Tag Archives: preview

Here’s The Trailer For Smile

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be absolutely honest, I would probably be dismissive of the trailer for Smile if not for the effort that Paramount Pictures has put into promoting this damn thing.  Apparently, this weekend, they sent people out to sporting events and had them sit motionlessly in the stands and smile for the entire game.  Not only did it look creepy but it probably ruined the experience of everyone who was sitting near them.  Of course, the people sitting near them actually paid money to get good seats for the game.  Imagine spending a few hundred dollars, just to have to deal with this:

Or this:

I mean, seriously, that’s a bold move!  I thought re-releasing Morbius just because people on twitter were making fun of it was going to be the boldest studio move of 2022 but Paramount might take the title.  Now that we’ve annoyed you, come see our movie.  That’s an interesting gimmick.

Anyway, here’s the final trailer for Smile.  The movie comes out on the 30th.

Here’s The Trailer For Hellraiser

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh hey, they’re rebooting Hellraiser because of course they are.

Here’s the trailer.  It looks like they really want to make sure that we understand how the box works.  The best horror films don’t overexplain.  Anyway, this comes out in October so I guess look forward to the review.

Here’s The Trailer for Babylon!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Finally!  We have a trailer for Damien Chazelle’s Babylon!

Who would have thought that 2022 would have been the year that would have produced three flamboyant films about the decadence of the entertainment industry?  Elvis has already been released.  Blonde will be available by the end of the month.  And Babylon will coming out just as the year ends.  Judging from this trailer, it appears to be a film that will either be brilliant or a total disaster.  I’m hoping for the former.  America could use a really good movie about cocaine and pool parties.

Here’s The Trailer For Walter Hill’s Dead For A Dollar

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dead For A Dollar is director Walter Hill’s first film in six years and Christoph Waltz’s first western since his Oscar-winning turn in Django Unchained.  The film will bring Waltz together with Willem Dafoe, as they play two rivals in the old west.  Waltz is playing a bounty hunter who is hired to track down the runaway wife of a prominent politician.  Dafoe plays a gambler and an outlaw who apparently has a score to settle with Waltz.  Rachel Brosnahan (star of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) plays the woman for whom Waltz is searching.  The film is scheduled to premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 6th.

Here’s the trailer!

Here’s The Trailer For The Son!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Look back on the 2020 Oscars, it now seems pretty obvious to me that, of the nominated films, The Father was the one that should have won Best Picture.  Of course, as far as I was concerned, The Father was actually a 2021 film but, due to the extended eligibility window, The Father was nominated for the 2020 Oscars.  Regardless of how one feels about all of that nonsense with the extended eligibility window, The Father was the best film out of the nominees and Anthony Hopkins fully deserved his second Oscar.  There are moments from The Father that were so powerful and heart-breaking that I feel as if I just watched them yesterday.  On the other hand, I can’t remember a thing about Nomadland, the film that actually won.

The Son has been described as being director Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father.  However, despite the return of screenwriter Christopher Hampton and the presence of Anthony Hopkins in both films (and despite the fact that Hopkins is playing a character named Anthony in both films), The Son is apparently more of a “spiritual sequel” to The Father than a direct sequel.

Well, no matter!  Sequel or not, The Son is expected to be an Oscar contender.  The teaser below doesn’t reveal too much, beyond Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern struggling to connect with their son.  Hopkins makes a brief appearance.  To be honest, the trailer feels a bit tense.  One gets the feeling that this is a movie about people who could explode at any minute.

Here’s the trailer:

Here’s The Trailer for A Jazzman’s Blues

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

To be honest, the trailer for A Jazzman’s Blues looks a bit better than the average Tyler Perry film but…. well, it’s still a Tyler Perry film.  Perry seems like a genuinely nice man and he’s given valuable opportunities to a lot of actors and technicians.  But, as both a writer and a director, he has a tendency towards being more than a little heavy-handed.  He’s one of those filmmakers who, because of his personal qualities, you always hope will eventually make a great film but it’s debatable whether he’s even made a good one yet.

We’ll see how he did with A Jazzman’s Blues when it drops on Netflix in September.

Here’s The Trailer for White Noise!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, the trailer for Noah Baumbach’s upcoming White Noise dropped.  This film, which is an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel, is expected to receive a major awards season push from Netflix.  It’s a film that not only reunited Baumbach with Marriage Story‘s Adam Driver but which also co-stars Greta Gerwig, who has yet to receive an acting nomination despite directing two films that have been nominated for Best Picture.  It’ll be curious to see how Baumbach does with White Noise.  DeLillo is one of our most acclaimed novelists but other filmmakers have often struggled to capture the essence of his prose on film.

Here’s the trailer.  Judge it for yourself.

Here’s The Trailer For Empire of Light!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is the time of year when the haze around the Oscar race starts to clear up.  On paper, Empire of Light certainly looks like it should be contender.  It’s British.  It’s a period piece.  It’s a love story.  It stars Olivia Colman.  It was directed by Sam Mendes.  And judging from the trailer, which was just released today, the film looks like a visual treat.

Will the actual film live up to the hype?  We’ll see.  As a filmmaker, Sam Mendes can be inconsistent but he’s certainly improved quite a bit since he somehow won an Oscar for the abysmal American Beauty.  I am looking forward to seeing and judging Empire of Light for myself.

Here’s The Trailer For Cars On The Road

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cars is the only PIXAR franchise that has never made me cry.  This is largely because it’s about talking cars.  It’s easy for me to get emotionally worked up over toys fearing that they’ll be forgotten or WALL-E losing its personality and returning to collecting trash.  Don’t even get me started on some of the emotional trauma that I suffered from UP and Inside Out.  But Cars …. I mean, I know that cars don’t talk to each other so it’s difficult for me to get too emotionally involved in their issues.  In PIXAR’s defense, though, the Cars films have always been pretty honest about the fact that they’re just meant to be silly fun.  No one is going to mistake Cars for Toy Story but then again, PIXAR has never asked anyone to.

Cars on the Road is the latest entry in the franchise.  This original series will be premiering on Disney Plus on September 8th.  Here’s the trailer:

Here’s The Trailer for Star Wars: Andor

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The upcoming Disney+ original series, Star Wars: Andor, is a prequel to Rogue One, which was itself the fourth prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope.  If Andor is a success, I’m sure it will lead to another prequel and then a prequel to that and then a prequel to that and eventually, we’ll have a Star Wars series that takes place right before the Big Bang.  

(As you may have guessed from the tone of that last paragraph, I’m a bit skeptical of prequels in general.  It’s rare that they’re ever worth the trouble.  Better Call Saul is really the only prequel that I can I think of that actually enriches the experience of watching the show from which it was spun off.)

Anyway, Star Wars: Andor will be available to stream on September 21st.  Here’s the trailer: