RogerBW's Blog

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal.)

The Handmaiden: caper film goes strange; this is a Korean adaptation of a novel set in Victorian England, and the director has a decent track record, so it might just work in spite of the gratuitous lesbian sex scenes.

Siêu Trộm - Bitcoin Heist: caper film goes stranger. Is it perverse of me that I'm looking forward to this rather more than to The Handmaiden? It may be horribly clichéd but there's an energy here that I like.

Gifted: being a Normal Person is vastly more important than being intelligent. I don't like such naked messages even when I agree with them. And of course there's a dead woman to provide motivation to the man, because he couldn't do it on his own.

The Eyes of My Mother: potentially interesting, but looks oddly dreary.

20th Century Women: why does this not engage me? Good cast, but there's just on feeling of soul here.

All We Had: Katie Holmes does another film about people who need to control. How remarkable. Looks plausible, if it's done well.

Life: I'm a sucker for vaguely realistic space disaster, though clearly this is heavily inspired by Gravity and the cause of the disaster itself doesn't look realistic at all. (I still want to see a film of Tess Gerritsen's novel Gravity, though there's no chance that will happen now.)

Run the Tide: crank the handle and the flags come up in a slightly different combination, but in the end it's just another custody battle and the Importance of Family.

T2 - Trainspotting 2: Ah, he's trying to be Heartwarming. Needs me to care about the characters. Bet that doesn't happen.

Wilson: no, it's not about the volleyball in Cast Away; it's just another horribly offensive guy whom we're supposed to cheer for.

Wonder Woman: looks rather better than the last trailer. I might even watch this in spite of my problems with superheroes.

La La Land: a musical parodying the world of musicals? Appealing cast, but where will it go, and will they manage to get some actual good songs?

Pet: yay for captive women being terrorised and tortured. It's not easy being a mad psycho killer. Ksenia Solo was great in Lost Girl but clearly has little to work with here.

Renegades: more action, with the guy who's currently headlining in Blindspot as a grunty macho FBI agent stretching himself to play a grunty macho soldier gone freelance. You know why even crap like Commando works? Because we care about the damn characters.

Apple of My Eye: horrible things happen to photogenic people. (Will they mention that horses can't be house-trained?) Oh, Burt Reynolds, did they have the negatives or something?

Live By Night: an effectively-mounted period piece, but the trailer tells me nothing about the people. Bonus points for a tent revival, though.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Luc Besson does what Luc Besson does, but it's visually appealing and might even be fun. Looks as if it'll be more spectacle than anything else, but if the principals can just avoid grating on me…

Ghost in the Shell: I'm still unconvinced of the need for an adaptation of the perfectly good manga and anime, but if you're going to do it, go all-out like this. OK, would have been better with an actual Japanese actress, but you can't have that.

100 Streets: two great lead actors, and they're playing two characters whom I immediately despise. Oh well.

Beauty and the Beast: if you have to make a new one, you might as well get it right. But will they get it right ("handsome is as handsome does" rather than "a nasty man can be reformed by Twoo Wuv")? Maybe, just maybe.

Jackie: probably more interesting to those who have some feeling of investment or involvement with the people, which doesn't include me. But as MaryAnn Johansen says, "desperate for more stories about women".

A Kind Of Murder: Yet another Good Family Man seduced by a Designing Woman. Probably less of a bloody cliché when Patricia Highsmith wrote it in 1954. (The point about Walter Stackhouse in the original is that he is "the blunderer" of the book's title: he's not particularly sympathetic, and it's the mistakes he makes by overestimating his own intelligence that get him into trouble.)

Detour: the strip club sequence is entirely necessary for the film. It's artistic, man. More horrible people doing horrible things, and I've already seen and enjoyed Sliding Doors. A strangely ugly leading man doesn't help matters.

Transformers - The Last Knight: oh, right, these still happen. Might be of interest to somebody who isn't me. (Note that none of these people pimping the film or the cameras says anything about the plot or acting. If you cared about those, you wouldn't be watching anyway.)

Before I Fall: can a ripoff of Groundhog Day truly be this shameless? Yes, I guess it can.

Get Better - A Film About Frank Turner: another musician follow-him-around-pic that makes no attempt to bring in anyone who doesn't already know who the guy is.

The Ardennes: horrible petty crooks being horrible to each other... in Dutch.

Smurfs - The Lost Village: see the bright coloured lights. pretty. woooooah.

The Book of Love: the big story actually looks vaguely interesting. The small moments of the story that we see are horrible.

The Comedian: har har har har har har har har har har BANG.

Silence: I feel pretty dubious about attempts to Christianise Japan, and I count someone who's been involved in it as a friend. I'm certainly not interested in a film about it. Is Scorsese trying to be the new Mel Gibson?

Eat That Question - Frank Zappa In His Own Words: OK, this is a follow-him-around-pic that does seem more interesting to me. Not that I'm particularly a Zappa fan, but maybe it's that he's talking more and being-shown-doing less?

Goon - Last of the Enforcers: wasn't interested in the first one, still not interested in this one.

Krisha: the trailer has Oscar bait painted all over it, but it might be fun even so. That someone is at least trying to do things right, rather than everyone being purely selfish, is a big plus point for me.

Dead Rising - End Game: if I wanted zombie survival horror / beat-em-up I'd be playing the computer games.

Incarnate: desperately generic-looking possessed child horror. Not my thing even a tiny little bit.