Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment 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.
Boy oh boy, as always it’s difficult to find a trailer if the post it relates to is about a song. Mege’s Damn Fine Degrees post about Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” makes it a bit easier by mentioning the Michael Winterbottom film of the same name – though it seems it only exists in very, very bad quality on YouTube. Ah well.
It’s easier with Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, which Matt wrote about in his latest Criterion Corner. Though, if there’s no recent reissue, the trailer will still not look all that great – especially when compared to the Criterion Blu-ray. Once again: ah well.
But wait, there’s more! More trailers, that is.
Mege: I’d never have thought I would see Amy Schumer, Richard Jenkins and Steven Yeun in the same movie, much less in the same room together, but there you go, they are all there for Stephen Karam’s The Humans, who wrote the play and screenplay and directed this interesting flick. He frames his cast members down a hallway, in a doorframe or at opposite ends of the same room, so the movie betrays its stage origins. It’s such a derelict, sparsely furnished apartment that the characters loom large while being unable to conceal their foibles and resentments. It’s Thanksgiving, and come evening, the ghosts will appear.
Matt: It took a few episodes before The Great (based, like Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite, on playwright Tony McNamara’s writings) won me over, but once it had, it was one of the sharpest, smartest, funniest comedies I’d enjoyed in a long time, definitely in a weekly series format. From the looks of it, the second season builds on what has come before in smart ways – and Gillian Anderson is joining the cast! What more do you want than sex jokes, political satire and Nicholas Hoult finding ever new ways to go “Huzzah!”?
Sam: It’s hardly surprising to find that after the highly successful Halloween sequel two years ago (whose own sequel, Halloween Kills, will be released this upcoming Halloween) had reintroduced the original Jamie Lee Curtis character, there is another killer slasher series on the loose again: the fifth entry into the Scream series that reunites its original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette) for another slash fest. It’s the standard tropes of a younger teenage cast being coached by the former survivors of the masked killer and it’s hard to imagine from the trailer that the wellspring of ideas and self-irony that was Wes Craven’s original trilogy has not already gone dry long ago. However, what looks like a rehash of the originals might yet turn out to have a few shocking surprises in store. May it be a screaming success!
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 