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.
The novels of Thomas Hardy – in particular his last two, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure – are the supreme downers, making you feel for their protagonists and then follow them on their descent into the kind of tragedy that would have made Antigone, Electra and Medea wince. And yet: these are beautifully written books, filled with sadness and anger at a society that chooses cruel judgment over mercy and empathy. Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out why these books have proven to be so enduring for Matt.
Less tragic, except in a snarky sense, is Matt’s take on Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which doesn’t even have the decency to be clear about whether it is or is not the final outing for Ethan Hunt & Co.
And what else do we have for you this week?
Matt: This week saw Netflix’s Tudum 2025, an event that’s generally likely to drive fans of Netflix and its various properties into an absolute frenzy. There’s the date announcement for the final instalment of Stranger Things – and yes, these days you don’t even need a proper trailer, a date announcement will do it. Then there’s the trailer for the final season of Squid Game – though I’m sure that there are spin-offs and the like in the works. The Thursday Murder Club, a new crime comedy based on a 2020 novel, could be fun, but while I love the cast, it does look the teensiest bit too smugly twee for my tastes. But then, if it’s on Netflix, it’s easy enough to check it out – and hey, at least it’s a film and not a series! It’s with the films that it gets interesting: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery also just offers a date announcement, but there are some nice snippets of the film itself – though the pedant in me hates the tagline at the end. (“‘Cometh’ is a singular verb, people! Get it right, for fuck’s sake!”) By far the most interesting of these, at least for me, is the teaser for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which also features a great cast, and del Toro’s films are always visual treats, even when the narrative is sometimes a bit lacking. And apparently the Mexican director/king geek is combining elements of the original novel with elements of the iconic Universal Pictures movies Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (yup, the Boris Karloff/Elsa Lanchester one). Del Toro usually does well with films focusing on supposed and actual monsters, so I’m very much there for his take on Mary Shelley’s sci-fi horror classic.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 