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.
After having had Yi Yi on his shelf for years, Matt finally got around to watching not only his first Edward Yang film, but his second (A Brighter Summer Day) and third (Yang’s episode in the anthology film In Our Time) as well. He writes about two of these in his recent Criterion Corner entry.
Matt was also at the helm for this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, ruminating about the connections and differences between quality and taste. And Garth Marenghi made an appearance as well, for what it’s worth.
But let’s not leave this week’s trailer post in such a dark, dark place.
Matt: Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is returning to cinemas – and we’re also getting the feature-length making-of documentary Making Marie Antoinette. The latter was made by Sophia’s mother Eleanor Coppola, though finished by her daughter after Eleanor’s death in 2024. I admit that I’ve not seen more than one film by Eleanor Coppola, but that one film was Hearts of Darkness, the monumental making-of documentary of a movie made by yet another Coppola: Apocalypse Now. Based on that credential, I’m more than a little curious to see this particular family affair, even if it’s unlikely I’ll be able to catch it on the big screen.
Matt: The games created by Czech company Amanita Design have always been beautiful examples of how well traditional, hand-crafted art with a strong, idiosyncratic aesthetic in the tradition of Eastern European animation going back decades can work in games. The 2009 release Machinarium, in which a little robot called Josef (named, naturally, after Josef Čapek, the creator of the term “robot”) saves his city from a band of robot bandits, is one such game – and now, 17 years later, it is getting a sequel. In these days of distressing AI shenanigans, it is oddly ironic to be getting a game set in a world peopled by robots, made by Amanita, the makers of many strange, quirky, utterly human worlds. Machinarium 2 and its robotic denizens are likely to have more humanity than the supposedly human protagonists of so many video games.
Mege: Mike Flanagan seems to be the safe choice to direct an Exorcist reboot. Here he is with some of his usual suspects, plus Scarlett Johansson waxing philosophical about serial killer history. I am not sure if his signature style has not yet become his tell. The trailer looks like an array of familiar tropes, so what you see is what you get – and that may be the death of horror suspense.
