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: Summer! Sun! Songs! And it’s all in Washington Heights, where the inhabitants bring us entirely cats-free musical Romeo and Julia-type stuff, egged on by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Actors with triangular faces! Dancing! Stephanie Beatriz! Dascha Polanco! Busloads of handsome gents and pretty ladies! It’s all fantabulous and supercalifragy, and it might just give you a much-needed out for a couple of hours. In the immortal words on John Lennon: “Imagine there’s no virus / Corona’s just a beer.”
Julie: From the estimable film historian (and filmmaker) Mark Cousins, most famous for The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a series we have also discussed in our latest podcast, the new series Women Make Film has finally arrived. I have been silently clapping and lavishing hearts on Twitter, hoping this series, a road movie / documentary about women’s roles in filmmaking, would also eventually make it to DVD. And now it has! Narrated by the likes of Tilda Swinton, featuring greats from Maya Deren to Sally Potter, via Agnès Varda, Mania Akbari and more: come May we can finally all see it. Consider me off the grid for a week, as I savour this series, the subject of which is so very close to my heart.
Matt: It’s not a brilliant thriller, but it’s for a film that is definitely unlike any other film you’ve seen: La Flor is a 14-hour film by Argentinian director Mariano Llinás. Does anyone watch it in one part? We watched it in… where are my fingers when I need them?… eight parts. It gets complicated when you realise that La Flor consists of six parts, some of those parts are split into chapters, and different cinemas showed the whole thing in different instalments. Each of the film’s stories is in a different genre, most don’t have a proper ending, and the only thing tying everything together is that Llinás uses the same four actresses throughout – except in the fifth part, which is a black and white, largely silent remake of a French film. Confused yet? You will be! You may also be somewhat bored, aggravated and frustrated at times, but there are few films around like La Flor… unless you’re one of those French critics who consider the third season of Twin Peaks a film.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 