The trailer for The Book of Life, an animated film produced by Guillermo Del Toro, was released earlier today and oh my God, I am in love with it.
I love this trailer so much that I’m not even going to waste your time trying to be clever about it. Instead, I’m just going to invite you to watch.
Here’s the official trailer for Kill The Messenger, a film that has been getting some early Oscar buzz.
Apparently based on a true story, Kill The Messenger is about a reporter (played by Jeremy Renner) who writes a story accusing the government of selling cocaine in order to fund right-wing guerillas in Central America. Some awards bloggers have predicted that Jeremy Renner will be nominated for best actor, largely because he’s Jeremy Renner. Judging from the trailer, it looks like Renner gets to be intense and deliver a lot of passionate monologues, which is usually a pretty good strategy as far as getting Academy recognition is concerned.
That said, the trailer feels just a little bit generic. In fact, as I watched it, I was reminded of last year’s ill-fated box office bomb, The Fifth Estate. Every year, there’s an overtly political film that’s expected to change the world and win a lot of awards that then ends up sinking into obscurity because most people don’t go to the movies to learn a lesson. They go in order to escape from the very world being detailed in films like The Fifth Estate and, possibly, Kill The Messenger.
Will Kill The Messenger be this year’s Fifth Estate?
We’ll find out in October.
I really can’t claim to have the slightest idea what’s going on in this trailer but I still think it’s adorable, nonetheless. This film is scheduled to be released in November and it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to its potential Oscar rivals, The Lego Movie and How To Train Your Dragon 2.
I love Denzel Washington.
Not only is he a great actor who can seemingly play just about any role but, by all reports, he’s also apparently a pretty nice guy off-screen as well. He has such a natural and likable screen presence that he can even make a potentially problematic film, like last year’s Flight, compelling and watchable. My friend Jake Moore once said that Denzel was the closest thing that we have to a modern-day Jimmy Stewart and I happen to agree.
Yes, I love Denzel. I just wish he wasn’t always killing people in the movies.
Don’t get me wrong. Denzel makes for a believable action hero and it makes sense that, if your hero is going to be killing everyone he meets, you would want him to be played by an actor who can actually be likable while murdering.
It’s just that Denzel Washington is such a good actor that sometimes, it’s a shame to see him in generic action films where he often seems to be playing characters that could be played by just about any actor. Washington always gives a good performance and brings a lot of charm to the proceedings but that doesn’t change the fact that his role in Safe House could have just as easily been played by Jason Statham.
Add to that, I’m growing bored with film violence. Whenever I see a trailer for a new action film, I often have the same reaction that I had when I first saw the trailer for Jack Reacher. “Really?” I think to myself, “Am I supposed to pretend to be excited about this?”
My feelings aside, it doesn’t look like things are going to change anytime soon. And perhaps as proof, here’s the trailer for Denzel Washington’s new film, The Equalizer. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Denzel gives a great performance here and the film might even be entertaining when taken on its own terms.
It’s just that it all feels so generic.
Here’s the trailer for Woody Allen’s latest film Magic In The Moonlight.
For the longest time, a lot of film bloggers (myself included) have been predicting that Emma Stone might be Oscar-nominated for this film. This was largely because actresses who appear in Woody Allen films always seem to end up getting nominated and we all know that Emma Stone is going to be nominated at some point in her career.
(She deserved a nomination for Easy A.)
(Oh, she so totally did!)
However, having now seen the trailer, I’m no longer quite as sure. It looks like it’s going to be a perfectly charming little comedy and the trailer is gorgeous to look at but the film itself doesn’t look like it’s going to be the type to resonate as strongly as Blue Jasmine or Midnight In Paris.
On the plus side, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be another To Rome With Love, either.
Jean-Luc Godard, that iconic and frustrating pioneer of the French New Wave, has a new film. Goodbye to Language is 70 minutes long and it’s in 3D. Knowing Godard (but does anyone really know Godard?), it’s probably going to be a film that’s going to be loved by many and hated by even more.
Goodbye to Language premiered at Cannes yesterday and, perhaps surprisingly given Godard’s lack of concern with traditional narrative, much of the response has been both positive and baffled. Speaking as someone who hasn’t seen the film but who is somewhat familiar with some of Godard’s films, I think the best review so far was posted by A.A. Dowd over at the A.V. Club. (Dowd also makes a very important point about why it is necessary to properly reflect on a film before passing judgment and why so many other critics fail to do just that. Seriously, read the article.) Dowd usually gives letter grades to the films that he reviews. For Goodbye to Language, his grade is “?????”
All of this, needless to say, makes me very much want to see Goodbye to Language for myself. Though I haven’t been able to find a release date, the film is apparently being distributed by 20th Century Fox so maybe it will eventually make its way over here to the States. (That said, I’m a bit worried that even if it does, it will only be shown in New York and Los Angeles and will never make down to my part of the country. There seems to be an elitist belief that people in middle America aren’t interested in seeing the latest from Jean-Luc Godard and, unfortunately, that’s probably true…)
But until it does, here’s the NSFW trailer for Goodbye to Language. Can you figure out what’s going on? I can’t and I speak French. But that impenetrability is a part of what makes me want to see the film.
And here’s a version of the trailer with English subtitles.
Here is the teaser clip for Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, Lost River, which was released ahead of the film’s premiere at Cannes.
So far, the majority of the reviews out of Cannes have been mixed. The film has been called self-indulgent, incoherent, and pretentious and, perhaps worst of all, it has been compared by more than one reviewer to Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.
Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian, a reviewer whose opinion I usually respect, writes: “Ryan Gosling’s Lost River is a conceited clunker – and yet there are great images and mad energy.” That gave me some hope — I can forgive self-indulgence if it’s at least interesting to watch. But then Jeff Wells had to pop up and start comparing it to Beasts of the Southern Wild. As usual, Sasha Stone over at Awards Daily has some very strong feelings about the film, despite the fact that — as she readily admits — she hasn’t actually seen it. (But Sasha’s so much smarter than the rest of us common people, so who are we to question her, right?)
Well, as you can probably guess, I don’t care what the critics think or say. I’m still going to see it and judge it for myself. Not only is the film directed by Ryan Gosling but it also stars three of my favorite actresses — Eva Mendes, Saoirse Ronan, and Barbara Steele. Dr. Who fans will be happy to see Matt Smith while those of you who enjoy Agents of SHIELD can get a chance to apparently see a new side of Iain De Caestecker.
As for the teaser below — well, who knows what the Hell’s going on? But aren’t you just a little bit intrigued to find out?
The final season of True Blood starts on June 22nd and I’m looking forward to reviewing it. Judging from this trailer from HBO … well, it’s kind of hard to judge much of anything based on this trailer. It looks like there’s going to be a lot of death and a lot of Sookie/Bill bathtub action. In other words, it’s True Blood!
If Michael Caine is playing the main character’s mentor, then it must be a Christopher Nolan film.
After watching the teaser for Disney’s live action version of Cinderella, all I can say is that shoe looks really uncomfortable! I can’t imagine dancing in that! That said, I still like this trailer because it has a nice fairy tale feel to it, with the butterfly turning into gold and all. Maybe Cinderella will go against the current trend of reinterpreting every childhood tale as darkly as possible.
We’ll find out in 2015.
Through the Shattered Lens 