Tag: trailer

Where’d you go Bernadette

Posted on by victorfraga

Marketed as a “mysterious comedy-drama”, Richard Linklater’s 20th features a short- and dark-haired hairy version of Cate Blanchett, starring as an architect long past her prime time who finds a very peculiar way of spicing up her life and her career, thereby challenging a mid-life crisis. It is based on the eponymous runaway bestseller by American novelist Maria Semple.

In the second trailer 0f Where’d You Go Bernadette (you can see the first one here, launched last December), we see our protagonist Bernadette Fox (Blanchett), a doting mother and wife, increasingly frustrated at her petty problems, particularly a feud with a woman living next door. When the situation spirals out of control and the neighbourly relationship collapses (alongside with the wall between the two houses), Bernadette simply “disappears”. We soon learn that she taken up a new career challenge… in Antarctica!

This looks like a major step away from director’s previous endeavour, the sombre and meditative Last Flag Flying (2017), while still dealing with confusion and turmoil in the average American family. Cathartic fun for the bored and embittered middle-aged American professional, who has created a loving family and encountered enough financial stability, and yet remains keen to “break free”, however unorthodox the solution might be!

Where’d You Go Bernadette is out in cinemas across the UK in the second half of 2019. The exact release date is yet to be confirmed.

Dolor y Gloria

Posted on by victorfraga

The storyline is simply described as “a film director reflects on the choices he’s made in life as past and present come crashing down around him”. The film narrates a series of reencounters of Salvador Mallo, a film director in his decline. Some of these reencounters are physical, some others are remembered: his childhood in the 1960s, when he emigrated together with his family to Valencia in search of prosperity, the first “deseo” (desire), his first adult love In Madrid in the 1980s, the pain of the breakup of this relationship, writing as a therapy to forget, the premature discovery of cinema, and so on.

The Castilian director chose to work with his usual cast: Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz, Julieta Serrano and others. His film takes place entirely in Spain, as characters travel back and forth throughout different regions of the country as they grow old. Almodovar once told DMovies that he “he used geographic extremes of Spain in order to emphasise the isolation of the characters”.

You wouldn’t be able to make the story out by watching the film trailer, which is in reality a patchwork of random images from the film. A heavily bearded Antonio Banderas looks like a young Pedro Almodovar, suggesting that the film is indeed highly autobiographical. The inevitable comparison, of course, is Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8 1/2. Both films centre on a film director in decline played by an ageing heartthrob from the same country as the real filmmaker (Marcello Maistroianni, in Fellini’s film).

Almodovar has a long history of celebrating filmmaking. Nearly all of his films are teeming with intertext and references to other movies. All About My Mother (1999) is a very explicit reference to All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950), with the Hollywood classic shortly played within the film. In Bad Education (2004), Almodovar apparently paid tribute to himself by closing the film with a very clear allusion to his own predicament as a filmmaker. This time he wishes to go even further. Let’s just hope he doesn’t slip into cliches and instead delivers a solid and masterful piece, similar to Julieta (2017).

Dolor y Gloria is scheduled for theatrical release in Spain on Friday, March 22nd. No UK date has been arranged yet.

Peterloo

Posted on by victorfraga

Four years after the release of the commercially and critically acclaimed Mr Turner, a dirty biopic of the radical painter JMW Turner, Mike Leigh returns with yet another very British film set in the early 19th century. The difference is that instead of investigating the life of a revolutionary figure, this time Leigh decided to portray a (equally revolutionary) historical event: the Peterloo Massacre.

The film is being marketed as “an epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The Massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reform and protest against rising levels of poverty.” The Peterloo Massacre was a defining moment in British democracy which also played a significant role in the founding of The Guardian newspaper.

Judging by the trailer, an historical epic with a message of “people have the power” is on its way. The Amazon Studios and eOne production has convincing costumes and special effects, and a conventional period drama look. The cast includes Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake and Neil Bell, yet super stars are absent, suggesting perhaps that Leigh wants to emphasise the message of collective action ahead of big names.

Peterloo is in cinemas in November.

The Endless

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Quote: “I was told… that they were all going to kill themselves… and THAT’S why we left the cult.” The opening words on the soundtrack of the new trailer for The Endless. Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (Resolution/2012, Spring/2014) play two brothers named Justin and Aaron. Tension between them. A thunderclap and a flashing image of a man putting a gun to his head. Light, eerie music. Sun-soaked rocks in a daylight American desert. A yearning. “They were our family. I want to go back.” A car journeying across Western desert country, then the image flipped so the sky is beneath and the land above, with no car… and superimposed over this, logos from half a dozen major film festivals. The brothers’ car passing a beatifically smiling man standing beside a sign that reads: ‘Camp Arcadia’. A videotape features strange circular images in a landscape. A man in a group of people round a table asks, “what video?” The sound of a clock ticking.

The music slowly builds via repeated and increasingly loud beats to something much more tense and unsettling throughout the rest of the trailer. A girl smiles. Dust above a dirt track in the evening, strange bird formations in the daytime sky. A rope drops out of the night sky to land amidst the circle of people below. “whoo!…” says a man boosted by adrenaline, “who’s next?” Another voice: “We can’t go back to our lives… knowing that there’s something out here.” (What WAS that sudden movement behind him that we just saw?)

Terrifying black and white drawings of…what? “It doesn’t let me sleep? It doesn’t let me dream!” One brother in the underwater darkness exhaling air bubbles. In the boat, on the surface, he breathlessly tells the other, “there’s something down there!” Seen from above, a strange circular pattern below a boat on a lake. Three written quotes on the screen: “Fantastical.” “Magnificent.” “Masterful.” A voice: “If you let it control you, it’s going to control you over and over again.” Kissing the girl. A clock reads ten past twelve. Jump cut: the same clock reads five past twelve. The girl smiling beside a campfire. Panic as something circular starts to assemble in the night sky. Two successive verbal quotes on the screen: “Mind-Bending”, “Brilliant.” A matter of fact question on the soundtrack: “there’s something out here, isn’t there?” The two brothers in their car at night fleeing a forest fire behind them. The title ‘The Endless’ with the slogan below ‘Never Go Back’. Fade to hashtag slogan #JoinTheCult

Some trailers show you the entire film and leave no surprises. Not this one. This extraordinary trailer shows a conundrum, pieces of a puzzle, which leave you wanting much more. Benson and Moorhead’s earlier Spring was an incredible, genre-defying narrative that’s well worth tracking down. Their debut Resolution – which apparently is not entirely unrelated to The Endless – will be included on the UK Blu-ray/DVD release of The Endless released three days after the new film’s theatrical release. You’re going to want to see The Endless on the big screen first, though.

The Endless is out in the UK in cinemas and digital HD on Friday, June 29th.

Happy Prince

Posted on by victorfraga

His 19th century looks are sterling, the vintage photography crisp and soothing, and the costumes look exceedingly beautiful and elegant. Has Rupert Everett mastered Oscar Wilde, both behind and in front of the camera? The English actor both penned and directed the Happy Prince, plus he also stars as the film’s protagonist.

The story starts in Paris, where an impoverished and ill Oscar Wilde is recovering from his prison stint in England, after being found guilty of gross indecency. His love affair with Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas and unrepentant attitude in court had shocked the country. He is now seeking to indulge in small acts of pleasure and hedonism in France and Italy, as his health fades and the end is increasingly nigh, it seems. He’s a man desperately seeking redemption through sex and beauty.

The film proposes to revisit Wilde’s very final days, as “desire and loyalty face off, the transience of lust is laid bare, and the true riches of love are revealed”. Everett embraced a mammoth task and a huge responsibility. Wilde is a subversive genius far ahead of his time, and there is no shortage of films, TV series and books about him. Will the English actor (who’s also gay himself) have anything new and fresh to say about the poet, or will he just slip into the same old cliched platitudes about “the love that dare not speak its name”? The trailer suggests a very conventional biopic. But has the -thespian-scribe-helmer perhaps infused his latest film with little dirty flavours?

The film features a top-drawer cast, including Colin Firth, Emily Watson, Colin Morgan and Edwin Thomas.

The Happy Prince premiered earlier this year at the BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival. It is out in the best cinemas across the UK on Friday, June 15th.

Submergence

Posted on by victorfraga

The influential German filmmaker has a celebrated filmography, including the emblematic Paris, Texas (1984) and the award-winning documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999). In line with his usual deeply humane exploration style, his latest film, Submergence, appears to follow the thematic elements of love for which Wenders is recognised.

Starring James McAvoy and Alicia Vikander in the lead role, the film focuses on two lovers, Danielle and James, who are forced apart by fate. They meet by chance in a remote hotel in France as they both prepare for a perilous mission. Despite their initial hesitation, they inevitably fall in love. When they have to separate, we find out that James works for the British Secret Service. He’s involved in a mission in Somalia to track down a source for suicide bombers infiltrating Europe, where he is taken hostage by Jihadist fighters. Danielle is a bio-mathematician working on a deep sea diving project to support her theory about the origin of life on our planet.

As alluded towards in the title, the aesthetics of the film adheres to the deep water imagery, with wide shots capturing the scope and scale of the on-set locations.Based on the novel by J.M. Ledgard, of the same name, the central essence appears to rely heavily upon the chemistry of the two actors. Comparable to Vikander’s work with her now husband, Michael Fassbinder, in The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance, 2016), the actress is continually cast as going toe to toe with notable male stars, further emphasised in Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015).

From its early trailer, Wenders’s new film does not seem as if it will hit the heights of his earlier work. Still, one must revel in the fact the filmmaker is still working productively in contemporary film. Submergence is out in cinemas worldwide on Friday, May 18th. Stay tuned for our dirty review of the film.

Alita: Battle Angel

Posted on by victorfraga

Adapted from Yukito Kishiro 1990 manga comic series, Battle Angel Alita is finally getting a big screen adaptation from 20th Century Fox. In their latest trailer for Alita: Battle Angel, 20th Century unveils producer James Cameron and director’s Robert Rodriguez’s clear eye for a piece of visual provocative cinema, a similar level of cyberpunk to this year’s Ghost in a Shell (Rupert Sanders), and a central love story which will act as a refreshing cleanser to the cyborg-on-cyborg action.

Focusing on Alita (Rosa Salazar), a cyborg created by Ido (Christopher Waltz), who consequentially becomes a cyborg bounty hunter, Rodriquez’s new film is clearly seeking to play to the summer blockbuster crowd, as it is scheduled for a July 2018 Summer release. Still, in the trailer, Alita’s distinct aesthetics are brought to the forefront in numerous close-ups. Blurring the lines between performance and CGI, the facial features of the character can feel a little jarring in a frame filled with actual human faces, such as Waltz’s.

Featuring the likes of Keean Johnson, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali and Jackie Earle Haley, the cast of the film is not particularly bad, still it does feel as though this big budget sci-fi summer blockbuster will be a nice pay check for all those involved. One would expect its box office and public reception to that similar of Ghost in a Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), with similar whitewashing claims.

Alita: Battle Angel will be released theatrically in July 2018.

Red Sparrow

Posted on by victorfraga

Jennifer Lawrence is back again in another role in which Hollywood objectifies women. Lawrence seems to have accepted her fate as an actress: she is a woman who is asked to give and give and give until she can’t do it anymore. The trailer shows her sitting on a bed in a night red dress with a drink on her hand. She is obviously waiting for a man. We don’t see him. We only see him placing a mobile phone and money clip on the bedside table. His next move is an order: “Take off your dress”.

Well, that is hardly acceptable nowadays, and so the trailer quickly notes she is in control. Lawrence is a young officer trained to seduce and manipulate. Her trainer is Charlotte Rampling, We hear the Australian actor Joel Edgerton (from Jeff Nichols’s Loving, 2017) say in the voice-over: “she uses her body” in order to attract men and kill them. She is what they call a Sparrow, or a spy. And indeed we realise that from the first clip that she is probably feigning her vulnerability. Next, she kills and puts on a wig in order to flee the crime scene (by the way, speculation around the natural colour of her hair is a recurrent topic on the internet; the wig is certain to stoke this profound and colourful discussion).

But the story is seen from the perspective of Joel Edgerton’s character, who happens to be a CIA spy. Hence, the audience tends to agree with him and be on his side. He is the right guy. And Lawrence chose the wrong side, as she is Russian. This highly Manichaean spy tale promises to show breathtaking Jennifer Lawrence mastering what she does best: an uncensored inability to be a cheat.

Despite sharing the surname with the sexy actor in red, the director Francis Lawrence is not related to her!

Red Sparrow will be released theatrically in early March.

The Florida Project

Posted on by victorfraga

The ultra-dirty Tangerine (2015) is one of our favourite Christmas movies of all times. It is a twisted fable of love and solidarity set in the outskirts of Los Angeles, and starred by transsexuals, hookers and immigrants. One of the most touching tributes to the marginalised people of Hollywood you will ever see. And also hilarious. Plus filmed with an iPhone.

The 46-year-old American filmmaker Sean Baker is now back, and his latest movie once again takes place in the outskirts of a very mainstream place. He has moved across the US from California to Florida. From the vicinity’s of cinema’s dream world of Hollywood to the dingy hotels of Orlando, just outside Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The director once again wants to portray the life of the outsiders living a stone’s throw from “the dream”, it seems.

The trailer of new movie, which features William Dafoe, markets it as “a movie destined to be remembered as one of the greatest films about childhood ever” and “a loving look at the innocence of childhood”. Sean will attempt to reconcile social exclusion with tenderness, with a funny and subversive streak. A puerile and yet critical look at American society. The child actors look very realistic, as do the settings. The judgmental look at those who haven’t experienced adult life yet feels like a gauge of American values. Likely another masterpiece, we would hazard a guess.

The Florida Project will premiere in the UK during the 61st BFI London Film Festival, which is taking place this October in the British capital. Stay tuned for our exclusive review, which will follow very soon.

Flatliners

Posted on by victorfraga

A dark and somber photography combined with a borderline ironic “relax, enjoy the experience” set the tone for the trailer of the upcoming sci-fi Flatliners. Heavy breathing and croaking add a very eerie feeling to the atmosphere. The movie intends to be, quite literally a breathtaking sci-fi. It will also raise existential and scientific questions about the blurry line between life and death, and give us a prescient warning not to toy with our very existence.

The story is described more or less like this: five medical students, obsessed by the mystery of what lies beyond the confines of life, embark on a daring and dangerous experiment: by stopping their hearts for short periods of time, each triggers a near-death experience – giving them a firsthand account of the afterlife. But as their experiments become increasingly dangerous, they are each haunted by the sins of their pasts, brought on by the paranormal consequences of trespassing to the other side.

The Danish is best known for the 2009 movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the romance by the same name. The film became an instant classic immediately, and it spawned as remake by David Fincher just two years later. The Scandinavian filmmaker has made four films since, but none has enjoyed as much commercial and critical acclaim. Let’s hope he’s willing to get dirty and turns things around this time!

Flatliners will be released worldwide on Friday, September 29th.