t put the viewer in a world of orcs and elves or shiny romcom land. But it does take them somewhere: back to the ’50s, that lost time of Boomer nostalgia so frequently visited by the generation of King (most notably for IT), Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE), Steven Spielberg (THE FABELMANS), and many other creatives born following WWII. But PICTURE SHOW's tone is far from carefree and enchanting; instead we get moribund, ennui-laced melancholy. The opening goddamn shot is a pan through a deserted town with dust blowing everywhere, a place that makes the shithole from LAST MAN STANDING look cheerful and prosperous. The very first words spoken are "You're never gonna amount to nothin’!"

The local kids we meet are thoroughly disillusioned. They have none of the collegiate spirit that their elders expect, shirking tackles on the football field and only singing the school anthem mockingly while driving away from the place. They pass the time making out in the back row of the town’s only cinema, being sure to remove their chewing gum first. They experience fleeting liberty by skinny dipping at unsupervised parties, in a famous scene with Cybil Shepherd that discloses to the viewer the exact moment when director Peter Bogdanovich decided to ditch his wife (who was working on the crew!) and run off with her.

It’s a not a film heavy on plot. It’s more of an atmosphere piece punctuated by minor incidents, a few shattering events and a whole bunch of loaded exchanges heavy with unspoken emotion, moving forward like the unhurried flow of water, lapping over you and soaking into your bones.

That Ben Johnson and Clois Leachman bagged acting Oscars for so little screen time (10 and 16 minutes respectively) tells you all you need to know: as we all learned in Physics class, pressure equals force over area. Their strong performances delivered within such brief pockets of time create a huge impact, and I'd say the effect has only ever been bettered by Judi ‘eight minutes’ Dench in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.

What I’m getting at is that the movie is dreamlike – at once intense and casual, amorphous yet precise, and, ultimately, transporting.

I think I see now what King was going for.

Five stars out of five.

^☆ … What? OK fine, since you won’t stop going on about it. The masterpieces are IT, The Stand and the Dark Tower series; other personal favourites are 'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Roadwork, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Dark Half, Duma Key, and pretty much all of the short story collections.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  That’s how the movie finishes: the town cinema that was one of its few features is forced to close down due to lack of business. Final screening: RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.

What would a movie called THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW be about?  Same thing as Scorsese’s HUGO? Something about Georges Méliès, certainly.

Previously:  FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST 

Next time:  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST (1992, Bill Kroyer)

 

* * * 

Deforestation threatens the creatures who dwell within the magical realm of FernGully.

Starring  Samantha Mathis, Christian Slater, Jonathan Ward, Robin Williams, Tim Curry 

Written by  Jim Cox

Produced by  Peter Faiman, Wayne Young   

Duration  76 minutes

    

Presenting FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST: myths vs reality.

Myth: Christian Slater and Samantha Mathis have only co-starred in two feature films.

Reality: Between teenage rebellion fable PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990) and muted but fun John Woo actioner BROKEN ARROW (1996), they both lent their voices to FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST. Slater and Mathis play a pair of fairies, zipping in mild flirtation around an idealised rainforest of bright colours and anthropomorphised animals.

Mathis (the lead) plays the stock kids’ animation character of the youngster who dreams of a life outside their restricted community. Seriously, when will they drop this trope? It’s still going strong today, in things like SMALLFOOT (2018) and STRANGE WORLD (2022).

In this particular case, despite being warned to "never go above the canopy", Mathis can’t resist wondering what’s really out there and takes regular peeks, specifically wondering if human beings really exist or if they are merely the stuff of bedtime stories.

Slater, meanwhile, gets the short shrift in a disappointingly small part – he should have insisted on the role ultimately played by Jonathan Ward (see below).

Myth: FERNGULLY has an ecological subtext.

Reality: What’s it called when the subtext is actually on the surface and not at all buried underneath? Oh, that’s right. No, there’s no ecological subtext here – it’s FERNGULLY’s actual text.

You see, the forest-dwellers had assumed that if human beings were actually real and not just legends, they would be no threat to them. Then reality comes crashing through in the shape of enormous bulldozers, hellbent on reducing the trees that the adorable creatures use as homes into someone’s dining room set.

Myth: Robin Williams made his animated debut playing a hyperactive genie in ALADDIN.

Reality: Before he signed on to be the blue lamp-dweller, he’d already agreed to play Batty Koda in FERNGULLY, a bat who knows that humans do exist because he's come from outside the forest where the two-legged ones have been using him as a lab rat.

Williams is (surprise surprise) the comic relief and definitely used this as a warm up for the higher-profile part – he's all non-sequiturs, celebrity impressions, shouting, accents and anachronistic pop culture references.

Mercifully, his performance never reaches the irritating ‘heights’ of his more famous Disney role, where he would display so many symptoms of ADHD you wanted to force-feed him Ritalin through the screen.

 

Myth: Only Bart Simpson was saying ‘don’t have a cow’ in 1992.

Reality: Jonathan Ward, as a human lumberjack on whom Mathis uses her forest powers to shrink down to fairy size when he accidentally wanders into FernGully, sprouts this nonsensical catchphrase at least once. He also has wavy blonde hair, rides a leaf down a tree trunk like a snowboard, and uses words like ‘bodacious’ and ‘tubular’.

Did I mention this film was released in the early ’90s?

Myth: FERNGULLY is an American feature.

Reality: Actually, it was a co-production between the USA and Australia; primarily Yank voice talent but set in an Aussie rainforest.

It joins the ranks of lauded Australian animations, in the great tradition of ... um ... well … did they ever do a cartoon version of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo?

Myth: Tim Curry essayed a wide variety of roles in ’90s movies.

Reality: He always played a snooty shit.

And unlike the meddling hotel concierge in HOME ALONE 2 (1991), or Cardinal Richelieu in THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1993), or Mr Jigsaw in LOADED WEAPON 1 (also 1993), or the duplicitous Romanian philanthropist in CONGO (1995), or Long John Silver in MUPPETS TREASURE ISLAND (1996), here he is literally the embodiment of evil: a dark spirit of the forest or somesuch, resembling a sentient oil spill, whose role in this affair is to encourage the humans to destroy FERNGULLY ... for reasons I never quite discerned.

As ever, Curry has a great time hamming it up as the dastardly antagonist, and even gets to belt out a musical number like he’s still in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

Myth: DANCES WITH WOLVES was James Cameron’s biggest influence for AVATAR.

Reality: Plot-wise, AVATAR is DANCES, for sure. But the same basic story is present in FERNGULLY, with the addition of the tree-hugging sensibility. Although it comes from a different perspective this time: we follow one of the natives, not the interloper.

Fellow animated effort EPIC (2013) is also cut from the same cloth, as is Ed Zwick’s 2003 Tom Cruise-starring THE LAST SAMURAI.

Myth: FERNGULLY was a flop.

Reality: It actually did modestly well, plus it birthed a no-stars sequel.

And there were rumours recently of a live-action remake, allegedly set to feature Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jim Carrey and Emma Thompson, which turned out to be bollocks. But someone went as far as to knock up a fake poster, so the desire is clearly out there.

Myth: FERNGULLY is a pretty mediocre and inconsequential cartoon feature film.

Reality: Look, it’s no THE LION KING or BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, or even a ROBIN HOOD or a THE SWORD IN THE STONE. And yes, it piles its agenda on with a shovel.

But it’s a charming enough yarn that has more on its mind than the standard be-yourself-and-find-your-own-path tedium, the usual thematic depth thrown at young viewers.

And so, when it ends with a title card saying, ‘For our children, and our children's children,’ the sentiment feels properly earned.

Three stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  I’m all for using hyperbole to help make a point and deforestation is clearly a very real thing. But there are definitely still at least some rainforests left out there.

What would a movie called THE FIRST RAINFOREST be about?  According to the National Science Foundation (that nation being the USA): "Ancient Denvers [was] the first rainforest. Time period: 64 million-years-ago in the Early Paleocene (Cenozoic)." Little chance it was under much threat from JCBs back then.

Previously:  THE LAST HOUSE

Next time:  THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST HOUSE (2019, Samuel Farmer)

 

* 

An elderly (but tooled up) widow won’t give up her house to land developers because "It ain’t right". They, however, insist "She’s fer sure sellin'". There is a clash. 

Starring  Camille Keaton, Scott Peeler, Karen Konzen, Eric Dooley, Christopher James Forrest  

Written by  Samuel Farmer

Produced by  Corina Seaburn, Jonathan Shepard

Duration  74 minutes    

   

In 2015, John Carpenter won a plagiarism case against fellow filmmaker Luc Besson concerning the movie LOCKOUT, which three years earlier the latter had produced. The film – starring a beefed-up Guy Pearce and featuring Maggie Grace getting kidnapped, just like she did in Besson's TAKEN – was a fun-enough sci-fi action romp, mid-budget and delivering middling thrills. Easy to put on, watch while scrolling your phone, and then forget.

Except Carpenter was paying attention; he or one of his people, anyway. The movie was accused, and ultimately found guilty, of hewing far too close to the director’s own sci-fi action romp, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981). The rescue mission; the penetration of an impenetrable prison; the anti-authoritarian antihero. Consequently, its writing credits expanded to include JC and his ESCAPE co-writer Nick Castle, and those creative originators received enough compensation for Carpenter to be able to afford a lifetime season ticket to his beloved Milwaukee Bucks, and then come home and blissfully play his favourite PC game Dead Space long into the night without worrying about the electricity bill.

Now, when I watched LOCKOUT, not long after it came out, I didn't think about ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK at all – and I think about John Carpenter movies a lot. I as much equated the two films as I do Ed Sheeran’s 'Thinking Out Loud' to Marvin Gaye’s 'Let’s Get It On'. (An example of an unsuccessful plagiarism case.)

On the other hand, in the summer of 2008 I had sat in the cinema watching Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY with my mouth agape at how flagrantly it was ripping off ESCAPE. The hero of that movie even has a Snake Plissken eye-patch! And yet DOOMSDAY has remained free of litigation.

And while we're on the subject, what about all those cheapo Italian rip-offs that came out during the ’80s? Why did Carpenter, MAD MAX director George Miller and THE WARRIORS’ Walter Hill never team up and file a class action suit against (among others) 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK, ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX and THE EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000, forcing directors Sergio Mantino, Enzo Castellari and Guiliano Carnimeo to cough up billions of their ill-gotten lire?

So, coming to a grisly revenge movie called THE LAST HOUSE, I was fully expecting it to be a THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT rip-off. But it turns out I was wrong – albeit not entirely.

Because despite the title, this film wants to remind you of another grimy, ’70s exploitation flick. What it actually has its sights on is I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) – and the poster makes this plenty explicit. THE LAST HOUSE stars that film’s Camile Keaton in another avenging angel role, and wants to do for her what David Gordon Green attempted so earnestly with Jamie Lee Curtis in his ill-judged HALLOWEEN legacy trilogy. This despite there already being an I SPIT ON remake (with sequels!), not to mention that Keaton herself appeared in the direct sequel to the original, subtitled DEJA VU.

But in reality, THE LAST HOUSE skews closer to the truly limp attempt to honour the ‘final girl’ from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in the 2022 edition of that franchise.

(Sidenote: CHAINSAW 2022 is actually quite fun! Its main target is Gen Z and their attempts to gentrify Leatherface's hometown. Anyone holding a mobile phone aloft to film the power tool-flailing maniac gets their arm severed before they've had a chance to post to TikTok! I recommend it.)

So, yeah. A class act THE LAST HOUSE most definitely is not. The company names that lead the opening credits do not bode well: "Chance in Hell Productions"; "Bad Man Pictures". Neither does its alternate title: CRY FOR THE BAD MAN.

It’s a home invasion flick. It’s also a ‘sell us your land or we’ll force you off’ story. But what it really feels like is a short film that’s been expanded into a feature – except in length only, with nothing added to its breadth or depth. It feels interminably long for a 74-minute feature, like all they did was take scenes that used to last 20 seconds and pad them out to 15 minutes.

The dialogue feels improvised, but not in an inspired way, more like no one bothered to memorise the script (or was never given one in the first place?), so instead just mumbled out semi-relevant phrases half-remembered from old TV shows and better movies.

The colour is ugly and oversaturated, like the whole movie is the final scene of TAXI DRIVER – except about a hundredth as good as that sounds, since this director handles action like he’s trying to flick a light switch with a broom. 

In a word: avoid.

So are there any genuinely new ideas left in the world? Or are we all just scrapping around the same drying-out pool of inspiration? One thing is for damn sure: there will always be a difference between good execution and total piss-poor fumble-job.

One star out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  It’s one of those middle-of-nowhere gaffs with no neighbours, so it’s the last house on the left and on the right.

What would a movie called THE FIRST HOUSE be about?  Let’s go for a documentary about the origins of house music in the club scene of early-’80s Chicago.

Previously:  LAST NIGHT IN SOHO

Next time:  FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (2021, Edgar Wright)

 

* * 

London, 2021. A fashion student with kind-of clairvoyant powers moves to the city and forms a cross-time connection thing with a young woman from the 1960s.

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

Written by  Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Produced by  Nira Park, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Edgar Wright

Duration  116 minutes

I really wish I enjoyed Edgar Wright’s stuff more. I mean, I should do: I’m in the ideal demographic and generation; his interests overlap with my own; his movies are well-structured, competently made and high in entertainment value. And I was 16 when his breakthrough TV series Spaced was first aired and loved it.

But somehow, the word that comes to mind when I think of SHAUN OF THE DEAD, HOT FUZZ, SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD and BABY DRIVER is ‘overrated’. None are as good as people babble on about, with SHAUN in particular elevated onto a pedestal above criticism, seemingly giving Wright a pass for life. That film is good, don't get me wrong, but come on: as far as horror-comedies go, it falls short of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, BRAINDEAD, EVIL DEAD II, GREMLINS, CRITTERS, TREMORS, GHOSTBUSTERS, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, BEETLEJUICE, RE-ANIMATOR or even THE LOST BOYS.

I do like THE WORLD’S END. That one feels made by an adult for adults, Wright transcending style over substance. He’s similar to Robert Rodriguez in that way, but I’d say I’ve got more out of the cinema of Rodriguez over the years – although to be fair to Edgar, Robert’s own idea of ‘grown up’ is SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO? I’m afraid it's another entry in Wright’s oeuvre of ‘meh’.

We're introduced to Thomasin McKenzie’s Eloise dancing around her bedroom in some kind of homemade dress to Peter & Gordon's ‘World Without Love’, indulging her twin fantasies of becoming a clothing designer and living in the 1960s. She has a goal, she has a passion, but she’s awkward and clumsy in the best Bridget Jones/every-romcom-ever tradition, as we see when she collides with her record player (of course a record player). She also sees her dead mother in the vanity mirror, sowing a supernatural seed into the plot. I’d call this opening sequence an effectively economical bit of scene-setting, if the whole thing wasn't so irritating.

"It's not what you imagine, London. You've got to look out for yourself!" warns her gran when Eloise receives a letter admitting her into the city’s premier fashion college. Echoes of those poor girls in THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT who also made the fatal mistake of visiting a major metropolis.

Thankfully, Wright doesn’t have anything nearly as nasty/daring in mind for young Eloise. The next morning, she’s staring wide-eyed out the window of a cross-country train away from whatever backwards but safe hamlet she's from, oversized headphones blasting the reassuring sounds of ‘Don’t Throw Your Love Away’ by The Searchers.

She’s barely out of King's Cross St Pancras before she's forced to endure rapey innuendo from a pervy black cab driver on the way to her dorm. Therein lies further danger in the shape of her roommates/antagonists-in-waiting, who overuse the word ‘babes’, drill her with some exposition-inducing questions and take her to the pub for her first experience of alcohol (which of course they don't have in the countryside). Then another first for her: hiding in a toilet stall overhearing people she had thought were her friends slag her off.

Fortunately, Diana Rigg enters the picture as a kindly landlady who offers an escape from the Bitch Patrol by way of an attic room for rent. Eloise moves in quick-smart and, despite the constant flashes of red and blue from a sign outside making it look like she’s in SUSPIRIA (nice try, Edgar), she falls asleep peacefully to ‘You're My World’ by Cilla Black.

(At this point, I started to wonder if Wright had one eye on flogging vinyl-pressed soundtracks to hipsters and misty-eyed Boomers when he came up with this project – and yes, Barry Ryan’s ‘Eloise’ does get an airing.)

During her slumber, our Eloise finds herself embodying Anya Taylor-Joy’s independent-minded singer Sandie in the Big Smoke of the Harold Wilson years. As these flashback-dreams roll on nightly, her EYES OF LAURA MARS psychic-connection to such an empowered female gifts Eloise a renewed confidence during her waking life, demonstrated by how she struts down Carnaby Street with a new hairdo towards college, where she wows her teacher with her clothing sketches. But when Sandie realises that all the men she trusted are bastards and have put her on a collision course with coercion, exploitation and murder, the ghosts of the past start to impact Eloise's present and she must shake off her passivity once and for all.

LAST NIGHT IN SOHO isn’t exactly terrible, but it is a promising concept in search of a solid film. I keep reading that it's a 'psychological horror' – Edgar's doing his Argento impression, but where's the psychology at? Everything is cartoony and one-dimensional; perhaps the pandemic rushed it into production before the script had gone through sufficient redrafts. McKenzie does her best with her deer-in-the-neon-headlights role, but between this and M Night Shyamalan’s OLD she might want to insist her agent only gives her screenplays populated by recognisable human beings.

And the weird anti-London sentiment that Wright (born in Poole, Somerset) peppers throughout really grates, with pearls like "London can be a lot" and "London’s a bad place". Maybe don't spend all your time in fucking Soho, then? (I did however chuckle at Michael Ajao’s bashful, non-threatening love interest admitting that he found hopping over the Thames to the north of the city a really daunting step.)

One definitely pandemic-influenced touch and probably the highlight for me: the John Carpenter-style Panavision shots of empty central London streets during the end credits.

Hmm, now where's that old DVD of HALLOWEEN hiding ...

Two stars out of five.

 

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  As things wrap up, Eloise is well on her way to fashion-designing success, so it seems unlikely that further evenings in the West End aren’t upcoming.

What would a movie called FIRST NIGHT IN SOHO be about?  Probably dodging so many tourists that eventually you get pissed off and jump on a train to do a reverse-Ajao and have a much better time somewhere south of the river.

Previously:  SAFETY LAST!

Next time:  THE LAST HOUSE

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

SAFETY LAST! (1923, Fred C Newmeyer, Sam Taylor)

 

* * * * 

A young man leaves his village to seek his fortune in the city, with hilarious consequences.  

Starring  Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strother, Noah Young, Westcott Clarke

Written by  H M Walker, Jean Havez, Harold Lloyd

Produced by  Hal Roach

Duration  73 minutes   

   

Marilyn Monroe’s dress billowing from an air vent in THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955). The bike in front of the moon in ET (1982). Fred Astaire swinging from a lamp post in SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952). Father Merrin arriving outside the house in THE EXORCIST (1973). Janet Leigh screaming in the shower in PSYCHO (1960).

So what is the most iconic image in motion pictures? And where does Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock face way above a busy street in 1923’s SAFETY LAST! figure? And furthermore, to what extent do people (like me) only know that shot because it was paid tribute to in BACK TO THE FUTURE?

I’d wager that most casual moviegoers have no idea from what movie the Monroe sequence comes, let alone the plot of SEVEN YEAR ITCH (which is a fairly amusing mid-level Billy Wilder comedy). And I was certainly ignorant about SAFETY LAST!, save for the hi-jinks promised by the title, and the fact that a bloke hanging off a giant clock is unlikely to come from neo-realism.

I was familiar with Charlie Chaplin; well, I’ve seen CITY LIGHTS (1931). And I knew Buster Keaton; that is to say, I caught THE GENERAL (1926) on TV one time. But I’d never heard of Harold Lloyd, so wasn’t sure if he was going to have as indelible a screen image as those two silent movie titans.

As it turns out, in SAFTEY LAST! Lloyd is playing a character named ... 'Harold Lloyd'. Just like James Spader plays 'James Ballard' in CRASH (1996), except without the creepy implications of that far more twisted story (JG Ballard was never actually part of a cult that sexualised car crashes ... presumably). Anyway, movie Lloyd is earnest, naïve and good-natured – not to mention physically dextrous. We like him.

The plot has Lloyd heading off to "the big city" (Los Angeles?) to find employment, so he can then send for his fiancé to join him when he is successful (she, incidentally, is played by Mildred Davis, who looks exactly like every other silent movie actress – or maybe I’ve only ever seen her, who knows.) And from there, it’s a series of his escapades in menial work, sprinkled with some mistaken identity, due to Lloyd wanting his visiting sweetheart to believe he has risen high up the corporate ladder.

And the movie is pretty funny. There are lots of great sight gags: Harold running onto the back of a truck instead of his train; he and his flatmate jumping under their hung-up coats to hide from their rent-happy landlady. And the title cards are often amusing, too, as a substitute for witty spoken dialogue. 

Really, SAFETY LAST! is a relentless series of moments designed to make you chuckle. It’s basically a live-action cartoon. Plus the clock sequence does not disappoint, managing to be a genuinely suspenseful set piece (although given the choice, I’d take Dr Emmett Brown any day of the week.)

So alright, answer me this: does the world need silent movies back? Was anything better before sound? I guess you didn’t get the mixing problems on movies like Chris Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR and TENET, or have to endure an actor’s voice that you find annoying. There’s an efficiency to the storytelling, an unavoidable and welcome reliance on the ‘show, don't tell’ principle.

And it’s not like every technological advance makes the old thing redundant. Take practical effects vs CGI: it’s now a cliche that filmmakers will boast how much a scene is practical and not computer generated, especially a stunt. (This is a far cry from 1998’s LOST IN SPACE, where the marketing gushed so proudly about the project breaking the record for number of onscreen SFX shots, with 750.)

But ultimately, let’s face facts: after THE ARTIST kicked up such a big fuss back in 2011, people didn’t suddenly fly out and start making more silent movies, did they? So what does that tell you?

Four stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  The entire backend of the film is Lloyd climbing up a building with nothing to stop him falling to his death, so they weren’t joking when they told us that being safe would not figure high on the agenda.

What would a movie SAFETY FIRST! be about?  It would be a lot duller.

Previously:  THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME

Next time:  LAST NIGHT IN SOHO 

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com

THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME (2020, Olivier Megaton)

 

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The not-too-distant future, and it's a real shitshow. So much so that the powers-that-be have resorted to broadcasting a signal that prevents people from engaging in unlawful acts.

Starring  Édgar Ramírez, Michael Pitt, Anna Brewster, Patrick Bergin, Sharlto Copley

Written by  Karl Gajdusek

Produced by  Jesse Berger, Jason Michael Berman, Barry Levine

Duration  149 minutes

  

JAWS is pretty much credited for establishing the summer blockbuster. But more than that, it’s one of the first of what can be classed as a ‘what if?’ movie. In the case of the 1976 hit, it’s a pretty innocuous one: What if a beachside tourist community was threatened by a man-eating shark during the 4th of July weekend?

It wasn’t until the more-is-more ’80s that big idea pictures reached their full potential. Mega producers like Joel Silver and Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer made a killing on high concepts that could be summed up in one sentence. Anything that had the potential for high stakes, sexy characters, tense culture clashes and wide audience appeal. For instance:

– What if a racist white cop needed a black criminal to crack a case? 48 HRS (1982) (Silver)

– What if a sexy young woman worked as a welder by day and a stripper at night, with dreams of becoming a professional dancer? FLASHDANCE (1983) (Simpson & Bruckheimer)

– What if a streetwise Detroit cop used his brash ways to investigate a crime in Los Angeles's snootiest zip code? BEVERLY HILLS COP (1984) (Simpson & Bruckheimer)

– What if two virginal nerds manufactured a sexy young woman and became the most popular guys in school? WEIRD SCIENCE (1985) (Silver)

– What if sexy young pilots flew around in a vaguely competitive tournament, between games of beach volleyball and hanging around the locker-room shirtless? TOP GUN (1986) (Simpson & Bruckheimer)

– What if a black cop needed a white cop to crack a case, but couldn’t be sure that the white cop wasn’t a suicidal liability? LETHAL WEAPON (1987) (Silver)

– What if one gritty New York cop had to fight 15 European terrorists in an LA skyscraper on Christmas Eve? DIE HARD (1988) (Silver)

– What if it was TOP GUN again, but this time with cars that keep turning left around a big circle while the spectators hope for a crash? DAYS OF THUNDER (1990) (Simpson & Bruckheimer)

Now, THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME is hardly a summer blockbuster; it’s a Netflix original that is unlikely to ever be projected onto a large screen or inspire queues around the block.

But it does have a what-if scenario that would’ve fit right in during the '80s: What if the US Government made it physically impossible for anyone to commit a crime?

The first thing that comes to mind is Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, where Alex is a guinea pig for a new method that induces revulsion to counteract his naughty urges. Then there’s Brave New World, where Aldous Huxley went the nicey-nicey route for keeping the populace in check – as opposed to 1984, with George Orwell’s "boot stamping on a human face" prevention through disenfranchisement: there can be no thoughtcrime if the state has removed the words from your vocabulary. 

More recently, similar territory to THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME has been explored in THE PURGE movie series, where society is allowed to get all the crime out its system for one anarchic night per year.

Unfortunately, LAST DAYS wraps its intriguing premise up in a generic crime thriller. It’s long, but not deep; violent, but unexciting; loud, but not clever. Disappointing, then, but perhaps not surprising, being that it comes to us from the director of TAKEN 2, TAKEN 3 and COLUMBIANA, the implausibly named Oliver Megaton. Plus, rather than the likes of Burgess, Huxley or Orwell, the source material is some comic book.

It’s the kind of movie where you’ve seen everything before: the plot points, the relationships, the attitudes, the tense interactions. Even the songs have all been used already in better movies: ‘Glory Box’ by Portishead (1996's STEALING BEAUTY); The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ (from LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELLS in 1998 – and also recycled from Megaton’s own TRANSPORTER 3!). 

LAST DAYS turns out to be a heist movie, and the heist, when it eventually comes, is good – but not good enough to make up for the previous 110 minutes.

And by the end, I was left with my own 'what if?' question: what if they'd made THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME with more smarts, or more fun, or more originality? Basically, anything that could have stopped it becoming a bland, generic, overlong slog that’s worse than even the later PURGE sequels?

Two stars out of five.

Valid use of the word ‘last’?  To paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in JURASSIC PARK, crime will find a way.

What would a movie called THE FIRST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME be about?  Someone stealing George Washington’s wooden teeth or something like that.

Previously:  ABOUT LAST NIGHT

Next time:  SAFETY LAST!

Check out my books:  Jonathanlastauthor.com