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Trailer Tuesday

I’m baaaaaaaaack…..

I wanted to be sure to come out of hiding to wish everyone a Happy Halloween without disrupting the scheduled line-up of posts for this week. So this is going to be a slight deviation from my usual fare of Trailer Tuesday contributions.

Once a year, I emerge from the dank recesses of my lair and adjust my hood, lest the piercing gaze of daylight sear my flesh. I’ll now gorge myself on thousands of unsuspecting Reese’s minis, watch classic horror films, and submit this post to assure everyone I’m alive before scuttling back to the sewers to slumber until Christmas. Part of the ritual also includes taking stock of my life (because what self-respecting ghoul doesn’t on a day that celebrates our fragile mortality) and turning to nostalgic entertainment. I’m not the only one, apparently. Creatures like me have taken over your TV and your town. We’ve possessed your young Millennials to find joy in throwback entertainment, including homages, tributes, remakes, and downright rip-offs. Today, I’m going to give you a trailer mash-up to watch once you’ve reached that point in the evening when you’re home from the party and under the influence of candy and alcohol (you know, that point when you feel you should hate yourself, but rationalize that it’s only once a year so the guilt is short-lived). It’s those moments when you’re done with everything you planned to do for the night, but aren’t quite ready to go to bed. Nostalgia TV (or in this case YouTube) is often the cure for that moment of post-revelry ennui.

So lie back. Dust the candy wrappers off your costume, and sink under the spell of nostalgic horror entertainment. I’ll be watching…

Trailer Tuesdays: The Dark Tower

Idris Elba Kicking Ass and Taking Names = Worthwhile Movie Night

By all accounts, I probably shouldn’t be covering this particular trailer. I haven’t read the books the movie is based on; I’ve never really been a devotee of the fantasy genre, let alone epic fantasy; and I’m quite burned out on the “chosen one” plot device. That said, I have been somewhat won over to fantasy stories through the Game of Thrones TV show. Despite all the hype, it is a show that manages to skillfully tell a story with stellar acting (the real selling point, in my opinion), and so I’m game to another good epic if the acting is good and the story is engaging.  However, it’s TV shows like Westworld that are nearest and dearest to my heart because it satisfies my personal checklist of things that I DO like:

  • Westerns (all of them…even the cheesy, politically incorrect ones).
  • Sci-fi, so long as the story doesn’t take a back seat to the whiz-bang gadgetry and world building.
  • Sci-fi Westerns?? Awesome idea. I quite enjoyed Cowboys vs. Aliens. Judge me all you want. I feel no shame about this.

 

The Dark Tower may further scratch my weird-ass entertainment itch and then some due to a few more additions of things I quite like:

  • Anything to do with parallel dimensions (I have a copy of Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality on my To-Read List and intend to find a portal to somewhere someday).
  • Idris Elba (do you need a reason?).
  • Matthew McConaughey playing a bad guy.

 

Based on this trailer, The Dark Tower checks off the abovementioned attributes and is just a friggin cool trailer. So whether or not I’m “qualified” to highlight it, I want to anyway. There’s plenty of Matrix stylization and “we must save the world” dialogue, but watching Idris Elba in a black duster coat channeling his inner Wyatt Earp will alone be worth the $10-$15 for the movie ticket. I’ll definitely be watching.

Trailer Tuesday

A History Lesson, Nolan-Style

In the months of May through June 1940, Allied forces were stranded on the French coast after German forces had them flanked and trapped with no hope of escape. Hitler, somewhat inexplicably, signed a halt order, which kept the German army from advancing into Dunkirk towards the doomed English, French, and Canadian soldiers. It’s been argued that Hitler and his army felt it didn’t matter, as it was likely all over but the shouting; yet the halt order enabled a miraculous evacuation scheme carried out, not just by Allied destroyers, but by every able-bodied seaman with a sturdy craft and the utmost devotion to their patriotic duty. By the eighth day, a staggering 338,226  men, originally awaiting certain death, were rescued from the shores of Dunkirk.

After a slew of superhero tales and overly-long existential think pieces, Christopher Nolen has now adapted the story of Dunkirk as the subject of his latest movie, which opened in theaters on June 21 to rave reviews. A pretty strong group of renown performers headline the film, including Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hardy, Ciaran Hinds, and Harry Styles (formerly of One Direction). I have yet to see the movie myself, but as a WWII history buff, I’ll definitely be adding this to my viewing catalog, now that I have a little time in between out-of-town visits from family. As our society becomes hijacked by “post-truthers” and the last remaining survivors of the Greatest Generation die off (taking with them the first-hand knowledge of what it meant to charge headlong against tyranny), movies like Dunkirk may help us remember the stories of men and women who discovered the best of themselves in the worst of times.

Trailer Tuesday: Alien: Covenant

Alien…Again

I expect most people are highly anticipating the next installment of the Alien franchise, and so I’m going to cover it for this week’s highlighted trailer. As for me, the first Alien was so hard to beat that I wasn’t especially curious about the sequels (though I feel I owe it to myself to at least watch Aliens…as in, Alien with an S). When Prometheus came out, I was intrigued enough to grab a friend and head to the theater. Not much to say there, other than I was as underwhelmed as everyone else, and also quite irritated at stupid stuff like the heroine jumping across ravines and banging her stomach in the process AFTER giving herself a space-age C-section. As a result, my general reaction to anything Alien-related was along the lines of, “Meh.” But now we come to the next chapter in the Alien saga, and it appears to be getting back to giving the audience what it returns to these movies time and again to see…the friggen alien! And of course, we’re going to see them in their entirety here: from larva to adult with a new selection of human incubators. With the reappearance of Michael Fassbender as the android from Prometheus, it’s my guess that they are back on the same planet, only now all life has been eradicated by the aliens that were left there and allowed to breed.  I may be wrong about that, but I’m willing to take bets. You can send the money you lose to me when I’m proven to be right through Erin. For now, here’s the trailer so that you can make your own predictions:

Trailer Tuesdays: Twin Peaks

A Cultural Juggernaut Returns

Note: in my last Trailer Tuesday, I mistakenly named Dakota Fanning as a featured performer in the remake of The Beguiled. It is actually Elle Fanning who is playing the role. (Erin’s note: I spaced on that one. Ooops.)

It’s been 26 years since we’ve been to the logging town of Twin Peaks and bore witness to the twisted secrets intermingled with soap opera-y camp.  The David Lynch/Mark Frost project only lasted two seasons, as studio executives pressured Lynch to reveal Laura Palmer’s murderer, thus forcing Lynch abandon the core mystery of the series and instead find as many ways as possible to delve into mindfuck mythology that enveloped the town’s inhabitants and – eventually – FBI’s Agent Dale Cooper. But the mystery of Twin Peaks kept haunting viewers, and the specter of Laura Palmer kept returning in a prequel movie, countless references and spoofs, and in a comedic tribute. With the series’ availability through Netflix’s streaming content, new fans are continuously wooed into Twin Peaks’ dark web. However, it’s Showtime that has scored the coup of rebooting the series (scheduled for May 21)  with much of the original cast. The denizens of Twin Peaks may be older, but are they any wiser?

If you haven’t seen the series, I actually don’t recommend watching the extended trailer released by Showtime, nor the linked content above, as the entire story is pretty much hashed out. Yes, it is a 26-year-old show and the reveal of spoilers is kind of moot. But a new generation is embracing older cultural phenomena like Twin Peaks (see also: The X-Files and Mystery Science Theater 3000, both of which were also rebooted), and it will no doubt find a broader audience the second time around. Until such time as all interested parties get caught up on the Twin Peaks saga, here’s a little something to whet your appetite along with that slice of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee:

Trailer Tuesdays

Much Madness is Divinest Sense

I first want to preface this trailer review with an update: go see Split. The less I say about it the better, but it takes the more respectful approach to mental illness and is a most satisfying return for M. Night Shyamalan.

Now, back to the trailer at hand. I admit to not paying too much attention to the poetry part of my English literature classes. I was a biology major and mainly took humanities courses because I had to. But I always liked that Emily Dickenson poem about the sublimity of madness, or rather, what society would call “mad”:

Much Madness is divinest Sense –
To a discerning Eye –
Much Sense – the starkest Madness –
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail –
Assent – and you are sane –
Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –
And handled with a Chain –

Demurring from conventional wisdom will usually be thought insane. But what if our current state of reality is just an illusion from the madness with which we are already infected? Can we escape it once we are forced to acknowledge it?

From what I can tell, that is the theme presented by the trailer for A Cure for Wellness, a Gore Verbinski film due out February 17th. A young man is charged with retrieving the head of his company, who has suddenly fled to a retreat in Switzerland. The young man leaves the colorless boardroom and dour, expressionless board members to the fresh, open air of the Swiss countryside and to an asylum that appears to offer some kind of revolutionary therapy to its inmates. But something appears to be off as a young woman is seen standing on the edge of the roof – the same young woman who tells our protagonist that no one ever leaves. An accident lands him back in the asylum where he undergoes a “treatment” that may be cure or kill. Is this a cult? A mad scientist conducting unsavory experiments? Or is the young man actually being cured of something? Whatever’s going on, color me intrigued.

And go see Split!

 

Trailer Tuesdays: Beauty and the Beast

Disney Re-introduces Beauty and the Beast for a New Generation

What? You didn’t think it would ALL be horror or comic book films did you? Rather than focus on the latest shock flick or comic hero disaster porn, I’m going to shift gears and talk a bit about my childhood. Don’t click on another screen; you know you’re riveted.

Beauty and the Beast has always been my favorite fairy tale. Cinderella’s moral was too neat (be good and you’ll marry a handsome prince) and even in the original Grimm versions of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty the main characters didn’t seem to have any defining traits other than being beautiful, displaced princesses. Beauty was a regular girl, brave and selfless, and motivated by love for her family – not to one day marry the prince.  Even if one can guess what the deal is with the Beast, he enters the story shrouded in mystery with the off-putting habit of asking Beauty every night if she’ll marry him. The original animated version of Beauty and the Beast takes these same elements and gives it some humor and rounded out motivations for the Beast and even the enchantress who curses him.

The Disney film came out when I was a freshman in high school, so I suppose I wouldn’t have been the target audience for it. That’s the thing about this movie, though. Whereas later Disney films like The Lion King had a bit more schtick aimed at the kiddies, Beauty and the Beast told the story like an adult who expected that their audience, young and old, could handle it. The characters were three-dimensional, the animation was gorgeous, and the story was…well…old as time. Unlike the travesty of Bella and Edward, the Beast wasn’t supposed to be a darkly sexy Prince Charming. He wasn’t even charming when he WAS a prince. And Belle wasn’t taking any of his crap.

Now we have Disney giving one of its most classic films the live-action treatment, and I have been admittedly skeptical. I can appreciate re-introducing these stories to a new audience by casting well-known actors and “updating” the story. But the latter is where I often find myself struggling to accept it. Rather than bash you over the head with “they’re just misunderstood” and “see…they’re ahead of their time”, the original movie just let you watch the interactions and come to that conclusion yourself. Realistically, Belle just thought she was odd and her father reacted the way any proud father would have (“oh, of course not”), but didn’t present the clunky dialogue found in this trailer. Still, this looks to be a shot-for-shot remake, and I am enjoying Emma Watson’s and Luke Evans’ characterizations as Belle and Gaston respectively. The cast is rounded out with Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, Sir Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, and Dan Stevens as the Beast. I may not be 14 anymore, but I’m still enough of a sucker for this story that I know where I’ll be on its opening night.

Trailer Tuesdays

Hollywood’s Mental Illness Problem

The much-maligned M. Night Shyamalan (say that five times fast) enjoyed a bit of a comeback year before last with The Visit, a flawed but rather entertaining found footage tale with more than one memorable moment. I dare say anyone who’s seen the movie will dry heave at the thought of a soiled diaper. However (spoilers for anyone who hasn’t watched The Visit), instead of the more empathetic treatment of mental illness portrayed in The Sixth Sense, Mr. S relied on an old Hollywood trope of mental patient as monster to jack up the scares. This is a problematic depiction, as it not only regresses from his earlier message of mental patient as victim and maybe even someone with special insight, but reverts to a stigma that sufferers and caregivers alike still fight to overcome. Perhaps the long string of box office failures and unintentionally laughable stories had Mr. S grappling for a sure thing and he settled on a regressive trope that labels the mentally ill as “the other,” and something of which to be afraid.

It doesn’t look as if he’s changed his tune with his latest film, Split, featuring an unsettling James McAvoy, who plays a kidnapper with 24 distinct personalities. Controversy has already sprung up around the film with a Care2 Petition being circulated over the depiction of mental illness, as well as a depiction that reads as transphobic (McAvoy’s character has a female personality that appears in the trailer). This wouldn’t, of course, be the first time a man disguised as a woman was a source of terror – Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill for instance. But Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill were explicitly explained in their respective movies as not being true transgenders. It would seem to me that a similar approach is being tried here: McAvoy is not transgender per se, but rather has a distinct personality – one of many – that identifies as female. Not being a trans woman myself, I don’t automatically assume this depicts a true transgender, but I do concur this is a clumsy attempt. Furthermore, we are all aware that a mangled combination of nature and nurture can create twisted psyches that give us such monsters as Ed Gein and Jeffery Dahmer. But the condition suffered by McAvoy’s character is controversial and since this is Hollywood, it is not likely to be accurately represented in this film. After all: crazy = scary here.

With all that said, I do think that Shyamalan’s stigmatizing depiction is not deliberate so much as trope-heavy, and there are a lot of call-backs to other thrillers like Kiss the Girls and Session 9. The victims are being gathered together for something and they don’t know which version of McAvoy’s character they can trust. What do you think? Will you still see it anyway?

Trailer Tuesdays

Yippie-ki-yay, Mother…

 This Saturday, one of our local theaters will screen a midnight showing of Die Hard, to which I am going. In reference to our earlier Halloween posts, I do have one Christmas tradition that I have tried to maintain, though I couldn’t often find copies of Die Hard (yes, I know…time to go ahead and buy it): that was to have Die Hard going on the TV in the background while I baked Christmas cookies. I have no peer-reviewed data to present, but I am convinced that the cookies tasted better when I did that. If you’ve never managed to watch the film and wonder what all the hoopla is about, you can check out a few podcasts and trailers (like the one below) to whet your appetite.

I won’t be able to simultaneously bake cookies this time, obviously, but may find another way to honor the tradition:

I have a machine gun now…ho, ho, ho.

(and, yes, this is on Pinterest)

So whatever you do to celebrate this time of year, be it for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or Festivus, you do you and have a wonderful holiday season!

And watch Die Hard.

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