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.
Julie: Douglas “Arm” Armstrong, is torn between two families. The Devers crime family and, significantly, his own. A brooding crime thriller set in the breathtaking Irish landscape, it is not your run-of-the-mill mafia film. Rather it is a drama that turns to violence and death in the manner of a Greek tragedy. For people like me who like a simple story told well: it’s a stunner. Watch with subtitles.
Mege: Now there’s a guy who mixed up his life and his movies. Fassbinder must have been equal parts fascinating, demanding and unpredictable to work for. The result might not always have turned out to be a convincing work of art, but he made his movies the way he damn well wanted to, thank you very much. And if he got it right, he was unlike any other, undeniably himself.
Eric: Consider that the best stories are not born from a place of happiness. What flavour, then, what kind of disquiet could birth a book like The Haunting of Hill House? Or could it be fury, instead, liquid and bubbling beneath a calm, quiet stillness? Shirley (not a biopic, but a free adaptation of a novel on a period in Shirley Jackson’s life) is perhaps not so much interested in the genesis of a story as it is in examining a relationship balanced on a knife’s edge; and it’s not interested in Shirley Jackson’s seminal horror novel so much as examining the gestation of an earlier piece — Hangsaman — from a place of marital discord. Given that the novel features a heroine going slowly mad while half inhabiting reality and half inhabiting a dream world, there’s a strange poetry to be found in the film mirroring exactly that in its author’s state of mind.
Matt: Are there many directors who could pull off a trailer like this? A trailer that is, first and foremost, about the director’s public persona? In honour of our latest podcast episode, here’s a personalised tour of Bates Motel. We hope you feel very welcomed.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 