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: I think we’re not in Cherbourg anymore. If you were disappointed with the second seasons of Jessica Jones, Stranger Things or Killing Eve, here’s to hoping that The Umbrella Academy‘s new episodes will deliver. Oh, and you can also watch it because it combines the problems of superheroes and a dysfunctional family really well. Premieres July 31 on Netflix.
Eric: Yes, we’ll need to get this out of the way: it’s an anime featuring a man with a crocodile head who’s lost his memory. Dorohedoro features a bunch of people living in a town literally called The Hole, and they’re regularly practiced upon by sorcerers, one of whom is responsible for what happened to our Crocodile Man. The literate amongst us might imagine this to be a riff on Metamorphosis, and they’d be dead wrong. The characters aren’t anywhere near philosophically inclined, and the art design, while baroque, doesn’t call to mind any really Kafkaesque imagery. No, the nearest point of inspiration is in fact one Clive Barker, with the towns having a very Imajica/Weaveworld vibe to their alien-ness, and the general character visuals smacking of no small amount of Hellraiser with its peeled-back flesh and masks. Would you be surprised to hear this is as much a comedy as it is grotesque? Or that the one point of criticism everyone has about the story is you can’t help but like everyone in it, including – or even especially – the bad guys? If there’s another thing everyone can agree on, it’s that this show is a trip. Good or bad — well, that’s up to you.
Matt: Wait… after three or four weeks where one of the others swiped a juicy trailer I was going to add before I had a chance to do so, no one’s done so with this one? How often do we get a chance to watch a new Spike Lee joint? And one with as eclectic a cast as this one? Lee’s films haven’t all been pure gold, but they’re always interesting and worth checking out. I suspect that this one won’t be an exception, whether we’ll watch it on Netflix or get a chance to see it at a reopened cinema.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 