Posts Tagged ‘This Week in Trailers’
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
L’Immortel (22 Bullets) Trailer
I never really understood how pop stars that sing in English can be so revered in countries where English is not the primary language. Further, I am mystified at how these very same audiences sing back in perfect harmony. After watching this trailer, you see, I wouldn’t mind learning French.
You’ll have to excuse the fact I don’t speak the language of love, and you’ll further have to excuse the fact that this trailer isn’t translated, but this deserves a couple of minutes of your time, no question about it.
I mean, how can you not be at least giddy at the thought of Jean Reno and Luc Besson reuniting once more for a movie about hitmen, revenge, tender mercies of the heart, and violence of the bloodiest kind? I’ll answer that for you, you can’t feel anything less than hope.
The trailer opens with the most delicate soundtrack, a tune in the operatic vein that stands in stark contrast to the bloody bullets that sit in a metal pan. A mother and child lay in a bed. While I don’t know what’s being said, again, the contrast makes an impression on me. It’s all very serene and surreal.
It’s easy enough to infer what’s happening on the screen just by watching what’s being told through the pictures. Reno looks like he’s recovering from being riddled with gunfire while we also flash back to a simpler, quieter time of his life. What’s more is that even though I don’t speak French I do know enough that an interstitial that states this movie is “Inspire de faits reels” means that what we’ve got here is an inspired tale of realism and, for that, I love that Besson can’t get absolutely nutty with the story.
Wherever the truth lies I have to say it at least warrants hearing it out. How could you not be intrigued by a hitman who leaves killing behind, starts a new life, a few years later finding himself on the wrong end of a phalanx of bullets, and then living to tell about it? There is much talking going on in the middle of this thing which I obviously can’t infer, there is subtlety I wish I could understand, but all you need to know is that he had a kid, had a life, and had it all taken away at about the one minute, thirty second mark. It’s about here that we see a brilliant
Don McKay Trailer
This is a joke, right? A farce, perchance?
There is no way this could be anything else but a Tommy Wiseau inspired kind of film because the intended effect this trailer should have had, I believe, is supposed to make me think this is a sultry story of misdirection, misinformation, and the dark secrets we keep from one another.
Um, no.
I honestly don’t mean to be harsh but this trailer utterly fails to stoke the embers that a good, cerebral, Hitchcock-ian thriller ought to do. First time director/writer Jake Goldberger delivers on setting up a promising story but it simply collapses as every frame unfolds.
I sincerely love the beginning of this thing. I do. I was hoping to extol the thunderous powers of Thomas Haden Church, as he just has that presence about him, but as we see the twilight that’s falling on a sleepy hollow, him standing on a doorstop introducing himself, it’s the old sea hag who reiterates his name at the door (Melissa Leo) that just pushes this trailer in a downward direction, waterboarding it completely.
From the way it opens, I was hoping this was a story about a guy who has come back to slaughter a small family in a murderous rage, a prisoner who has come back to kill! Instead, I get Elizabeth Shue. Writhing, no less, on a bed in a negligee, asking whether he got her letter? Whaaa? What letter? Why are you twisting around in your underthings like that? It looks like these two were old boyfriend/girlfriend from high school but it’s all very weird in the way its executed.
In what sums up the oddity that is this trailer, at one point Church is standing behind Shue and he tells her, in a lecherous strangler voice, how beautiful she is…as she curls her hair. Then you get Leo putting on this affect of some strange school marm as she talks and it all comes off as trite.
Further, Shue can’t seem to be clothed in anything less than the back catalog of Fredrick’s of Hollywood and, in a pièce de résistance, you’ve just got to watch as Church says the line, “You’re lying to me.” Dare I say it tops, “You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” but I honestly think it does.
I don’t care about this movie as not only does this trailer completely give away his hand, ensuring I really only need to watch the last ½ hour of it, but it just doesn’t inspire confidence or clarity. Pass.
A Film With Me In It Trailer
This is a classic example of when seemingly interesting movies get saddled with poor trailers.
What I enjoy most of director Ian Fitzgibbon’s, who is also bringing us this year’s Perrier’s Bounty, telling of a tale of a guy who just happens to be in the proximity of three people who randomly all die around him is the way the trailer just flows. I realize that it’s a lot to take in with a plot as complex as this as you watch it but the trailer paces itself appropriately and it comes off very, very funny.
The angles used, the shots that sort of linger on the decedents as the confusion and consternation grows within our protagonist Mark (played by writer of the film, Mark Doherty) and the comedic relief in his buddy Pierce (Dylan Moran) who does a smash up job laying out everything that we’re thinking and plays the fool to his role as serious straight man.; the two of them click in the grand tradition of comedic teams like Pegg/Frost. To wit, we see a chandelier fall on a guy, we see a man get a tool stuck in his jugular as he bleeds out on the kitchen floor, and a woman who eats it after falling on a sharp object on her way down from fainting at the sight of a dead man under a chandelier.
It’s all very amusing in how quick we get to this point, and how this trailer just zooms along in establishing the problem our heroes face, but the one and awful issue I have to take contention with is the wretched guitar music driving it all. Was there no one who could hear that what we are seeing on the screen doesn’t necessarily match up with the generic, stock a-chords wailing in the background? It’s obvious there wasn’t and the trailer merely ends with a whimper as it should have been energizing because of the restraint shown in keeping things vague to the viewer.
Overall, by the end of this I know generally what’s happening but it’s not really clear what is going to occur when people find out about these deaths. I think I could have been more excited for a movie that at least looks like it could be a rather funny yarn but, instead, I’m just thankful when it ends.
Salvage Trailer
I’ll state that this looks like genuine fun.
Not only does this trailer hit the right notes with what you ought to do in order to generate some interest in your movie but it tantalizes you with with its opaqueness, not revealing anything that might reveal too much, and has you guessing throughout its running time. That’s also its greatest strength: you have to keep watching to try and mentally put together a puzzle that seems to be right there in front of you.
Is this a zombie movie? Is this a Red Dawn kind of film? How can you have zombies in a Red Dawn kind of film? All these kinds of questions bubble up but it shows a complete sense of restraint on the filmmakers’ part in not just spilling everything in order to generate buzz and for that I am impressed.
How this trailer accomplishes greatness really is attributed to the first 25 seconds. It’s a microcosm, really, of how it ought to be done for all films where confusion and disorientation are at the crux for a film’s plot. Writer/director Lawrence Gough should be proud for slapping the wrist of any money man who wanted desperately for him to reveal what was going on.
You have a good score that instantly makes you feel on edge, uncomfortable; you have no voiceover, no interstitial, to spoon feed your mind about what you’re going to see; quotes from people who have seen it and liked it thoroughly; and just a hint, a smidge, of the plot. These four things at the outset of a trailer will work every single time in order to get people to stick with the trailer long enough to get you through the next 25 seconds and it does so with this trailer fantastically.
The next 25 are filled with guys armed with machine guns who are breaking down doors, people who are getting shot, bloody hands smearing across glass, women freaking out everywhere, and I have not one iota of insight into what’s ultimately happening here. I think it has more to do with an assault of a small community that anything else but since everyone is covered in gore I could care less. I’m in.
This trailer paints this as a movie that moves quick, has some good production values, and at least has the pull-quotes in order to stick it squarely on my radar as a movie I’d like to more about. Successful trailer any which way you look at it.
How I Ended This Summer
What I appreciate about this trailer is how it eases you into its world.
There is nothing wrong with being launched from a supine position straight into the air at a 100 miles an hour as you get detail after detail about what a movie is about but this one wants to put your slippers on, put a hand under your elbow, and assist you out of bed gently.
Director/writer Aleksei Popogrebsky evokes a sense of isolation and bareness with the opening shot of this trailer which, no doubt, will prove to be a theme explored later on as who shows a desolate land only to have a movie filled with cherubs and BJs.
Oddly, the tone is upbeat when we meet our headphone festooned interloper, star of the film, who is spending some time with the men who man a station that seems to track and report on weather patterns. Who knows what they report on but the mood is jaunty as we watch this guy milling around the site just exploring the area and kicking back. Somehow he messes with the natural order of things and really changes the mood.
The kid is smacked around a little bit and the whole trailer just devolves into a series of quick cuts. Cuts that don’t explain why the leader of these guys just has a mental collapse but his meltdown is my enjoyment because the way things are communicated in the last third of this trailer it compels you to watch. You don’t know what is going to happen, whether there will be a wholesale slaughter of everyone, and you sure don’t know how this kid is going to escape a madman who’s armed and ready to mow down a few people.
In all, this is a thrilling trailer that tantalizes you with the promise for something wicked and even gives you a little something to show you a load of seriousness is about to be delivered to the middle of nowhere.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
American Grindhouse Trailer
A good documentary ought to be a blend of information and context with all the proper elements of good filmmaking. A trailer for a documentary, by default, ought to show whether there is something worth being educated about and whether you could be properly entertained by its message.
This trailer makes me wish I would’ve taken a class in Exploitation Cinema.
I am thrilled by the beats this takes right from the opening in that it deals with the subject matter from a proper baseline. It doesn’t care that some guy watching this knows all about Truffaut’s influence or what soviet bloc country put out the greatest minimalist, post-op tranny dramas in the late 60’s. The trailer just gives everyone a common starting point and, for that, I appreciate the quick lesson in what we’re about to see.
Watching the file footage of New York’s 42nd Street, lined with cinema after cinema, you get the vibe of the era in the 70’s. Interviews with guys like Joe Dante (his story pretty much sums it all up) and William Lustig buttress interview snippets from a whip smart film historian like Eric Schaefer. But, what’s more, I was intrigued by the explanation of the gradient difference between grindhouse and exploitation film. I didn’t know such a dichotomy existed but this trailer just establishes parameter upon parameter, without you even realizing, that what’s happening is they’re defining the boundaries of what’s going to be explored.
Great praise and exultation should be heaped on the trailer at about the two-minute, thirty second mark where all these elements of exploitation and grindhouse coalesce into a visual and auditory barrage of clips from this time. It goes on for a while in this regard and it’s brilliant. You get these small glimpses into the films that defined an age that not many who’ve spent time outside of a screening room who’ve consumed these works can fully appreciate.
Without question, this is one of the most anticipated documentaries I want to see this year. Director Elijah Drenner seems to have created a film that is not only going to be filled with teachable moment but looks like a wild ride to the dark side.
Cargo Trailer
A little Aliens, a little Sunshine, a little Hunt for Red October, and mix vigorously.
I like high concept films that want to push their ideas out as far as they can. Whether or not this actually results in something enjoyable remains to be seen but it is interesting, nonetheless, when the trailer jumps right out of the gate with information and not superfluous padding.
Right away we figure out that we’re following someone who applied for a job to spend eight years in space as a medic. Alone with six other people who seem to have an extreme sense of shift work, these people slog away for eight and a half months alone. Another observation: what is up with the dark conditions? Seriously, can no one afford fluorescent lighting in space films? I get it, you’re creating a mood but, come on, fire up a torch or two, would you please?
What this is all about, how these people are in suspended animation for long stretches, is kind of irrelevant because it seems like it’s going for something more dramatic. All textured to evoke a sense of mood and style that is not your typical sci-fi, the trailer does a great job in setting up what triggers the waking up of everyone in the ship so that they’re all huddled together. But it does feel like we’ve been here before.
It’s classic stranger on a (insert vessel) but there’s always room to push the genre and this looks like it does try and do just that. I mean, yes, all the common tropes for what makes these so much fun at the movies is on display here but while the idea isn’t fresh I do like that the use of confined space and a heightened sense of tension that this trailer communicates.
The last third of this trailer gives us the usual things you want to have with a movie that looks like it will have more twists and turns than a Shining garden maze: weaponry, yelling, fighting, screaming, close-ups, string instruments that slowly crescendo to nothing but quiet.
Cue a soft voice, speaking in hushed tones.
I mean , you can’t fault someone for making a trailer that does as well as can be expected for a genre movie like this. As it stands, I want to see this movie simply based on what I saw; not only do I not know what is happening, mind you, but I also don’t have a clue which people are going to be done for by the end of it. A little lack of information goes a long way with me.
Perrier’s Bounty Trailer
I’m not the only one who really enjoyed Intermission, right?
I realize no one really talks about it in retrospect as being anything special but I was a fan of the talent and of the story that it told. Kind of like a little girl who sees a pony under the tree on Christmas morning, I have to admit I was delighted to see that here was a movie that was written by the guy who penned that film, and starring some of the biggest names from the Emerald Isle.
The trailer, graciously, doesn’t dally a moment with its opening. There is no fumfering around, no wastes of anyone’s time. Cillian Murphy owes money to a gangster and has four hours to come up with a grand. That’s it. End of story. All that in under twenty seconds, too. Not only does this help understand what’s going on but it hits the right beats with introducing us to Murphy, his pretty neighbor who offers to help him out with this debt, and the two henchmen representing the gangster who look like unintended comedic relief. And they are funny.
I’ll also have to admit being utterly delighted upon seeing Brendan Gleeson pop up on the screen; say what you will about Colin Farrell but Gleeson helped make In Bruges such a good comedic romp. I lit up at the sight of Jim Broadbent slithering on the screen as Murphy’s crazy, disheveled old dad who believes that the next time he falls asleep he’ll die. He has a few moments in this trailer that show he knows what kind of role this ought to be and he’s playing it for all it’s worth. Pack on the moment when Gleeson declares a bounty on Murphy’s head and you pretty much guess where things are going to go after that. A cavalcade of oddballs who are no doubt going to be in the hunt for the guy all come out of the woodwork. It’s a little old hat but this looks like it has the promise of being something good.
The remaining third of the trailer does a solid job in doing what it ought to do: throw up a fistfuls of quick clips that have no context whatsoever.
We do get an insight into the snappy character of Gleeson who very well may match Brick Top from Snatch for sly witticisms while also possessing a furious sense of power. The end result for all of this is a movie that looks like it will be a fast paced film that will hopefully take us all over Dublin with strong performances all around if this trailer is any indication.
Give Me Your Hand Trailer
Now this is an interesting trailer.
Filled with a little bit of strangeness coupled with a storyline which defies normal standards with regards to the conventions of what a “road trip” movie is supposed to be, I am befuddled to try and wrap my head around what I think this movie actually is or is not. It’s just flat out weird.
I mean, we’ve got two brothers, twins, traversing the countryside. The soundtrack is just clutch, any way you slice it; a jaunty Parisian number with a little bit of jazz smokiness, as we try and understand why these two men are hitchhiking. I think they’re deaf mutes because none of these boys can utter a word yet one manages to pull a little bit of side action and impress a lady on this journey of discovery. How he does this is beyond my ken but the graphic imagery we get tossed in our faces just make you realize how open other countries are about nudity in general as this girl and dude just start pounding.
The twins seem to hate one another with no plans of being nice to one another. I mean, they don’t seem to be very in love with each other’s company as they look like miserable twits on a journey to nowhere. At one point they start beating on one another and I am screaming out in anguish, wanting to know what in the world is their problem.
I think one has a thing for guys, much to the disappointment of the other brother, and I believe this raises some concerns, perhaps, about the nature vs. nurture argument with regard to homosexuality. The other brother even pulls a prank on the other one, offering his brother’s backside to a stranger who thinks he’s in for a quick bathroom stall hump.
Overall, I’m confused, disoriented, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when you consider that they’ve managed to reveal not one, simple plot detail.
A Somewhat Gentle Man Trailer
How would you feel about a trailer with Stellan Skarsgard, master of the morose, cut to a soundtrack with a beat so peppy you swear you could dance to it? If it’s nothing less than excitement you’re just not right.
I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the man to even crack a smile in films, lest his face crack from the hard set marble it seems to be made out of, but this trailer was all kinds of funny in ways that translate quite well. Who knew Stellan could be such a nutty guy?
I appreciate very much that (and this is brilliant) we don’t go backwards to find out why Stellan is fresh out of the joint at the beginning of this thing. No narration lets us know why he was there or the circumstances surrounding his release. Instead, we get him standing in a diner, wondering why no one came to pick him up when he was let out. The way the camera is set up, and the way Stellan’s approach to playing this man who seems to have learned whatever lesson prison was supposed to teach him comes across, the mood is set perfectly. This looks like a trailer filled with rubes and characters of the silliest type but it works.
What’s more is that the story just goes forward, either you’re with it or against it, forsaking any oportunity to put into context what “score” needs settling as Stellan seems to be a heavy of some kind. It never says why he is sitting in a hotel room with a little person showcasing a bevy of guns but, at the minute mark, the funniest line of the trailer is said and it kills.
It’s all a rush and a blur from here.
We see Stellan try and get back in touch with his son, who knows how long they’ve been separated, see him pull the Kingpin trick in order to knock a few kronor off his monthly nut (literally), albeit in a much more graphic fashion, and watch as he gets back into the trouble that no doubt sent him to prison in the first place. The subplot of him wooing a lass from his workplace is a nice touch.
Now, are there any readers out there who can place this film within director’s Hans Petter Moland oeuvre as something he’s always done or this is a new direction from a director who looks worthy enough to go pillaging his back catalog? As far as I’m concerned, this guy had me laughing through the whole thing.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
When You’re Strange Trailer
Bruce McCulloch of The Kids in the Hall did a sketch about The Doors that really put things in perspective to me as a listener of the band. I was a listener, sure, but I don’t think I understood. It was a comedic goof on the fanaticism surrounding the band but, as with a lot of comedy that works, it had some truth to it.
Sometimes it takes a different interpretation to flesh out a subject when you’re talking documentaries and I think this trailer shows you an angle you never considered if you were a casual fan like I am. Take I Am Going To Break Your Heart, the Wilco documentary by Sam Jones. It was a documentary that contextualized the band’s musical process but it also gave the group some distance by playing through some of the musical numbers. It stands, in my mind, as one of the most solid musical documentaries and raised the bar for how others use the documentary medium to tell a musical tale.
Enter this trailer into the fray.
Director Tom DiCillo gave us the Brad Pitt epic Johnny Suede, the genuinely good film Living In Oblivion starring Steve Buscemi, and, now, curiously, a film that looks to take a direct look at The Doors. Yes, Oliver Stone gave us Val Kilmer’s best performance on film, second only to Real Genius, but watching Jim Morrison walking slowly on the horizon with Johnny Depp narrating in the background with the fuzz of a guitar playing threateningly underneath it all? Electrifying.
Flash from Morrison walking on an open road to flipping out inside a car. The music rages as we move on. Morrison philosophizes on the nature of stardom, his face looking serene and delicate, before we see him just flopping on the ground in front of thousands. The era of rock was now and Morrison is the center of the attention. From news footage of some fuddy-duddy declaring war against Morrison to Jim getting arrested, there is electricity surrounding this band’s acceptance that comes across. To put it another way, there doesn’t seem to be another band today that could both fuel the ire of law enforcement but be so beloved by thousands. (Insane Clown Posse come close, though, so my apologies to Juggalos everywhere)
The last third of this trailer does exactly what it should and that’s to showcase the music. From the performances, to their antics off stage, to the blizzard of fandom that followed, the scenes cut together with the music just works wonderfully. I was only a marginal fan before seeing this trailer but, like great trailers are able to do, watching this engenders excitement to see if this will tell a well-rounded tale that will leave people with a better understanding of a man who burned out too soon.
EV Trailer
There is a lot to be mined with regard to figuring out how reality television is changing our media landscape.
From a show about chubby people crying and letting their man boobs flop wildly for our amusement, to a program based on a guy where he can road test handfuls of women as we look on in amazement by the mentally shallow women who couldn’t care less, there seems to be an endless pocket of virtual oil, reality television programming, to be pumped out for every major network. For first time filmmakers Alper Ozyurtlu and Caner Özyurtlu there seems to be something that’s invading the zeitgeist of many countries, namely Turkey, where these gents are from which has spawned this film.
The concept is obviously novel if not timely: a gunman storms a house being used for a reality competition and holds everyone inside of it hostage for all the world to see and witness. But the trailer also does a superb job in laying the foundation quick and ramping up the fear factor almost immediately.
It’s the opening sequence that really hooked my attention. You have a reporter asking the latest reject tossed out of a house, a la Big Brother, the superficiality of it all captured perfectly, before a shot rings out. It gets exciting quite fast as people fan out, the gunman walking into the home where our reality stars reside. The guy storms the house with his gun, the editing on this trailer mimicking the confusion and chaos on the screen with solid synchronicity, and this is where the trailer excels even more.
Unless you’re one of those people who are part of the hoi polloi and twist your nose up at even familiarizing yourself with a show like Big Brother, we’ve all seen how the cameras are set up. Remote cameras from dozens of vantage points on a swivel capture everything that’s happening in the home 24/7. I think that’s the draw here in that we have a movie that will use the uninspired, utilitarian camera movements to not only mimic the reality experience but will push our expectations of movies where the words “found footage” accompanies any movie’s description where it’s supposed to have the affect of real life.
The tail end of this trailer just explodes with a hushed violence as the guy who will be our hostage taker for the evening has a deranged, yet completely believable, sensibility about him. This is the real marriage of good editing and releasing only a modicum of information with regard to how the film’s narrative will go that make this trailer sensational.
(Thanks to Quiet Earth who had the exclusive on this trailer)
4 3 2 1 Trailer
Funny thing, talking about the effect of Kidulthood with British film goers last week. I asked about its effects in the UK and whether it could make a film like Shank more marketable or if it was like an albatross around its neck, a surefire indicator of its terribleness. This week I find a movie co-directed and written by the guy who wrote Kidulthood. Again, is this like realizing Adam Shankman is directing the next Batman installment?
I am sure there will be one nerdish gasp at the admission I haven’t ever watched the new Doctor Who series (I never watched the old series, either) but it looks like an actor, writer, director for Adulthood, Kidulthood and Who, Noel Clarke, is your modern day renaissance man with the way he can jump from behind the lens to in front of it. Mark Davis, a man who seems to also enjoy performing multiple roles in film production, shares directorial duty with Noel for a movie that feels utterly vibrant and full of life.
Sometimes you can’t help but endear yourself to certain film scenes and James Spader’s opening moment in the trailer for 2 Days in the Valley, in which he holds up a stopwatch to someone’s face as he dons rubber gloves, is one I won’t forget. Its immediacy was thrilling and that’s what I feel when this trailer begins. Much like the trailer for 2 Days (I can’t even remember if I liked the film), this begins with a countdown with no background, no plot information, no narrative structure.
I love it.
A fair, young lass is the one thing we focus on as we begin, looking straight at her as she stares into the camera saying that “you” are about to die. The stopwatch on the screen gives us thirty big seconds. The countdown is interesting as this gives the trailer maker the opportunity to throw in anything he damn well pleases to make this trailer sizzle. And I have to give him credit, because it does. Behind a subtle techno beat, people are running for their lives, samurai swords are being unsheathed, the same pretty lady from the opening now brandishes a gun, people are getting shoved, cars are squealing out of control, the movie’s title slowly wipes across the screen, and we get an amusing, if not old and busted, comment to end the sequence of shots.
The direction feels frenetic, the shots are really well lit, the colors just pop off the screen, and I feel genuinely excited by the end of this thing while also cursing my fate, being stuck all the way across the pond, unable to see pretty girls donning weaponry.
The Exploding Girl Trailer
You ever watch something that just makes you think that what you’re witnessing feels like a window into someone’s life?
This trailer evokes a feeling of tenderness, or at least ought to, as you watch two young folks who obviously like one another as friends. It should, if all movies like this go in the direction it usually does, follow that the two of them end up coming together. This all, honestly, sounds like a film we’ve seen before but, I don’t know, there is something here I found endearing. Director/writer Bradley Rust Gray ought to give a high five to whomever created this trailer because its opening just hits the right beats both tonally and musically.
A killer bass line plays just beneath the action on the screen which is, essentially, a girl picking up a guy she knows from someplace far away and you can tell they’re close. The relationship isn’t defined but the direction and cinematography push any confusion aside because it feels rather intimate.
There is nice shout out to this movie making the Berlin Film Festival (always get those kudos in early, people) as well as the praise that goes to Zoe Kazan for being named Best Actress at the Tribeca Film Festival. Zoe shines as a girl who seems aloof, yet vulnerable, as she navigates the relationship she has with her good buddy Al (Mark Rendall), a guy who seems to only think of her as a friend. The clutch thing about this trailer is that it doesn’t overplay its hand. Both sides seem like they could go either way with defining whether they are or aren’t boyfriend/girlfriend material.
It’s brilliant, actually. It just feels like a real relationship fraught with the weirdness that comes with understanding who you love and who you could love a little more.
The little details of showing her frumpiness, of some slight perspiration on her face in a scene or two, the way she talks, just astounds me with how vivid and real this trailer makes her look. Again, it’s like we’re peeking in on someone who we’ve all known growing up but now we seem to have a chance to just linger on her for a little while and drink it all in.
9 to 5: Days In Porn Trailer
I’m giving you kids a two-fer.
Last week it was Serbian Film, this week it’s about porn. And what would a trailer on the sex industry be without a little nudity? I don’t know why it’s a subject that has so long been maligned by the uptight citizens brigade that wants to bring morality to a land where free speech can takes all kinds of forms. but I’m hopeful for a documentary that can help break it all down. As well, since I’m not a prude and am not hung up on other people’s proclivities in the bedroom this kind of trailer fascinates me in a way.
However, it doesn’t help that this thing starts off with the kind of guy your mind’s eye immediately assumes loves porno: a little chubby, unshaven, slightly skeevy guy, oozing the kind of uneasiness usually reserved for those who snatch purses in movies. He makes an excellent point about the kind of money that’s involved with this profession and before we can reflect on his comments we are introduced to the players in this picture. Now, what really sets this trailer apart is that we do get a wide spectrum of people who this profession touches and we also get a feel for the culture that surrounds it.
I love the hard rocking attitude this puts out, the music is perfectly matched to what’s happening on the screen, and everything that pads the middle starts to lay the foundation that what we’re seeing really is a job for these people. It’s a job, if you can believe the voices of one of the people in this thing, that it seeps into their personal lives. What’s more is the toll that’s collected by those in this machine called pornography; the cost being, of course, the loss of normalcy in a business that is anything but. The level of earnestness and candor the performers and people who are in this kind of work is refreshing if not eye-opening when you consider what’s being done in front of the camera.
What’s amusing is that as we head towards the end of this trailer, after seeing people have various objects inserted in them, seeing women put in positions I didn’t think was physiologically possible, and at one point seeing a woman with a plastic dog cone wrapped around her head, we get Dr. Sharon Mitchell. Here’s a doctor who I’ve seen various times when commenting on the health issues of those working in porn and who is genuinely funny when she laughs out the line that there seems to be nothing else new you can have people do on camera that we all haven’t seen before.
Will this documentary talk about the proliferation of amateurs who are eating into the market share of big business porn outlets? Will it talk about how the industry will continue to evolve technology as it has over the years? I kind of hope it does as I think you can have a documentary on porn that is earnest in its quest to break down this industry without it devolving into something seedy.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Some Days are Better than Others (trailer) from matt mccormick on Vimeo.
Some Days Are Better Than Others Trailer
Some mornings as I trudge into work, walking that Trail of Tears from the parking garage into the office, I wonder if it would help my day if someone were to take a pillow case full of a quarters and barrel it into the small of my back. I mean, everything to happen after that should be glorious if you were to front-load your day’s misery and, if it were to happen to random people walking into work, it would recalibrate everyone’s idea of what a bad day really is.
Not one of my more popular ideas that I floated during company meetings.
To watch a trailer like this you really do have to be in the right frame of mind of what a painful existence can be like. I think it would be easy to dismiss this as an exercise in whining. It’d be real easy, in fact. However, something happened when I watched this all the way through and I think it’s because it got the idea of misery and sadness telegraphed just right. This minute, thirty-five second trailer is cut well as writer/director Matt McCormick‘s pedigree in music video directing eeks through the details. Oddly enough, these video artists have a knack for knowing how to get maximum pop in these small bursts of time. Looking at (500) Days of Summer’s Marc Webb and the amount of success he had last year is reason enough to give the benefit of the doubt that music video directing is a solid proving ground for something longer.
Staying away from the film’s description, I just let the trailer play. Right away, and notably, we get Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and James Mercer from The Shins taking the lead here and I think it’s a curious choice. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the opening sequence assuages any concerns about using rock stars as leads in your film.
Brownstein kicks it off with a near teary breakdown as she tries to navigate the nature of heartbreak. It borders on the maudlin, almost syrupy with the crocodile tears but it still works. Smash cut to a wet car, overlooking a beach and some surf. The scene is framed so well, and scored so minimally, that it’s hard not to be wowed by the moment.
Further into the trailer a sad old man talks about the loss of two women in his life. He’s just as bad as Carrie with the moroseness in his voice but it’s the story that’s pulling me in like some hankie tractor beam. The music is assaulting because it fits like a glass slipper around this whole thing; it’s perfectly chosen and, when the characters talk, it blends seamlessly into the background.
Mercer opens his yap as he talks about a feeling lasting forever but it doesn’t take a pack of rocket scientists to get what he’s selling. I’m already there, desperate to see how things turn out, because if this is going to be a movie about plodding through painful times in your life you only have two options: be a Debbie Downer of a movie that only pretentious art majors will want to see or craft something that might be inspiring to those who want a reason to believe that life can go on after something shatters your emotional insides.
Serbian Film Trailer
At the outset, please let it be known that you should not watch this if you happen to work for anyone other than Playboy, Hustler, Oui, Vivid Entertainment, Barely Legal, NAMBLA, the KKK, Buzz’ Porn Emporium, Barely Legal, drug dealers, meth addicts or in the business of kidnapping poor women for the international sex trade. Without question, this trailer is not safe for anyone’s place of business.
With that out of the way, let me say this is a fascinating trailer. One of the best trailers I’ve seen in a quite a while, in fact. And it’s not just because of the copious amounts of skin but, rather, it’s the content that keeps you wondering what it is you’re watching and what it, ultimately, all means.
When we meet the protagonist Milosh, the guy seems normal. Wife, kid, nice house, nice life, you wonder what in the world could make him seem interesting. Then we get a shot of him rhythmically pounding something (in the nude?) with blood on his face, his hand wielding a weapon of some kind like a latter-day Spartan who is engaged in a furious sexual battle with who knows what.
Downshift to him taking a leisurely jog like nothing’s wrong and, surprise, it’s mentioned that he’s a retired porn star. As if to provide some kind of wacky dichotomy we get the guy’s young kid doing voiceover duty while we see samples of said porn on the screen and, to make this an even more uncomfortable moment, the kid is talking about how he felt when he saw the skin vids themselves. I don’t know whether to keep enjoying or wonder whether Interpol is now monitoring my Internet usage after looking behind both my shoulders. Honestly, I was made a little uncomfortable.
Now, before you have the chance to think that this may be a movie where the old porn star starts to have second thoughts about his past indiscretions, and what it means to have this guy thinking to get back in, possibly in order to make ends meet, we’re told he’s in financial dire straits. The guy gets back into the biz of throwing around his money maker but the twist is that this isn’t your ordinary porno. Something truly bizarre is afoot and we, not even he, are let in on it when he makes it to the set.
In the most classic senses of the phrase, the proverbial wheels come off this thing. After being drugged and slapped around and drugged some more the production feels like an Aronofsky nightmare. Nude women in various states of duress pepper the screen, we see this guy’s crank at one point, and we see some of the most depraved imagery ever to be put in a trailer. I mean, when was the last time you saw a birth of a child and had it associated with a masochistic, ritualistic sexual encounter? None, I guarantee it.
Somehow, I think, the wife and kid get involved, our father/porn king pees blood at one point; the music devolves into Trent Reznor techno babble; our protagonist is shown ready to thrust a huge pig sticker into someone; we certainly see dad squeeze off a few shots from a gun; and there is no way I could tell you how this ends or what direction we’re headed with this narrative. Director/co-writer Srdjan Spasojevic has made a trailer for a film that both shocks and thrills me. Kudos to him.
Love In A Puff Trailer
I’ve never had much love for those who get to sneak away from their work in order to indulge, satisfy their drug habit multiple times during the day. Since I have nothing but contempt for these people it amazes me that I have such a strong, positive feeling towards a film that has smoking at its epicenter.
I may not know filmmaker Pang Ho-Cheung’s previous works but this trailer works for me in that it seems like it is a small film about two people who each share an interesting quirk. Not only that, and I have no idea how far our Stalinist government now goes in regulating the quantity of smoke you can have in an advert, there is at least a metric ton of billowing smoke oozing out of these people’s mouths.
Taking a page, ripped from the headlines, out of their pop culture, out of their news we get introduced to Hong Kong’s stance on smoking. They may be half a world away but in quick fashion we get the government’s stance on what they think of the cancer causing pastime. It communicates so much without saying anything. I get it.
Next, we are introduced to our boy and girl. Somehow they immediately click for me as there appears to be a mutual attraction between the two of them.
The music is joyous in a Parisian way, very light and lilting to the ear with music I half expect to be playing if I were to be eating a warm croissant and butter, as these two enter into what looks like a genteel relationship. The trailer then goes into a slow, delicious burn. The philosophical implications that the subtitles throw up about the girl (“She inhales not smoke but solitude”) and the boy (“He exhales not smoke but romance”) are endearing but don’t ever feel too arty.
It’s playful to see these kids romance one another, the camera work feels organic and not rigid, there’s even a nod to American Beauty’s floating bag moment that I feel absolutely encapsulates what kind of movie this is. There are no high-arching metaphysical conceits here, just two people who are coming together thanks to their addiction to nicotine. It certainly made this softie a little squishy on the inside.
Prince Trailer
Is it possible to be in awe, to gaze longingly at some lady bits, to have a good laugh, and be left with the sense you had no idea what you just saw? This trailer will make you do all of the above and it couldn’t be more welcomed as this trailer has a lot of heart.
Bollywood filmmaker Kookie V. Gulati, according to IMDB, hasn’t had any directorial features attached to his name before this one and I think it shows. It’s not a bad thing, per se, to have your first film be an action movie spectacle that incorporates a lot of what the movie going public has already experienced through movies like The Matrix and Crank but, and I would mount a defense in support of this theory, the guy has put his influences in a blender and mixed in some bikinis, bullets, and that undeniable swagger of a Bollywood production in order to make a movie that shows off what he’s learned from these movies. This trailer really is interesting to watch, no question about it.
You can’t get three seconds into this trailer without recognizing the auditory fingerprint of the wood instrument a lot of us who grew up on Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme films could pick out even if we were deaf. Smash cut. A guy base jumps from a tall building, clad in his super undercover brother garb, natch. Cut to him executing a sweeping leg kick in slow mo, cut to him feeling a building to a waiting helicopter, a la The Matrix, where bullets are nicking the water’s surface. Smash cut. This guy tarries in entering a car long enough on one of the emptiest streets I’ve ever seen in my life to take on a pack of guys all at once with some of the most awkwardly placed bullet time camera work I’ve ever witnessed on film.
The reason why I love this trailer is that it feels different than a wholesale rip-off. There are moments of this guy crashing through glass of a high office building, of him taking on armies of men all at once, of him flashing the high cheekbone Blue Steele in almost every shot, of him getting the girl. We find out that the guy only has six days to live, possibly from a parasite of some kind, who knows, and this is the day he dies (the convenience of it all!) but I don’t know why I can’t be harsher on this than I should.
Maybe it’s the music that makes me want to get up and dance, or the heart that I feel coming through, but from my perspective this looks like a great time that could be popped in the DVD player and enjoyed for what it is. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to blend all the action tropes from the past decade into one film. I think this one could show you.
Shank Trailer
I need to know from the UK readers whether someone hanging their hat on a movie like Kidulthood is something that helps or whether it hinders. This is director Simon Pearce’s first film so it stands to reason if one has anything to do with the other.
To me, I could care less if the distributor’s last film was Freddie Got Fingered but this movie feels like it could be something more than your usual teenage fare. In the U.S. we have Save The Last Dance, Fighting, Cradle 2 the Grave or any number of films that try and get to that young teen, young adult demo. This, however, feels a little more mature, a little more reckless, thrilling even and it’s something you don’t see a lot of in the theaters.
When we open up on a scene with a guy free running through the back alleys of a city street, trying to avoid being clipped by a maniac on a motorcycle (isn’t that always the way), we get that this is supposed to be London, 2015. It would be easy to start knocking this trailer for a lame premise but the editing is solid, as well as the musical selection. These two blend well with each other as we get to the emotional core of this story which seems to be two brothers who lean on one another to stay safe in this reckless, dystopian vision of the future. Well, things don’t go too well. The big brother gets shanked, imagine that, as the younger brother is pushed to some breaking point where he’s ready to throw down.
The music picks up, and the editing gets faster and more furious with the zigs and zags we take, but the tempo couldn’t be better suited to match the fury of this kid who wants revenge on those who killed his brother. The trailer genuinely engenders a feeling of excitement and interest as every little moment of this movie seems to build on the one that came before it. You feel like there is some real honest violence about to go down, you can feel the rhythms of the club where our boy is probably going to get his rocks off, and you should feel uneasy as you see all kinds of people swinging fists in what could be one of the more visceral teen movies to come out in quite some time.
Honestly, if you were to tell a producer or a director to make a contemporary Warriors-like movie, replete with gangs of nutballs who all identify with some crazy visual detail, this likes like the film that would come out the other end.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Oil City Confidential Trailer
I am not what you would call an audiophile or a connoisseur of music.
Any argument I could make about my taste in music or what I would defend in public would be specious at best and utter drivel at its worst. I am intrigued, though, by the acts that came before Samantha Fox or Debbie Gibson burst onto the scene like an unclean zit needing popping. That’s why, I think, I appreciate any opportunity to get dirty in discovering the not well known stories about phases in musical history. I was transfixed by Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years as I think it got right down to what made this such an incredible and wretched time in popular culture. And certainly, without question, having the guy who brought The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and Earth Girls Are Easy and Janet Jackson’s “Alright” video should engender some kind of excitement, right? Of course, it’s the former work that made such an impact, some would say that the cinematic train wreck of Julie Brown made a bigger divot and that Julien Temple ought to have been banished to a remote island because of it, but that’s neither here nor there.
What I see in the Oil City Confidential trailer is a whole lot of excitement for a sliver in time that I never knew existed. I don’t live under a rock but I’ve never known about the players in this movie or why a movie needed to be made of them. Hell, I’ve never heard of Dr. Feelgood (I did hear Motley Crue’s version growing up and that was but one influence on my basis of knowledge so a) that explains a lot and b) I apologize for having such low standards) who hailed from Canvey Island in the UK but the opening of this trailer does an exquisite job in relating what that time was like. We see this beaten up, blue color town that seems suffocated by pollution and desperation. The opening sequence electrifies with the promise that there is a story here and the epicenter is a place that should have yielded hooligans, not rock stars.
Meeting the members of the band and getting a quick bio on each one helped me to understand who these guys were and what they were about. Nothing could compare, however, to the insanity of seeing guys literally fall out of cars, dudes flailing around on stage, people smashing into one another in a grand thrashing fashion, and trying to make sense of how all this fits together. The music is blisteringly catchy, and it seems like a lot of people went gonzo over it if the file footage is any indication, and the final declaration that this was “The Greatest Local Band…In The World” puts this into the right perspective for someone like myself.
This isn’t a story about some guys who never got their chance but, rather, it seems like it’s a story of some guys who got their chance and influenced those who would change the world. The trailer is like a great pop song: it’s got a hook, a little bit of emotion, it has superb rhythm, and it makes me want to buy into what they’re selling.
Reel Injun Trailer
As someone who lives surrounded, literally, by Indian reservations I see where they’re coming from.
As background, I enjoy the local stylings of KUPD DJ John Holmberg and his vocal creation of Chief Double Down, a surly Indian character whose sole existence is to put down whitey in a bit that has him playing blackjack over the phone with callers. Chief loves “butt-weiser” beer, an occasional “yamba yoose” smoothie, and a “yumbo yak” from that place that has a clown named Jack for a company spokesman, all the while poking at that relationship between those who live here and those who lived here first. It has a mix of hilarity, of the subversive quality in having a character that’s done by a pasty white guy and of the feeling that there is some tension among some folks who live in the valley of the sun with regard to Indian’s right of sovereignty. It shouldn’t be an awkward interaction between us and them, you would have thought we would get it right by now, but the fact of the matter is that Americans aren’t doing a lot to make things right and this trailer perfectly nails what’s at issue.
Much to this movie’s credit, this trailer is not aggro or wanting to throw this issue in your face in order to get your attention. Rather, it’s done playfully and with a funny slant. It is in that playfulness that engenders a sinking feeling in your belly as you sense the filmmakers are absolutely right.
The opening sequence of some guys horsing around on the set of a western just sets up Clint Eastwood’s little yarn about how, a long time ago, he was on set of the western and the director wanted to use a real Native American for a scene. However, chuckle chuckle ha ha, they couldn’t find one. I mean, it’s a western, and not one Native American could be found! This perfectly lands us in Chris Eyre’s lap, a Cheyenne/Arapaho filmmaker, who talks about the practice of using white men for Indian roles. It’s unsettling, true, and a little uncomfortable but you go along with it when Chris then says how funny it is to him when he sees that happen.
Cue snippets of Anthony Quinn (Mexican), Burt Lancaster (Irish), Charles Bronson (Lithuanian), Daniel Day-Lewis (British/Irish), Sylvester Stallone (Italian), and on and on it goes as we see all these actors who have taken on Indian personas. Again, it’s incredibly unbelievable but it’s done in such a way that the egregious information speaks for itself. It’s right there.
We move beyond this as we see that the movie is one filmmaker’s journey to define the Native American experience in cinema. Jim Jarmusch has a fabulous soundbite that is poignant and gets to the heart of what is at play here. Additionally, we get some film buffs who talk about Dances with Wolves and the implications that movie had with regard to the positioning of Indians. With all the talk about how Avatar cribs so much from this story you can see how this might be the case with the blue people as well. It’s dead on as you see the practice still happens today and you’ve just got to wonder how it can continue on like this.
I love anything that might help me recalibrate my sensibilities so I welcome the chance to see how this plays out in its entirety because I already am sold on the basic tenets set out in this trailer. Co-Director/Writers Neil Diamond and Catherine Bainbridge have something here which really is fresh and original; it’s just too bad that filmmakers who use white people for Indian parts are neither.
Valhalla Rising Trailer
Let’s just get this out of the way: Mads Mikkelsen is just one intimidating individual.
Yeah, he wasn’t so much a threat to be dealt with in the Bond films but the man just has a presence about him where you understand why a filmmaker like director/co-writer Nicolas Winding Refn likes to work with the guy. He just comes across as a person not to be ignored when he comes on screen so it should be no surprise that when you ask whether he could pull of being a one-eyed mute with “supernatural strength”, like some human chimpanzee, the only correct answer is undoubtedly “yes.”
The opening sequence is a delight to look at. The rolling hills, the low clouds creating a smoky environment, the gathering of a few men to bear witness of Mads being extensively tied up to ostensibly keep that roid rage in check, all the while as some lad finger paints on his back.
The smash cut to us seeing Mads get pummeled while chained to a stick in the ground like some canine is awkwardly presented and doesn’t really invoke that sense of grandeur I think we should feel for what will ostensibly be a movie about this man’s personal journey. Further, I’d add that a lot of this kind of looks like Louis Leterrier’s Danny the Dog: guy is kept as a slave monkey, learns how to beat people when unleashed, literally, finds meaning in his life, and learns how to pick up ladies the Morgan Freeman way. All loving aside, I’m not sure what’s different but when when our guy takes events into his own mitts and slashes the throat of the guy who’s trying to keep him under control I am wildly engaged with what’s happening.
However, this is where things get a little weird and a little confusing.
So, he kills some guys in order to get free. He gets propositioned to be a part of some gang to kill other people and he accepts the offer. They all start paddling, like Vikings are wont to do when there’s a boat in the water, down a river when one of the gang members gets an arrow in his chest from a pack of hooligans brandishing weapons on one of the river banks. The net effect of all of this is a little concerning because I don’t think I have anything invested in this guy who I could care less if he survives or dies. He just seems like a merc who has nothing in the game, as it were.
Smash cut to our mute just slaughtering his way through the last third of the trailer. Literally, there are heads being carried off the field of battle, hands being stuck on the end of spears, ax fights are just blurring into bloody faces. But the one thing that’s troubling is the sound mixing is horrendous. Also, the musical track being used, if I’m not mistaken, is that of The Terminator. Huh? Seriously, I’m confused even more by the sudden auditory inclusion of a score that doesn’t really belong but I’m quickly given a visual back-rub with an ending that couldn’t better sum up what we’re going to see.
I love Refn’s work. I do. This is, unfortunately, a case when a weak trailer is released for a film I was really looking forward to see. It’s almost like being in rush hour traffic with a lot of fits and starts and then nothing. Let’s hope it’s just a matter of a bad artisan who was allowed to do whatever they wanted in slapping this together.
Black Field Trailer
How often was The Crying Game used for comedic punchlines after its release?
A lot? Too much? More than your occasional Brokeback Mountain joke? I think a lot of people have supplanted their insecurities for homosexuals or homosexual behavior, even weak perceived behavior, in general with this “joking around”. It’s to the point where you really can tell a lot about a person’s stance on these kinds of things by the number of times this gets used whenever something “questionable” comes up.
A movie like this stirs something in me that I certainly am not able to identify with but I think it’s a universal connection many people have when you have a love story between two individuals. Without question, however, there is that element of the forbidden, of the licentiousness inherent with the act of man-on-man love. I don’t think the number of Greeks who practiced same sex love, to say nothing of the incredible strides made in poetry by Sappho that dealt with homosexuality from a woman’s perspective and helped keep the memory of a time long since passed alive, would object to a movie like this. I certainly welcomed a fresh take on a tale that’s a lot older than some would think.
It certainly does start majestically. The vistas, plains, mountains, and atmospheric elements we see coalesce into an opening sequence that tells us we are insanely far from anyone even near a telephone. A horse carries the body of a beat up solider who needs 40 winks and a little bit of superglue to close up the gashes that brought him to a Christian nunnery. No one knows who he is or what he’s all about. It’s kind of like The Bourne Identity for the Age of Crisis era but it’s all very clandestine. No voiceover, no narrative clues.
While the cinematography is gorgeous to look at I can’t say that seeing one of the nuns cut themselves, graphically, in the inner thigh with a sharp implement, and deep too, is something I can square up in my head. There is something going on here but we come back to the warrior who wakes up. Cue a beautiful violin playing the background as the guy fools around with one of the young sisters who we might as well all know now is really a young brother.
They make out, the nun starts a fight with the guy as the two of them get into a slapping contest (huh?), they float on a raft down a slow moving river, they get accosted by two soldiers in a forest as it looks like the two of them will get their heads chopped off. I seriously can’t make out what the heck is happening.
Is the nun running away with him? Is the nun going to return? Why did the he/she cut her/his hair off? How on earth did they end up sleeping on a grassy rock where the two of them give into carnal pleasures with regard to man on man love? Now, I have no evidence of where we could reasonably pick up where the warrior figures out that he’s not a she but I don’t think he has an issue with it either way.
Curiously, we’re given an ending where our young boy lays down on a grassy field as we’re left to just interpret whatever we want about why we’re lingering so long on this shot. It’s all very Walt Whitman, I feel, but it has the effect of being more emotionally compelling than many of the manufactured moments I’ve seen in other films.
Consider me (bi)curious on this one.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Sherlock Holmes Trailer
This is a trailer that I can’t help but throw my arms up in the air in complete, abject disdain.
I would say this is the most awful trailer I’ve seen in 2010 but that would be unfair. That honor I could bestow on a few other trailers I’ve seen as what makes this one so dreadful and so awful is not only its content but that, in its mechanics and execution, it decided that just being another ripoff was not enough. This film, it may be no surprise, coming from the people who brought us Paranormal Entity, and the piggybacking it did on Paranormal Activity, but what that trailer had was a little pop, a little sizzle. I was actually all the way on board for that film because there seemed to be a genuine spirit inside of it. What we have here, though, smacks of indolence and an unwillingness to at least attempt a sales pitch to make anyone interested in this movie.
It’s not all harsh, though, as the opening of the trailer is pretty solid. Not only does this outfit, The Asylum, have the kind of branding aims to let everyone know they’re the ones who are bringing us this movie as they telegraph this info but they at least have the brains to not smack us with the absurd right away. No, instead it’s a very slow, very measured intro that’s quite good, actually. There’s no mistaking this movie for Guy Ritchie’s solipsistic interpretation as this feels like something you would see on Masterpiece Theater. But, it’s at about that feeling when the crap-tageous, shockingly miserable flying dragon that looks like it was done on a Packard Bell 386 circa 1993 flies in front of our face.
Before you have the time to say “Whaa?” we downshift back into the gear where this trailer excelled, the period piece that at least tried to capture some essence of goodness, as we get some reflective moments from those in the film that look watchable. This is about the time the velociraptor makes an appearance. Huh?
We get some more moments where nothing makes sense, which is fine with me because I can forgo a little story in lieu of some visual sizzle, but when you have a giant squid take over a boat (What in the hell is going on here?) I can’t get a handle on anything.
I mean, I don’t purport to be any great observer, but this is truly a mess. It wants to be dramatic, it wants to inject action, it wants to rip off Iron Man wholesale, it wants to be emotive, but here’s a situation where it’s just too much. Not even on a lark would I subject myself to this and the trailer does a great job in making the case as to why not.
It feels like that scene where Neil Page is laying into Del Griffith about being a conscientious storyteller in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. “You have to discriminate,” he said, “You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting.” This trailer truly is a miracle, it has none of that.
Blood Into Wine Trailer
I’m not a Tool fan but I’ve got a buddy, Amir Raza, who would follow this band into the depths of an Arizonan dust bowl hell if that meant he could be front row to rock on with his bad self.
I don’t understand the cult of personality that surrounds the enigmatic lead singer of an outfit that sells out countless shows all across the globe but that’s OK, I figure. The fact that makes me really interested in this man isn’t his music. At all. My interest stems around the singular idea that Arizona produces the foulest wine you’ve ever put to lips. I mean, I honestly think I should be blind after supping on the swill people claim will change my stance on local wines but Maynard Keenan has been creating some incredible buzz. The man is garnering positive attention in that he has been able to churn out some really delicious varieties of wine. What could be so interesting about a rock singer that can make a solid cabernet? I am not sure but the trailer is wild fun.
Bob Odenkirk kicks things off with a little cutsie play on words. Fumbling with a screwdriver, and passing himself off as an intense wino and making a slight joke in the process, the opening sequence leads gingerly into Maynard, tending to his very real crop of grapes.
This leads us to the thing that hooked me instantaneously: Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Good Job! Now, I don’t know what it is about the two of them but everything I read about Maynard has him painted as a man who’s very serious about what he does, and big ups to his bad self for being that way, but this paring of him and the dynamic duo of subtle comedy is a thrill to watch.
I next see Milla Jovovich making a little bit of the funny funny as she insinuates herself into what seems to be a self-reflexive joke about the nature of this documentary. True, as Tim Heidecker asks Maynard, why would or should anyone care about a guy who manufactures poison, but the look he gives the camera and the music that thunders in just blows the lid off this thing. It’s endearing.
And we’re not just talking a documentary on wine. This looks like it really is going to deconstruct the reasons why a guy who has it all wants to be involved with an endeavor that not only seems a little quaint for a rock star but how his Natty Light swilling audience would react to their icon being involved in a process seems a little frou frou. It’s a lie, of course, to say that the two have to be mutually exclusive, music making and wine producing, but this trailer just hits the right beats with giving the audio snippets that show why this could be really fascinating to all audiences.
Like I said, I am not a fan of the band but this trailer does have a good beat that you can dance to and it is positively content rich with trying to connect you with the idea of how this one guy has managed to create a great wine where there hasn’t been many who have succeeded. I am thirsty to find out how he did it.
Pumzi Trailer
The higher concept the better is my motto when it comes to sci-fi.
It’s funny in a way because, as a boy, I would have just as soon lapped up the Zemeckis world of tomorrow in Back to the Future, which I realize is a real loose interpretation of the genre, or Star Wars than I would Dune. Dune for me has always been a fuzzy photo of Sting wearing a blue winged jock strap that not only made him look completely silly and foppish but it had the effect of completely turning me off as a viewer. I was a kid, who could blame me. As I got older, though, movies like Aliens and Blade Runner took hold of my attention and I have enjoyed flicks like this in a variety of ways. I realize that some are written well and there are some, ones I eschew, simply because they want to try too hard and lean on the science of it. Pumzi seems like it’s a lot of the former with its concept of a world that is populated with people who don’t, or aren’t allowed to, dream.
The trailer opens with the sound of a drippy tap followed by the sound of a soothing computer voice companion, a la HAL, a la GERTY, a la Bishop, you get the point, letting her ward know to take her dream suppressants. We’re no more than seconds into this movie and it’s already laying down the theoretical groundwork. No grandiose, sweeping shots of this land, no prosthelytizing about what this new world is all about, it just gets right into it.
Our protagonist takes a pill to what we can only assume stops dreams from happening (sociological spoiler alert as this movie is coming from South Africa as we could easily talk about the real world inspiration for this). We then shift to some guy wearing stirrups in order to walk on a treadmill (I’ve heard barefoot running is all the rage nowadays) and we see this land in all its CG glory which is a pretty descent rendering. This is about where we get the flashpoint for this film.
While I think there is some heavy handedness with getting the message across that people aren’t allowed to dream and that they aren’t allowed to leave their underground cocoon without permission, and that here’s a woman who is starting to question why’s she under mind control, there is something to be said about what we’re seeing.
I like where things leave off after our protagonist sees a small green plant growing in a soil sample for reasons we’re not sure of and, as a result of this, she begins to have vivid dreams about what this could mean. She’s subsequently dealt with for defying authority as she starts to shed her complicity.
The one or two gripes I do have, though, is that we’re given just a little bit of the story and we ought to have been given more if for only to understand what’s at stake for this future person. As well, and this absolutely unforgivable, putting the fact that this was a Sundance 2010 selection at the very end of this thing? That was an awful decision and one that the person who cut this together should have second guessed.
As it stands, I can go either way with wanting to see this film.
The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulu Trailer
The closest I come to knowing what H.P. Lovecraft was all about is by reading Locke and Key on a monthly basis from IDW Publishing. It’s a solid comic book. Outside of that? Not a clue.
Lovecraft seems like a real fiction fanatic with his weaving of the fantastical, horror, and sci-fi all together in a mishmash of what appears to be some good readin’. To that point, though, it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of a trailer that looks pretty damn impressive from a man who had only directed two shorts before this full-length feature. Additionally, the director Henry Saine, has worked on Will & Grace, Wild Hogs, Entourage, and a host of other projects, but only as a graphic artist. However, everyone deserves to be judged solely on the work they produce and this thing pulled me in quickly and didn’t relent to which I say this feels like a very funny film.
I loved, first of all, that I had no dog in this hunt insofar that I didn’t care about what I was watching but it managed to make me care right away. It’s kind of cute in a way that the first guy we see seems to be a brotherly descendant of the scraggly haired man John Mason from The Rock. He’s over the top and just hooks you with his empathic suggestion of how to deliver what looks like a metal door knocker.
Boom, cue the dramatic string number, flash up that this is an official selection of the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival (I appreciate that they embrace their inclusion into it),and start the awkward chubby guy explaining to his memaw that’s he is going on a quest like a nerd is wont to do. Now we’ve got ourselves quite an opening. It’s mysterious, funny, the shots chosen are rather compelling, and when we back around to awkward chubby guy the closing comments deliver in full. As does the moment we get the fish man who enters the moment with the kind of absurdity that even defies my ability to explain why I laughed so hard at it.
We’re then thrust into a musical montage that is just straight caffeine to your soul. Clips of all kind that try and show off just what’s in store does this film so much more favors than just pounding more dialogue into our ears. We see samples of their effects work, the creative liberties they’ve taken with how they’ve designed their monsters, we get to see the deceptively funny Martin Starr from Party Down mixed in, and we get an ending that, again, leaves us guessing about what in the world is happening.
This trailer is the modern day equivalent of a girl you almost could go all the way with if she wasn’t so prudish; she leaves you wanting more but, good for her, she’s just going to tease you.
The Last Rites of Ransom Pride Trailer
Look, there are just some things that I am not into.
I know some people love to talk about how they love all music…with the exception of country. There’s always one of those in a bunch. I hate country too but I learned to appreciate Johnny Cash and look at the hybrids that have come out, Wilco can be included in that, to take the genre and reshape it in their own image. I am reminded of the things I sometimes tell people when I say I like all kinds of movies …with the exception of westerns. I just can’t get into them. I’ll watch Tombstone and think it’s good and all, but it just doesn’t move me on an artistic level, a visceral level.
In contrast, this trailer had me by the short and curlies.
A trailer that has no compunction at all with using the word “dwarf” in their marketing campaign has my attention, as is the creation of this thing which seems to borrow a lot from the action genre. Just because a movie is set in the Wild West doesn’t mean it has to look like it and this one absolutely does not. It has a swagger, an air, a sense of humor, and an eye for ass kicking that genuinely gets me going. Director/co-writer Tiller Russell’s resume is a curious one in that a few of his past films doesn’t really scream “old school western” director. Hell, they don’t even whisper “action” director. From movies about people overcoming adversity, a documentary on cockfighting, a tale about someone who grew up to become an arm-wrestler after overcoming a brain tumor at the age of 18 months, there isn’t a lot to say why this works, or should work, but it does speak about his unique perspective.
That’s really what jumps out at you as you watch the opening sequence of this trailer, guys firing their six-shooters, of Dwight Yoakam coming off all greasily as a nefarious ne’er-do-well, of the independent sheen that this movie seems steeped in, and of the interstitials that kind of lighten the heavy mood.
It feels like an action movie should: light, airy, and a little thrilling. You’ve got Peter Dinklage making an excellent introduction as a “gun totin’ dwarf” and the indication, based on the weaponry and the equipment, that this is a modern throwback. Specifically, there are motorcycles and pump action shotguns in the same scene as women dressed in frilly lace and period dress. I mean, I have no idea what’s going on, I have no clue what the story is, I’m confused about what year I’m in, I think I’m going out of my mind, but it’s all OK because here’s a movie that looks like it wants to shake up our notion of what a western is supposed to be and I couldn’t be more open minded about the possibilities.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Terribly Happy Trailer
I saw this trailer last week when it was circulating overseas, chock full of foreign language goodness, and I was inches away from writing about it but trying to navigate the trailer was obtuse, the quality of the trailer was sub-par, and it would’ve been just too hard to explain why it was such a good trailer.. Thankfully, someone took the meager video, put a little spit and polish on it, and the result is a movie that just oozes with character and the promise of something delectable.
I feel bad in a way that I’ve never seen any of director/co-writer Henrik Ruben Genz’ previous works as the first few moments of this trailer brim with some of atmospheric enveloping that have made the Cohens such masters at the art of translating mood to film. The quiet whispering of the wind that we get here evokes so many different emotions as we see a lone police car gently motoring down a desolate country road. The bareness is only trumped by the isolation that is instantly communicated to the viewer. The interstitial stating this was Denmark’s official Best Foreign Language Film for the 2009 Academy Awards is a solid salvo to the overall pitch as it is quintessential in order for lay people like myself to think about what makes this movie stand out from any other movie from the Danes about quiet desperation. (Insert sarcasm)
We get the set up gently, no rush, no hurry, and we’re launched into a town that looks like it has bred some unique individuals. Just listening to the cop who explains a word like “Mojn” means to the townspeople evokes certain sensibilities that transcend the language barrier. With a cast of oddballs that would make David Lynch proud I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to wince as we plod along in this thing.
I love that we’re told this is absolutely a community that policies its own, where “homegrown” justice rules, and where no one seems to pay any mind to the police officer who is there, ostensibly, to just keep the peace. When a voiceover whispers about people who just disappear for no reason we see some guy wading into a wet bog who we’re led to believe might be shot in the back, and the creaking of a rusty baby buggy pushed by a small girl just amps up the seedy factor.
Big ups to the film scoring 7 Danish Film Academy Awards (did it beat out the documentary on the making of lingonberry jam?) and the other accolades as well because this helps me, as a consumer, make a choice about whether I want to literally buy into this film.
Further, I would love to point out that the music which drives home the last 40+ seconds of trailer is fantastic, along with the kudos that people like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter showered on it. The moment that we get with the town’s cop as he has a drinking contest with one of the local yocals packs a wallop because not only does it put into context who this guy is (as well as the great looking Swede Jakob Cedergren) but we get a great sampling of the film technique employed by Genz which made this such a winner of a movie.
The Wild Hunt Trailer
Thinking about how Darkon made an impact on the community that loves to dress up and go at one another with Nerf-like weaponry and how it contextualized a movement that hadn’t before been explained in a narrative fashion it made me laugh to watch the first few moments of this trailer. I know some would point to a film like Role Models as one that talked about how these kinds of people have been fictionalized but I think a movie like this is really the first of its kind in its fictionalizing of their experiences. I like that here’s a movie that takes this aspect of a person’s life and then ensconces it in a bubble of fiction that doesn’t feel like it’s being made fun of or laughed at in any way. The opening of this trailer is a testament to this marriage of the serious and the absurd.
A cast of dozens sets this thing off and it’s absolutely convincing as a straight film. Usually there’s a tell somewhere in its presentation to tell you this all really a joke but kudos to director/writer Alexandre Franchi to making an opening that is convincing as straight action. If you were coming fresh on to this thing, not knowing where it was going, you would be hard pressed to know what was going to happen at the :30 mark. There is some slight hand tipping but it’s glorious when the characters break their designated roles and start arguing the finer points of magic and battling.
Then the trailer shifts tones.
This is where the kidnapping is introduced.
Things take a quite serious turn and I am throttled by the punch I didn’t see coming. From a bunch of rubes going into a forest to indulge in behavior some would say is weird but harmless to this turning into a serious case of someone on the verge of getting violently hut I am in for this roller coaster ride. The music, as well, should be praised in helping to bring any artifice of comedy down to the ground. Thrilling stuff in here.
Friendship! Trailer
Readers of this column should know that I do loves me some films about America that are filtered through the prism of a foreigner.
A few weeks ago I looked at the trailer for Jerry Cotton and saw some of the funnier peculiarities of American life. This new movie from director Markus Goller and writer Oliver Ziegenbalg looks like it’s going to continue the tradition of taking the metaphorical air out of American tires. And, why not? If we want to be the world’s bullies and insinuate ourselves into situations where we’re often not wanted and stay for longer than expected then I think it’s just natural for people to point a finger and have a little laugh.
What better place to start than with David Hasselhoff?
I wouldn’t normally be so fast to include a trailer completely in another language but it is genuinely funny and it does cut through linguistic barriers as the trailer makes clear we’re not only in Germany but that this begins at the time of the Berlin Wall coming down. We go from black and white communism to full color liberation as Hasselhoff sings a song about freedom, resplendent in a jacket illuminated by tiny light bulbs. Sigh.
This has something to do with two young Germans making a trip here to the USA, the film’s IMDB page saying that “a young man from East Germany travels to San Francisco to search for his father, who fled 12 years ago,” and honestly this is worth watching if only to see American customs officials think, because they’re German, that they’re Nazis. And why shouldn’t this be funny to Germans who might project their feeling that some in the U.S. might go straight to the Nazi association; again, it’s the perception and prism that we see these things play out which make it amusing. The love doesn’t stop there as American security forces also seem to have a propensity to strip search possible Nazis as well. Yes, this is all done for the sake of comedy and I couldn’t be more amused. I loved seeing these nuances blown up to satirical proportions. This looks like a movie along the lines of Todd Phillips’ Road Trip as these kids are also looking to hook up while here in the State.
It should also be noted that this is a a movie that takes them from NYC all the way to the west coast in what should be one of the longest, literal, road trip movies ever made, but it does shake things up a bit. We’ve got your standard mistaken sexuality as our boys find themselves in a gay bar, your usual hook-up that ends with a firearm being discharged by someone really mad, an interesting look at our country’s obesity issue, and, in a weird twist for a comedy, the movie has some heartfelt moments that involve tears.
It looks like this film is just pure fun for fun’s sake and, coupled with the sociological breakdown, I could not be more interested in seeing what I’ve missed by never taking German in high school.
The Scouting Book For Boys Trailer
What is it with people who live in caravans in movies that always seem their houses burned to the ground?
I mean you have the pikies from Snatch getting their trailers burnt to cinders, now you’ve got a movie where there seems to be much ado about these people who find mobile homes to be de rigeur of a certain social class. I wasn’t sure what to make of a movie that feels like something closer to Stand By Me in its eeriness with regards to a young protagonist finding himself in a very strange circumstance but there is something else about this movie which feels very electrifying.
Director Tom Harper, once you flip through his oeuvre and compare it like a piece of litmus paper, trying to determine what color it matches up to, you see a pattern developing: he makes movies about youth. What it’s like to be young, and not necessarily young in a good way but in a way that takes into consideration all the trials and travails that can happen to young people as they maturate into the adult world. Writer Jack Thorne is the other wild-card here as his writing has brought us five episodes of the very good and very sharp Skins, a short about a teen girl taking out an old fogy to the supermarket, and now this movie about a young man trying to help one of his lady friends run away from home.
The trailer thrills from the first moment as we get everything we need from this trailer: we get the set up, we get what’s at stake, and we get an insight into what these two young adults mean to one another. It seems to be a story about one friend helping the other one to run away from home but things get more convoluted, more serious. The boy, David, seems to be at the center for this tempest as a community rallies to try and find her. David’s family is really eager to find her as they seem to have no compunction at all about smacking him around in order to get an answer about her whereabouts. It gets weird as we try and piece together what is really happening here with the story as it looks like the girl is hiding away in a cave somewhere and that the boy is somehow keeping her there but it has a very Silence of the Lambs, kidnap-y vibe to it that seems like it could quite dark, quite quick.
We get a few notable quotes, one of which pegs it exactly about what the relationship between writer and director means to a movie where both parties sought to define a certain and specific adolescent experience, and an ending that makes this a rousing trailer for a film we’re not soon to get here in the States. I am endlessly fascinated by the many avenues a good story about youths can go and this absolutely looks like a charmer.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
Mugabe and The White African Trailer
I’ve heard of this. Only in passing, on NPR, a stray news story in the paper I can’t specify, I just don’t think I have a good grasp on the situation.
The situation being, mind you, of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s controversial land seizure initiative. The way things went down is that, around the turn of the millennium, the president essentially told over 4,000 farmers of the nation’s top crop producing areas that the government was coming to take their land. It was then going to be fairly distributed to those in the lower class who have been marginalized by years of “colonialism” and “white minority rule.”
Now, having said that, how do you think things have gone in Zimbabwe since?
Not good would be a good way of putting it and certainly, without knowing the particulars, it makes watching this trailer a little confusing if you don’t know the background but now that you know a little bit about a little bit the trailer ought to be fairly shocking in its presentation.
Right out of the gate we get that this trailer is a winner. Winner of Best Documentary Feature, three times over. There isn’t anything flashy or particularly striking of this fact, it’s downright bland with its Times New Roman font declaring it, but it’s the moment right after that the uneasiness sets in. The transition between the facts that are tossed out about Mugabe’s rule and that white farmers have had to flee for their lives is unsettling when you hear the drumbeat in the background. An anonymous guy steps out of his truck with a cellphone camera and points it at our camera and says he’s here to take the owner’s land. Just like that. It’s an act of quiet aggression and things just get visually louder from here.
A woman cries, a farmer gets suited up in a small armory inside his house as he prepares to literally defend his property in the middle of the night, a shot rings out, photos of people who look like the ever loving hell was beat out of them pepper the screen, and in one of the more bizarre moments of this trailer, a pack of men are running down the street towards a camera man who is speeding away in a car. It’s frightening.
What’s more, is we come back to the old guy who was going a-huntin’ as he tries to go through legal channels in order to save his farm from seizure. The camera phone guy reappears too and his presence underscores this whole documentary as he tells the farmer that he will sleep on the guy’s farm for as long as it takes until he’s out; it’s a perfect distillation of what seems to be a very charged, emotional, and contentious battle. First time documentary filmmakers Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson certainly have chosen a spark plug of a subject that won’t soon be forgotten.
This is a trailer that should not be missed and certainly was one of the more affective ones I’ve seen in a while.
The Dungeon Masters from Dungeon Masters Movie on Vimeo.
The Dungeon Masters Trailer
Of all the films, of all time, are you telling me not one person ever made a documentary about Dungeons and Dragons? Sure, there was that rockin’ kids show in the 80’s but it would depress me knowing how many of you reading weren’t even born when it was on the air.
I’d like to think that a documentary like Trekkies gave rise to films that went out to chart the many crags and crevices of nerd life that seldom ever got noticed elsewhere. Sure, these geeks existed but the light shone on them after such an absence in popular culture proved to be a good thing as many of these visual documents showed them to be fascinating creatures. From American Movie, The King of Kong, to Darkon it’s hard to look away when it comes to another entry into the secretive lives of the wimpy. So, too, is this movie which looks like a combination of so many of these films all in one and director Keven McAlester appears to have nailed this subculture.
I’ll be the first to admit I was way too stupid to play this game. The idea seemed fascinating to me but after a botched stint with an Indiana Jones role playing set from 1984, I thought my passion had all but extinguished for these kinds of things.
And then the first few moments of this trailer play.
I find myself enthralled at the opening sequence of the haughty classical soundtrack playing in the background as we look upon a foggy and damp looking parking lot. Images of Chris Matthews carrying on like a blubbering idiot, economic talking heads blather on about the fall of the American economy, and then we see scads of die all strewn about on a desk. The juxtaposition is not lost on me as I think the intersection of hard fact and imagined reality is a hilarious one when you finally are presented with the face paint.
Honestly, it’s the look on the guy’s face at the 1:03 mark which is absolutely precious, priceless, and the reason why I will buy this film site unseen. It just has a fuzzy effervescence that makes you think this will be a loving portrait of these fans who like to talk trolls, ogres, spells, health, and armor all the while being completely serious. What’s more is we push on beyond the fascination of the game and it delves into the very public lives these people have to lead after the gaming is done. I don’t know how these things will merge into a cohesive whole but the snippets that we do see, at one point a military guy is told he’s going to be going through a Lifestyle Assessment Survey and I have lucid visions of what the results will actually yield, but the pitch is strong that it will be glorious.
The soundtrack, changing from classical to an edgier rock selection, helps to carry this thing all the way to the end as we see more of the private, in some cases nude, lives of three people who obviously have a great love of the game. It’s a curious thing that the trailer makers decided to place all the festivals it’s been picked to play at the tail end as there are some real notable places it could’ve pimped.
I don’t know what your cinematic slate looks like in February but this movie is absolutely on my must-see list if for nothing else than to understand what I didn’t all those years ago.
The Girl on the Train Trailer
What do you get when you mix Morton Downey, Jr. and Catherine Deneuve? Wrongful racism with a lilting French accent, that’s what.
Anyone who had a passing interest in the film A Christmas Tale knows that the film was the best case anyone could make about how age only makes great actresses even more special. The movie was a wonderful piece of work that wasn’t a deep philosophical treatise but it was a delicate family drama that mixed in comedy with effortless aplomb thanks to director/co-writer Arnaud Desplechin’s take on this dysfunctional family. Yes, dysfunctional families are all too common on the screen but that film stands in perfect contrast to the family depicted here in this trailer.
Yes, I admit standing here ignorant of director André Téchiné’s past film efforts but the past is of no concern to me as this trailer just vibrates with the uneasiness that usually only accompanies films that get drama right. It succinctly captures all the strings that come attached to a movie that hinges entirely on one person’s lie.
The opening sequence is sanguine, to be honest. It’s a girl on roller skates on what looks like a spectacular day in the park. In a voiceover, she tells us she’s roughly 23 years-old and that she rides the train in what looks like a bustling city full of life. That changes, of course, as this trailer comes right out and puts it right out for us to read on the screen: a hate crime, a lie.
We see the focus for this film, Emilie Dequenne, playing our cinematic mentirosa and who I only know from Le pacte des loups, Brotherhood of the Wolf for us non-Parisians, secretly cuts her own face with a knife and cries wolf, ironically. As the way these things go, it’s labeled and reported as a hate crime and things just so nuclear from here; we go from serene to insane in about ten seconds.
I think we’re supposed to get that Deneuve realizes her daughter, for reasons we’re unsure of, is making it up and wants to protect her. It’s tense and the musical mood is perfectly tuned to what’s happening on the screen.
An unintentionally droll moment happens when none other than Armond White, the lightning rod of a critic, gushes about the movie with a full screen quote.
The last third of the trailer shows these characters in motion, the uncertainty of how they will ultimately collide is obfuscated by the rich imagery, with enough reasons to seek this film out in the moments that seem like they will make up a satisfying whole.
Talhotblonde: Trailer
I make no apologizes about the idea that To Catch A Predator should be on every night.
To extrapolate a little of what Bill Hicks had to say about a reality show based on hunting down and killing Billy Ray Cyrus, and for his fascination with the series Cops, I think a show that hunts down and captures would-be chomos would prove to be an endless delight to the late comedian. I know it would be for me. The actual stories are, at their core, frightening but they are fascinating when you try and comprehend the pathological minds of the men who seek out the amorous advances of girls barely out of grade school. Now comes this trailer, where the hunted becomes the hunter in the most literal of ways in what looks like one of the first stories I’ve heard of where Hard Candy comes to life.
One of the benefits of not knowing anything about a film is just experiencing its pitch and this does it calculatingly well. I’ve grown used to having the movie explained within a matter of ten, fifteen seconds of a trailer’s start time but things are different here. The film’s contents couldn’t be more telegraphed than they are here with a pretty vanilla piano suite, the words “A Teenage Vixen” splashed across the screen with a blurry image of a girl on a bed, and the sound of a firing gun.
We follow the CGI’d bullet on its path to nowhere but, as it slowly spins, we get interview footage. Instead of cutting away from this bullet,montage, the interviews presented are blurred, or relegated to voiceover entirely, as we painstakingly get the setup of the film. Guy meets girl on the internet, guy lies to girl, girl doesn’t like it, and the final solution is something really violent.
The novel thing about this approach, and it’s so subtle that you hardly notice it, is that we aren’t given much in the way of facts surrounding this case. Paradoxically, we’re given a lot of facts about the relationship all at once. The relationship in question obviously ends tragically but what we have here is a trailer that gets into uneasy territory when one of the voiceovers says that he threatened to violently hurt this girl and/or bring harm to this girl’s mother. Now, this girl must have been a real mind scrambler to deal with if she’s driving dudes to such extremes.
The teary piece of interview footage that caps this thing ought to be enough to drive anyone to find out more. I know it did for me.
THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD - TRAILER from Swel Noury on Vimeo.
The Man Who Sold The World Trailer
Quelque part entre les points de rationalité et la folie là existe un endroit d’émerveillement. Attrapé dans un monde de la folie et de l’amour il n’y a jamais eu un film qui a ainsi a capturé le goût de l’époque d’un temps longtemps allé : de l’amour. (A little bonus there for those of you who took French in high school)
Here’s a trailer that pushes my boundaries of what I consider high art and what I think is pretentiousness. It’s a hazy area that you never quite want to go one way or the other because there really could be a story in there that defines the human condition in a way that’s new, fresh, or completely novel.
As someone who likes to think there is validity in every endeavor I watched this trailer and was surprised by what I saw. Not only were there smatterings of art for art sake, not a completely bad thing, there was a narrative that piqued my interest. Knowing first this movie is about a guy who we’re led to believe has everything, a hot fiancé, a great life, the weird thing is, we’re told, he can’t deal with this and goes insane. Yeah, a little odd but I’m up for odd.
Before we even see a frame of footage we’re treated to the proclamation this movie was in official competition in the Marrakech International Film Festival. This is awesome, right? Right? Even though you may not know this was the Moroccan film festival, or that we’re even talking about Morocco, we get into particulars that this movie garnered a Best Actor award for its film’s star, Said Bey. Plus, it looks like a lot of outlets, none of them in English, have written in praise of the movie. It may not mean much to us but it’s presented quite nicely and with an eye toward visual design which I thought deserved some kudos.
The first moment we do have of this movie is of a complete vision of a woman. Petite, with delicious lips, bouncy head of hair, and a total vulnerability about her, she’s asking a question. I only speak American so I have no idea what’s she’s saying but I honestly could let her ramble all she likes because she sounds precious.
A jaunty musical number that just seems so indicative of this kind of movie starts to play and I’m transported to the surreal. A woman is writing in lipstick on a dude’s back, some (maybe different?) woman is lying in bed in her Underoos, a guy with jacked up teeth and a bad dye job looks blankly into the camera, and we get a host of other well photographed but bizarre slivers of narrative.
We move back and forth between the lives of the people showcased in this movie, the trailer giving the impression it’s more about than just one person here. Almost like an ensemble piece of hipsters living through a malaise of their mid-30’s, when they realize that pork pie hats aren’t allowed to be worn at the workplace where they’ve had to get real jobs.
Towards the end there is a lot of crying, yelling, and screaming (as is the case with many films about love as it pertains to artistic types) but I can’t help but feel this is yet another entry into independent films that just want to be artistic without wanting to bridge the gap between commercialism and artistry.
The key, I would think, is to be somewhere in the middle but this looks like directors Swel and Imad Noury have made a movie that simply wants to be art for art’s sake.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers?
There was no column last week, so what better way to kick off a year that saw so many great trailers than by giving you a double-dose of some of the most noteworthy trailers so far in 2010?
North Face Trailer
Director Philipp Stölzl is the modern equivalent, in my eyes, of a video director who dreams of doing something more than just blocking lip-synching bands where to thrust their crotch.
Some video directors ought to stay video directors while some, from time to time, surprise you with what they are able to produce with a full-length feature. While I don’t think you’re going to be seeing Philipp’s name dropped in Variety anytime soon with sentences that start “From directing Rammstein to directing Rambo…” I do believe there is something unique here that’s worth discussing. The film deals with two men in 1936 who have plans on climbing what is affectionately called the Murder Wall in Switzerland. Some people have died trying to make the ascent over 13,000 feet up in the air. We’re not talking about some leisurely stroll up a mountain top either; we’re talking a nearly vertical climb to get to the top. Throw in blowing snow, freezing cold, a true story, and nary an Eddie Bauer to outfit someone properly and you’ve got yourself an interesting beginning.
The opening sequence is presented wonderfully and captures the solitude and mood of the movie real well: the whipping noise of air racing across a mountain, dramatic views of a mountain cliff, and the sound of pounding metal. The metallic pounding is what should catch anyone’s attention, the rhythmic ‘clink clink’ telegraphing exactly the mood we’re all supposed to feel.
I get that it’s two buddies who are at the center of this movie, and when we’re shown them at the top of an ascent all chummy, you know things won’t remain that way for much longer. Cue goose stepping Nazis, a little bit of a sour note on what seems like an inconsequential detail that only serves to pique a layperson’s attention. We’re thrust back into the thick of the climbing and this is where it gets good.
The banging drum starts, the metal upon metal clanging as these guys start driving spikes into the raw rock, and then they start running left to right across the face of the mountain as we then get some quick clips. A little romantic subplot is explored, the fact that people are all gathered at a distance to see them make the ascent and is no doubt a huge news story in Germany is revealed, and then the sweet part: one of the ropes isn’t tied real well for someone who’s climbing up. The visual of the rope leaving what looks like a carabineer with an ostensibly falling climber if the screaming is any indication is fantastic.
Cue more drum beats, dramatic views of the ascent from all kinds of crazy angles, more shots of them near death as they struggle to the top, and then one parting shot of a guy falling downward and you’ve got yourself a movie I’m interested in.
Red Riding Trailer
As it was reported back on September 8th by /Film’s own Russ Fischer, The Red Riding Trilogy is a series of films dealing with police corruption, anomie from within, and the hunt for a child abductor in Yorkshire, England.
These films (over 300 minutes all together) were screened recently in Telluride and opinions agree on at least one fact: it’s a wicked dark exploration into the human condition. I couldn’t have been more excited at the mere premise of a triptych that spans, and is broken up, in the years of 1974, 1980, and 1983 but there is something intensely personal about these movies that holds them all together.
The movies boasts the directorial talent of Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane, Brideshead Revisited, Kinky Boots), James Marsh (Man on Wire), and Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl) and stars such as Sean Bean, Andrew Garfield, Rebecca Hall, and David Morrissey among others. It was just poised to be my favorite import of 2010 and then I saw the trailer.
The trailer here is superb in doing what a non-conventional trailer needs to do: breathe like a freshly opened bottle of red wine. Watching this, essentially a promo spot, slowly unspool itself we can spy in on its contents. The actors themselves speak about what they felt drawn to by the roles and even though it’s a little mutual admiration society-esque the interspersed clips work in tandem with the voiceovers. Even though I recognize there might be a lot of BS’ing going on from these actors, we do see representational evidence of what these films want to be and actually are. You’ve got a lot on your shoulders in trying to sell three different films at once and here it’s done brilliantly.
David Morrissey, in particular, has a delicious moment in this trailer whereby he explains the nature of these corrupt cops trying to operate and navigate the troubled waters of what they’ve gotten themselves into; it’s fantastic, really, to hear him put it into context of what we’re watching on the screen.
Yes, these are Made for TV productions, but dare I say that this looks like it could rival even the most sensationalistic thrillers put out by modern studios on this side of the Atlantic. Consider me on a hunt to find out one way or the other.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers Trailer
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Before you all chime in with how you have heard it and remember it, thank you very much, think about this trailer with regard to how good we’re doing by not repeating the past. Fact of the matter is that, after seeing this trailer, the one right answer is that as Americans we don’t seem to mind with being lied to or having secrets kept from us. If this preview is any indication of what happened with Vietnam, the very same thing has happened this decade.
What makes this a great trailer is that even though books upon books have explored this topic, the issue with what The Pentagon Papers actually meant to modern journalism and the quest for true transparency in the government is crystallized with in two minutes.
We have Lyndon B. Johnson talking about winning totally in Vietnam (echoes of Iraq?), Richard Nixon trying to vilify reporters trying to discover what was happening in this unwinnable war (a recent president did this decades later), and there is a fantastic montage of a Xerox scanning documents with file footage of the war in ‘Nam. Explosions, bombs, guns, and dead bodies.
It’s such a tightly packed opening seconds that I am blown away by its potency. Our man of the hour, Daniel Ellsberg, who at the time worked within the Pentagon as an official and Vietnam War strategist, narrates his decision to just pull a Firm, or Clear and Present Danger if you roll that way, as he copied what he could to get the word out about what he saw as mass murder. Agree or not agree, we at least know in hindsight he was absolutely right (Jon Cryer was also right in Hiding Out, in case you were wondering) and dead people being flung from stretchers into piles just embolden his initial salvo.
The music cues are matched exquisitely well as I learn some things I didn’t know before: John F. Kennedy violated the Geneva Accord, Johnson tossed out more than a few lies to the American public, the New York Times building was surrounded by troops after publishing these papers, tomes really, which equated to 47 volumes, 7,000+ pages in total. I can’t remember being riveted by a documentary trailer but this one does capture your attention.
The intrigue of what this meant not only to Ellsberg and his career but of what this meant for Americans who never knew what was happening halfway across the globe makes a dusty historical factoid brim with life. The trailer also deserves thanks for galvanizing the more tantalizing portions into what could be called a history lesson, the likes of which I only wish I could have been taught in school.
Bushido 16 Trailer
Well, you can’t blame them for ripping Quentin Tarantino off wholesale.
I mean, you’ve got ladies, sword play, the young age factor, and the whole Asian vibe going here. How can you not blame director Tomoyuki Furuyama for wanting to sup at the teat of gloriousness which is the movie that made it fashionable for ladies to be swinging some tempered steel between their hands? The film stars Kie Kitano and Riko Narumi, two starlets who I can’t place in anything I’ve seen from that side of the world, as two girls training in the art of kendou. Not that I could glean that from the trailer proper, big ups to Twitch.com for the assist in explaining this thing to me, but you can sense that just by watching things unfold.
The trailer smacks you in the face with that plunk-plunk instrumental and then kicks into that drum beat as we are introduced to our two ladies. One seems well versed in the art of kendou and is ready to serve a fistful of pain while the other seems frightened to even be standing ringside in her gui. It’s silly when the whole buildup results in the angrier one going out for blood but I guess that’s the point.
There’s nothing fantastic about the direction or cinematography but there is something here that warranted the trailer’s inclusion this week: there seems to be a real story underneath all the artifice. It feels like there is a real Jo/Blair, Facts of Life, kind of kinship happening: it’s a little shallow in its depth but the whole “rising to the occasion” trope is one that we’ve seen countless times is a nice standby. The brutish one no doubt will learn how to be sensitive while the other will figure out that meek and afraid is no way to coast through her existence.
The moments where we see massive amounts of other kendou pupils in their black garb, face masks, oven mitts, swinging their fake swords around does inspire the inner girl in me to think this all about empowerment. In a land where men seem to enjoy a hegemony over a lot of what the culture dictates in terms of gender roles I really do hope this could be a movie that has something to say vis-à-vis Bend It Like Beckham, a movie that was light and airy like a Madeleine cookie but was nonetheless enjoyable.
I was frightened by the cadre of girls who yell at the end of this thing, I nearly mistook it for an all female ninja attack on my person it was so shrill, but it does keep with the whole playful message of this trailer quite nicely. If I was 13, and a girl, and living in Japan, I would so want to see this.
Jerry Cotton Trailer
I read a thrilling book years ago called Turn Left at Greenland, by Mark Little. It was tome chronicling the waning days of Gore’s failed presidential bid, a little sociological dissection into the lives of Americans, and a little bit of a commentary about who we think we are to the rest of the world. Thing is, Mark Little was an Irish news correspondent who lived in D.C. reporting on the news in our backyard. The book was kind of like a true mirror that shows you how you really look when not flattered by other, more forgiving ones.
The real treat, then, in a movie like Jerry Cotton is that it feels like that book in cinematic form. Based on a book series that started in Germany in 1954, and spawned eight films starring this hallowed FBI agent who obviously did not exist, the series seems to have taken hold with some part of Germany’s pop culture establishment. Nearly a dozen writers have taken the time to pen a tale or two about an agent of the U.S. government yet is grounded in the German language. To see this trailer is to feel like a joke is being played on your country but it’s an interesting thing to just watch and soak in.
At first you don’t think anything of the opening. You’ve got a dead guy, you’ve got some dude speaking German, you feel confident someone will start speaking ingles as we get shots of New York, of The Statue of Liberty but then no one starts speaking English. In fact, we get a lot more German.
Now, this is about where the slapstick comes in. By this point you get that this is a goof, the bumbling superspy of this series (I thought our bad comedies starring idiot agents were our purview) gets into all sorts of awkward moments that are actually very funny. Excusing the real offensive Asian minstrel sideshow that pops in shortly after we get this is supposed to be a comedy, you’ve got yourself a real barn burner of hilarity with what’s on display.
Our man Jerry, who we are led to believe is a master of disguise, displays skills that betray his identity, make him stick out like a bumbling idiot, and somehow get him to eventually be standing in an alleyway with nothing but his boxers and sock garters. Toss in more of the offensive Asian stereotype, a fumfering partner who is the straight man to all the obnoxiousness on the screen, a really sizzling costar, and you’ve got Get Smart in German.
While I think there is a little more seriousness to directors/writers’ Cyrill Boss and Philipp Stennert’s exploration of what is, ostensibly, an Anglo machination I am pretty confident that, with subtitles, this could work for me. Comedic idioms and cultural mores aside, actor Christian Tramitz has the kind of steely look you need for a role like this and I damn well want to see how it all comes together.
My Name Is Khan Trailer
Everyone ought to love a feel-good movie if it’s done right.
Sometimes you get bad feel-good like Patch Adams (sorry to rain on someone’s parade with that declaration) and sometimes you can get good feel-good like Forrest Gump (sorry to rain on someone else with that one). This movie looks like it is not only coming from someplace unfamiliar to me, I am not up to speed with the oeuvre of director Karan Johar, but the movie brims with the kind of easy joy one can get from a movie that looks to be life affirming. True, it helps that actress Kajol is just a delight to the eye and that any movie where you have a guy overcoming a malady like Shahrukh Khan has (think Rain Man) is a recipe for an emotional tearjerker.
More than that, you see, the first minute plays out with a jaunty soundtrack that is completely deceiving. By all intents and purposes this looks like a Bollywood production that takes place on the streets of San Francisco. Done, end of story. However, what follows absolutely belies everything that has come before it in that we quickly understand that this is not going to be a happy film filled with superficial joy, dancing, and the promise of no kissing.
9/11 happens and these characters find themselves in the middle of a contentious maelstrom of ignorance, hate, and violence. It certainly made me wonder exactly what’s happening here and made this feel more than just a movie to display some brightly colored saris with hot dance moves.
Our man Khan has autism and after the events of 9/11 he wants to go to Washington to talk to the president. Seems like an easy thing to do but this trailer makes you wince with the way some people with any excess of melanin their bodies were treated and Khan is at the receiving end of that. What an interesting thing, to take a film and showcase what it was like to be a foreigner from someone else’s perspective.
What we see here, as the trailer winds its way to the close, is that we’re given scads of images that are somehow related to this guy’s plight to get an audience with the president of the United States. Encountering a little bit of hatred, a little bit of ignorance, a full-on shotgun attack, and, in what puts this movie in the right context, shows him praying in the desert as the outro has him saying, “My name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist.”
I’m fascinated with the promise of where we are going with this movie, not only with the story, but what it could say from a cultural perspective different than our own.
Dog Pound Trailer
I mean, come on, who wouldn’t love a teenage version of Sylvester Stallone’s Lock Up?
Short of guys having their mitts on top of their junk, which we get here, I can’t imagine a more inspired way to start a trailer about a youth correctional facility where everything seems predicated on violence and defiance of the law. There are great documentaries about the prison system and those who find themselves wrapped in it be those suffering from mental illness, those who are recidivists or those who are ostensibly much too young to be serving time, but each one somehow shows how the lines between those wanting to make a difference in their own lives and those who want to stay in jail blur considerably.
This movie, following the lives of three juvenile inmates, looks like it will try and explore the avenues of the people who want to change and those who won’t ever change. Starting with the line-up of these three men as I mentioned earlier it lays out the rules.
The trailer deftly goes from beat to beat as the guard explains what is not permitted in the jail, cut scenes showing how juveniles are getting over on the system, with jolting images of guys getting shanked, of someone cutting the face of another, someone chugging down something that’s obviously not apple juice, and a cavalcade of other behaviors that the system is trying to avoid.
I love the tempo of this trailer, as I do the musical cue used to push things along, because we aren’t allowed to rest on any one image or fact about what’s being put in front of us; we’re essentially rudderless in trying to piece together a cohesive narrative with regard to who’s the protagonist in this tale. Director/writer Kim Chapiron’s previous effort, Sheitan, explored the more jaunty aspects of Satanism and starred Vincent Cassel so it’s a bold choice to come back with a movie that seems daring, starring a couple of names from Canada, one of which, Shane Kippel, people might recognize from Degrassi: The Next Generation.
“The Taken” Trailer from Valentine Entertainment on Vimeo.
The Taken Trailer
Yeah, I get that Saw vibe, too.
At first, I wanted to just reject this trailer outright. There is a sameness to films that have come before it, of a played-out vibe anyone with any kind of interest in horror can pick up on, and possessing the kind of acting usually reserved for local community theater when you’ve exhausted every other entertainment options.
You would be right in asserting that and I’d be wrong to try and sway you. However, what if there was something to this independent vision of a slasher film that embodied the obnoxiousness of 80’s horror, the kind of movie that made you laugh at its production values while also delivering on the promise of a few quality kills? I fell on the side of trying to see the vision of this movie and appreciate it for what it was trying to do. There are little bits and pieces that I do love about it but there is certainly more than enough to goof on.
Something that I liked more than anything is that within the first fifteen seconds we get that this is a move that is dealing with people who are trapped in an enclosed space ostensibly to be tortured (Hostel), that there are some hot ones among the abducted (isn’t that always the way), there is a masked psychopath draped in a mask and butchers apron (but of course), and a game that some of them need to complete in order to have a crack at freedom (Saw). Say what you will but there are hints of so many movies in play that I am bowled over with the giggles just trying to figure out the originality of this film.
I love the cheesy a-chord shred as people start to get eviscerated by this psychopath. As a girl starts to get stuck with a horse sized needle, and we linger way too long on the metal going into her arm, the requisite screaming shatters any sense that this is your average indie thriller. In fact, this movie makes me yearn for a type of film that has long since past: the unintentionally funny horror flick.
You’ve got pieces of Psycho, countless story devices we’ve seen before from newspaper clippings on a wall to a woman-like effigy driving our murder to kill more being resurrected for our amusement, just everything that could, possibly, maybe, add up for a fun time as a rental.
9:06 Trailer
Igor Sterk. Igor Sterk?
Anyone?
I will have to admit that I haven’t had much contact with the filmmaker Igor Sterk. Hailing from Slovenia, or at least that’s where I think he hails from if the country he has filmed so many of his movies is any indication, the filmmaker has made a handful of movies I’ve never heard of. But I do want to hear about this one.
A trailer that just punches you in the face with so much humanity and mortality, it really does communicate a universal truth about sadness and the gnawing feeling that can happen when we feel connected to events beyond our ken.
It thunders right out of the gate as we learn within the first few seconds this is a movie about a cop, a mysterious death, and the impending obsession that will consume his life. It couldn’t be more easy to understand and yet all this happens halfway across the world. It feels intimate and the score that plays through it all underscores another accident that results in a car we see turned over in a wheat field. It just rests there, undisturbed, and we are given context as to why this flipped car is so personal to this cop. It’s haunting and the composition is glorious.
The story just gets richer and more complex as we see how this movie is going to weave in how his personal life, love life, and this case of a strange, shaven nude dead man all interlock. (Grammatical note to the trailer maker: Strength is not spelled “Strenght”) The descent seems to get deeper and a little weirder as our man partakes in some pretty thrilling lovemaking (NSFW) along with shaving himself clean no doubt spurned on by the case that started this trailer.
What is pretty amazing to note about what’s on display in this trailer is that there seems to be a real focus on obsession, about things that drive people to dark places in their lives. To see it distilled through foreign eyes it makes you feel that there is something here akin to the original Insomnia.
Celine: Through the Eyes of the World Trailer
I try to keep an open mind about almost everything.
Pedophilia, murder, those kind of things aside, I’d like to think there is validity in every argument and that only when people seek to understand can there be any meaningful change in the world. Take Michael Jackson’s This Is It that came out months ago.
I went in there to have a good laugh, see what kind of macabre ghoul slapped together an unfinished cinematic portrait of a man we all pretty much made up our minds about years ago, and to just enjoy the mess that ought to have been Michael Jackson’s swan song. Color me surprised when I found myself satisfied by what was on the screen. Kenny Ortega ought to win an Oscar for Sycophantic Toadie of the Year but the dancers, the behind the scenes choreography, the orchestration, and a glimpse into Michael’s processes were fascinating. There is a lot of quibbling you could do about how it all came together but there is no mistaking that it was a good film. Period.
Now, like I said, open mind. This time we’re talking about Celine Dion. We all know her as a woman who sang that song about being on a boat (no, the other one), and who married someone who looks like he could play the role of Old Giant in any number of Merrie Melodies cartoons. I took this trailer as an opportunity to hopefully see this Quebecer as something more than a plasticine doll that has the personality of a walnut. I was honestly hoping to get a frank presentation of what it’s been like to be an international pop sensation, to have grown up and matured before a world audience, what it’s like to live in a bubble.
What this trailer presents, however, is just a highly polished PR piece.
An exercise in shallowness, the trailer just showcases the very thing that prevents this from being a deep document of the woman who has sold millions of records. I wouldn’t have minded the clips of her strolling across various stages across the world, showing how big of a production every show is, how much she wants to entertain; this would actually be exactly how it should start. Though, as things progress, it feels more like a portrait of an artist as an old lady. Showing Celine only at her absolute best, the clips that come after presenting this is a movie all about her feel like a whole lot of falsities.
Before we get back to this trailer, as an aside, one of the things that made Truth or Dare such a great concert film was that, whether she was acting or performing for the camera, Madonna revealed herself to be someone who cared about what it took to give the audience what they wanted, what it took to be the best at what she did. What we get here, in contrast, just feels false.
At about the thirty second mark we see Celine serenading a girl in front of a phalanx of cameras and onlookers. It doesn’t look like the most developed of countries where she is doing this and as she pushes through a hurried version of “Because You Loved Me” to a girl who genuinely looks delighted to see her, it just smacks of opportunism. A lot of this does and even though we get slivers of the reality I would genuinely be interested in sitting through, we get more and more of her just performing on a stage.
I guess if that’s your thing, so be it. However, I am genuinely disappointed that this looks like something that should have been packaged and sold as a DVD inside the store devoted to nothing but her merch (I walked through a very real store like this at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. It’s as hideous and heinous as you would think) because if you’re going to be superficial you ought to expect to be judged as such.
In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week:
I usually loathe Top lists.
As the adage says, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. I have been starting to get highway hypnosis with the sameness of a lot of these Best Of lists for films in 2009, so I was emboldened when asked to come up with a Top 10 Trailers list for 2009 as I haven’t seen a lot of people devoting time to stacking which of them they thought performed their duty exceptionally well.
When I cobbled this list together I essentially, and unscientifically, used some of the same criteria that I use every week for my This Week In Trailers column. I wanted to include a wide swath of various genres (foreign, kids, drama, comedy, action) to show representative samples of what can be done within those arenas; thus, a few solid trailers just couldn’t make the cut.
Because these trailers are usually entry points for the films listed below, some of the challenge of this exercise is trying to “unexperience” watching the eventual film and judge these things based on why they moved me to begin with. It was tough separating what I know now versus what I knew then but, as you will see as my #3 choice, they don’t always have to result in great films. Trailers are always trying to separate you with your money or trying to make the best case why they deserve to be experienced so I hope you enjoy the ones I selected below and leave a comment or two for any trailers you think deserve a special mention.
10. Seven Days (Les 7 jours du talion) Trailer
This one will just not leave me alone. As a father I am unfairly biased at the initial opening of this but sometimes you can be moved by art simply by its construction. It’s such a deceptively simple premise (a chomo rapes and kills a girl, the father kidnaps the offender and plans on torturing and then killing him over the span of seven days before he’ll give himself up to police), but the trailer is wonderful to watch and soak in. There are no voiceovers, no annoying interstitial graphics, just expedient storytelling and the promise for a roller coaster ride straight downward. I can’t think of another trailer for a thriller this year that has kept a tight grip on my imagination like this has.
9. Coraline Trailer
Often, it’s hard to tell whether I might be able to go an enjoy a kid’s movie. I hate being trapped at a screening of a film (thanks, Madagascar 2) where I initially thought I might be able to eek out a little enjoyment, but the trailer for Coraline just exceeds my expectations as a parent as it is utterly phenomenal. There isn’t any sugarcoating the plot, the malaise or the sadness of the protagonist in this trailer and what a bold choice that is. The plucking violins, the hint this is going into some pretty dark territory, it all makes for one of the best “kids” trailer for 2009 that I think turned off just the right kind of parent: the one who actively wants Madagascar 2 and passed on what was one of the best animated films this year.
8. Zombieland Trailer
You’ve got a property that you may want to turn into a franchise. How you introduce the world to a concept we’ve seen before and make it fresh? This is how it’s done. My initial stance of this trailer was one of indifference with the number of zombie movies being put into production but the more you watch this the more you understand how tongue-in-cheek it’s being with how witty it tries to be. Not since Better Off Dead has Van Halen’s Everybody Wants Some been used so well and majestically. Say what you will about the actual film but this trailer knew what it was and sold it as-is. Honesty in advertising, imagine that.
7. Black Dynamite Trailer
A lot of independent movies come and go so it falls on the shoulders of a great editor to make a statement about why this one particular is special and deserves attention. This trailer packages itself as a true throwback to those 70’s era blaxploitation films many of us grew up watching, if not in the theater but on cable channels that loved to air them late at night in the 80s. And that’s what makes this trailer so great: it embraces its comedic selling points, showcases the period piece vibe it was trying to recreate, and gambles on pushing things all the way it can go. The music, the tempo, the voiceover, the clips, all of these things coalesce into a trailer that did a better job selling itself to an unsuspecting public and became one of the little indies that could, and did.
6. Drag Me To Hell Trailer
This is what brings all the boys to the yard. Yes, it’s a little slow going in the beginning as it all gets set up but once it does there is no going back with how fast things start coming at you. The deception of the first minute is that you don’t realize what kind of movie this is going to be if you were to just happen and stumble upon the trailer; it confuses you a little bit, I would assert, but it needs that time in order to line the pawns up. The last minute just jolts you with the very things that made it a satisfying movie in the first place: shocking and incredible visual cues. The intense images we get at the end contrast so starkly from the ones we got in the beginning that there was no way I could leave it off this list as one of the better trailers this year.
5. The Hangover Trailer
Who was Zach Galifianakis before The Hangover? To the hipsters who saw him coming there was never a doubt in their mind he was going to be the breakout actor in this little ensemble vehicle. For those of us who didn’t really know all the details of what happens in this film, nor knew of Zach, the trailer shined when we switched from a movie I thought was straying into cutesy buddy comedy with the Rihanna ditty playing in the background to one of dark bachelor party debauchery when daylight comes. The morning after sequence, along with the breakfast at the pool, that became synonymous with this movie’s campaign is used judiciously and sets up the film perfectly. As Ed Helms screams out from the back of a police cruiser near the end of the trailer, “What is going on?” That’s exactly what this trailer leaves you thinking and God bless them for keeping everyone guessing.
4. Moon Trailer
Atmospheric, ephemeral. There isn’t a lot more that can be said about a movie no one knew about yet one that a cavalcade of geeks would champion as one of the year’s best by the end of December. To wit, at the :28 second mark we get everything we need to know about this movie: Sam Rockwell is on a moon base, he’s the only one there and has been there almost three years. Such a masterstroke in that not one word was needed to convey that yet we hit the ground running with what’s going on. Add in one of the most haunting scores you have heard since Requiem for a Dream, quotes from notable notables, some substantive moments of Rockwell’s performance, and you’ve got yourself a movie that is imploring you not to miss it.
3. Terminator: Salvation Trailer
This one is getting my honorary Roland Emmerich award for Best Sleight of Hand in the field of trailer making. Every year there’s always one trailer that catches me unaware and this year it was this. I honestly don’t care if you think this was the greatest thing you saw in 09 or that Christian Bale deserves some kind of honorarium for the work he did in it, but this movie was terrible. This trailer sold me on a bill of goods that weren’t there but, man, did they get me. From the moment he jumps off the helicopter and delivers a double-tap to the head of a machine I thought this would be mind-blowing. From the Nine Inch Nails score, the motorbike that does a 360 and keeps on going, the big thing that knocks down a 7-11 (endorsement alert!) and takes people prisoner, to Bale’s bombastic radio address I thought there wasn’t any way this film could be a sham. But holy homology, Batman, there isn’t anything I would take away from this movie that made me feel it was a part of the Terminator universe I know. My cap is off to you, McG. You are a fine huckster/carnival barker (”Hey everyone, let’s call Christian at home!”) and you got me. Thankfully, I didn’t need to buy a ticket to find out you put all the good bits in the trailer.
2. Tron Legacy Trailer
For sheer thrill, this one deserves its number two spot. The Daft Punk helps it, to be sure, but the sequence we get here just excites me in ways that many teasers just could not this year. The use of bright color against a deep black palette, the shot of the face inside the helmet that looks like a video projection within a human shell, and when the dude slo-mos into the air to jump on his quickly constructed light cycle it is on like Donkey Kong. The cycles’ physics are dazzling, they feel like they possess some actual weight and heft, and the introduction of Jeff Bridges just makes the fanboy in me squeal with delight. The trailer feels and looks like a fine piece of modern furniture that seems too precious to sit on but I could not be anticipating this movie more than I already am after seeing this.
1. The Hurt Locker Trailer
After seeing this trailer I wanted to buy this film, site unseen. You don’t get a lot of these moments when you watch as many trailers as I do but there was something so inherent in this movie’s marketing that it enveloped me with its message. That message, yet another in a string of movies set in The Iraq, seems like it could have been swallowed whole in all the white noise but the trailer stands out, and stood out, thanks to Jeremy Renner. I mean, how can you not be brought to attention with a line like “If I’m going to die, I’m going to die comfortable”? You have to be, and the trailer disarms you with the way in which it sells this as an intimate portrait of a guy who is diffusing bombs in the most un-intimate of places on earth. The dichotomy is illustrated wickedly and the kudos and accolades this movie received that’s pasted mid-way in this thing hit all the right notes. Plus (and why it is getting the number one spot this year), the scene that ends at about the 2:20 mark that became synonymous with this movie’s marketing push. The whole trailer builds to this moment, earns this moment, makes one of the best cases why this is an important movie and deserves your money.
In the world of trailers, that’s the point. What a wonderful world it is.
