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.
During World War II, Jean-Pierre Melville was a member of the Résistance, and his experiences left their mark on his films – not least his grim masterpiece Army of Shadows, which Matt revisited in his latest Criterion Corner.
Meanwhile, in the latest instalment of our Six Damn Fine Degrees Alan looked at Don McKellar’s much-too-little-known Last Night, an end-of-the-world drama Canadian-style.
This week also saw the release of our latest espresso podcast episode, in which Sam, Alan and Matt follow up on the June episode on the Indiana Jones series and discuss the latest, and likely last, film in the franchise, The Dial of Destiny.
But what other trailers have we got for you this week?
Sam: The Brits in their spiteful cartoons might have left the indelible impression of Napoleon being small and much less significant than he would have wanted to be, but maybe Ridley Scott will set the record straight in his awesome-looking biopic coming out this fall. The images of Napoleonic times, successful warfare and crushing failures (Russia, anyone?) certainly look absolutely magnificent and the trailer-stealing performance by Joaquin Phoenix holds great promise of a complex, sufficiently dark and hopefully realistic take on France‘s man who came out of revolution against the king – then crowned himself emperor. Ridley Scott, of course, shies away from no challenge whatsoever: He’s already wrapping up the next epic, the sequel to his own Gladiator, due next year!
Matt: It’s odd to watch this one: I would’ve been all over Corner Office a few years ago, but at this point it comes across as unsettlingly similar in style and tone to the Apple Plus series Severance. Then again, there are worse places to look for inspiration than Severance, Ben Stiller’s oddball, darkly comic psychological thriller with a sci-fi edge, and perhaps this kind of surrealism is just the only reasonable response to modern-day office work?
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 