Trailer Enquiry

With the Hollywood labor strike still ongoing and which we hope takes as long as it must for the WGA and SAG to get every damn thing they want even if it means all we have to watch are Rizzoli & Isles re-runs and Hallmark Christmas movies made with stars of the British Columbia dinner theater scene, it’s difficult to forecast what the movie release schedule will look like this fall and winter. As numerous outlets have reported, studio bigwigs are already pushing some of their biggest 2023 offerings to 2024 all while kvetching that stars they were all prepared to write off as immaterial to AI facsimiles of stars are now the only thing that can help pitch the product at upcoming film festivals. Even so, movie trailers continue coming down the pike and we here at Cinema Romantico (feeling less romantic every day) thought reviewing a few a fine idea since soon trailers might be all we have left.

Poor Things. Described by no less an authority than Wikipedia as “a surrealist science fantasy comedy-drama,” that’s a tongue-twisting explainer that feels right in step with its director, Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous work, like “The Favourite” or “The Lobster,” you either enjoy, nay, appreciate or want to point a crucifix at, like Lanthimos is a vampire. Dude’s provocative, is what I’m saying, and is why I like that the teaser for his latest concludes with Mark Ruffalo getting smacked across the face, as if Lanthimos is the slapper and we, the audience, the slapped. Watch here.

The Marvels. Much like the trailer for “The Eternals” (which I did not see) showcased how Angelina Jolie’s innate Movie Stardom is being wasted by an industry that increasingly only concerns itself with CGI and shareholders, the trailer for the forthcoming “Marvels” in concert with 2019’s “Captain Marvel” makes me concerned that we also might be wasting Brie Larson’s screwball comedy chops and I wish I could take her in a time machine back to the 80s and create her own “Working Girl” and see what she’s got. Of course, once studio execs get wind of my time machine, they’ll go back in time and then use 80s Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver and Joan Cusack to make 2023 movies and there is no telling what havoc this will unleash. Watch here.

Heart of Stone. When I compiled my annual THRILLERS ONLY movie preview for 2023, I noted that there was next to no information for the upcoming Gal Gadot vehicle “Heart of Stone.” And here’s the funny thing, I realized the trailer had screened at my showing of “Barbie” only when the title flashed on the screen right at the end. I literally don’t remember a thing about it, like I blacked out as it was happening, or maybe was just so disinterested that my brain shut off of its own accord, or perhaps even that the trailer wasn’t real in the first place and just flashed up the title to make us all think it had just been shown and that when it finally debuts on Netflix (where I will still watch it because I’m an idiot) everyone will watch it without realizing they have not even watched anything and somehow it will still get a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Next Goal Wins. I can’t decide if I find Taika Waititi’s in-trailer joke about being an Academy and Teen Choice award loser charming or a calculated attempt at charm which renders it charmless. But I confess the part where Michael Fassbender says, “We’ve worked too long and hard for this,” in tandem with the sort of half-assed triumphant way he stands there when he says it, is side-splitting because his voice makes him sound like someone reading lines from a moderately successful college basketball coach’s book on leadership from an easy chair with potato chip crumbs on his shirt and on the pages. I can only imagine this line reading will be the highlight. Watch here. 

Priscilla. The only thing Sofia Coppola does better than make movies, it seems, is concoct teaser trailers for those same movies.