Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest installment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
Mege: So Eve Polastri is still alive? Well, duh. Besides it being Killing Eve, I am just really, really glad they managed to finished this one before the Big Scare. Villanelle comes in many guises and is mostly fatal, but at least you have a small chance of seeing her, and if it is the last thing you do. Which it probably is.
Julie: Our brains are wired to believe all sorts of things. And so there is a lot of lore, superstition, conspiracy-theory and mythology around certain films, or certain film-related events. Were they cursed? Did they unearth actual skeletons? Cursed Films promises to delve into all that. And as a lover of both film and lore, it sounds pretty awesome.
Eric: The song that plays over this trailer is Sharon van Etten’s Seventeen. That tells you all you need to know about why a girl needs to travel from rural Pennsylvania to NYC to get an abortion. But it doesn’t tell you about how luminescent the acting is, or the assuredness of the direction, or of the sheer bravura and human heartbreak etched across every frame. I can only applaud the fact that the father isn’t important enough to the story to even be mentioned, because this isn’t his journey to make. The obvious parallel here is Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and is justified: both movies share the same topic, and though one is set in darker times and is heartbreaking for different reasons, both are equally important in their message of strength and solidarity in the ones you trust – to hold on, no matter what happens.
Matt: Apparently Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is one of the most-watched films on Netflix these days – at least in those countries where Netflix actually offers a reasonable list of films, i.e. not in Switzerland. (What’s with that? Are they punishing us for our chocolate, cheese and banks?) I’m a bit surprised that this is what people go for in times of pandemic, rather than some fluffy escapist fare. Which also makes me wonder: is the video game developer Wales Interactive happy, horrified or a bit of both that their latest, The Complex, an interactive sci-fi thriller about scientists fighting a killer disease that threatens humanity at large, is coming out these days? Does coronavirus make for a good, bad or simply ugly piece of viral marketing? (Ba-dum tish. I already feel bad for having typed this.)
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 