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: Pop quiz, hotshots: what is worse, the Kennedy assassination or the end of the world? Either one or the other will happen unless that bunch of ever-quarreling, immature bobbleheads will get their act together. Season Two of The Umbrella Academy premieres on July 31 on Netflix, featuring music, dancing and one very disappointed foster daddy.
Julie: The Boys Season One was one of my favourite shows to watch recently. Grim, ironic and full of fantastically psychopathic superhero characters, I appreciate it might not be for everyone. Do we still need superheroes, after all? I will be curious to see where season two takes the material. Quite close to the comic by Garth Ennis? Where even our spunky protags are massive maniacs? Or in a gentler, more conservative direction? Either way, judging from the trailer, come September, this will be a must see for me.
Eric: Well, after Julie’s question above, here is (coincidentally and unironically) another movie about superheroes, making this a hat trick. There are few tropes older than immortality; The Old Guard does not spin a ripping new yarn out of it, but uses it as a MacGuffin that does double duty to explain a plot that stars immortal vigilantes as well as enable some clever, fizzy action scenes that redefine the term ‘collateral damage’. Charlize Theron’s world-weariness as an immeasurably old warrior is almost palpable here, but the deftness of the direction and cinematography gives the movie a light touch, making it an always-moving and compelling bit of entertainment that never asks too much of your brain while giving it a healthy splattering of blood-soaked comic book action.
Matt: Perhaps She Dies Tomorrow (directed by the highly versatile Amy Seimetz) looks a bit too much like it’s taken a page out of It Follows‘ Book of the Dead, but it’s not like the world is drowning in that particular kind of horror movies. Also, how many horror movie trailers are confident enough to do entirely without jump scares?
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 