RogerBW's Blog

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

A Girl Like Grace: well, it's a coming-of-age that's not about a white boy, but is that sufficient to make it an interesting story, or is it just more coming-of-age? Not one for me.

The Belko Experiment: feels like a very transparent excuse for violence porn.

Eloise: a very contrived setup that had the potential to turn into something interesting, but of course it's just "let's send some expendable meat into the abandoned asylum to die horribly".

Reset: if no shot ever lasts more than a second, you can indeed make something look energetic and exciting. But if I'm going to watch a film about ballet I want more than synthetic excitement: I want long shots so that I can evaluate what I'm seeing before going on to the next thing.

Sleight: it looks like Chronicle, only with a black protagonist. I can see how this might be interesting, but the trailer won't tell me if it is.

The Shack: yet another missing child story, combined with magical schmaltz. Oh, sorry, "religious" schmaltz.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe: isn't actual murder scary enough? Why do you need to bring in walking corpses too? Like so many of these things, starts off looking almost promising and then quickly turns into generic jump-scare horror

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: sigh. The appeal of this is aimed squarely at people who are not me.

The Mummy: well, apart from shots where people's only lines are "aaaaah" (never a good sign), this looks as thought it might almost be possibly interesting. Except: Tom Cruise. Can he suppress the Smug while paired with yet another female co-star more than two decades younger than him? And why the hell call it a "reboot" of the 1999 film, as opposed to, well, just another mummy story?

Gimme Danger: if these are the most interesting things they have to say, this won't be for me.

The Circle: creepy high-tech panopticon is creepy. And?

Fifty Shades Darker: badly-written BDSM power-plays are badly-acted too. (If your potential partner offers to take you to this for Valentine's Day, dump 'em.)

Baby Baby Baby: an appealing cast with terrible, terrible lines.

Cross Wars: stunt-casting Danny Trejo? What has the world come to? I mean, he already did Machete, and did it very well. And that already did all the big clichés for humorous effect, without having to call them out as big clichés.

Baywatch: uh. Right. This is clearly aimed to appeal to someone, but that someone is not me. I feel as if I'd just heard a trailer for a radio programme in Arabic, or something similarly outside my comprehension.

The Wall: your basic extended macho grunty duel scenario, which will therefore rely entirely on the acting.

Spider-Man - Homecoming: what, another reboot? Of, frankly, one of the less compelling characters as a character (gosh wow, he has actual human problems); and superpower antics don't interest me.

War for the Planet of the Apes: yeah, the effects are effective, but really, I was bored last time, never mind now.

Nerdland: why should we care about these people?

The Fate of the Furious: physics has left the building. Also acting, apparently.

The Last Word: the concept is vaguely appealing but the details leave me cold. Especially sassy black child.

Irreplaceable: Very appealing cast, but looks like a very hackneyed story. Or am I supposed to believe they won't all learn Important Lessons about Life?

Unforgettable: because, however civilised they look, grownups aren't really grownups; they are all rampaging beasts in waiting. Given some elections this year, that isn't a message I really want to see again.

Despicable Me 3: maybe not as terrible as number 2? But that'll depend to a large extent on the non-action scenes, of which we don't see any here.

Dunkirk: maybe. Yeah, just maybe. A bit blatantly arty for a war film, but it might just possibly work.

Alone in Berlin: I wonder, though, whether this is more the war film that we need to see now. It's the people not in uniform who can stop a pointless war, if anyone can.

Arsenal: sports movie meets incompetent crooks movie meets woman-as-prize, with the 1970s Look Filter to boot. Aimed almost directly away from me.

Norman: whereas this simply fails to have anything which appeals to me or annoys me; it's extruded movie product.

Going in Style: if not for Michael Caine this would be competely unwatchable. With him, well, just maybe. But I'll be looking for really positive reviews. And if that "8-0" joke is one of the best they've got…

Snatched: women behaving badly is better than no women at all I suppose. But… do we have to?

Blade Runner 2049: this is my trying to care face. But I just don't. Another instance of Harrison Ford reprising a role he was good in back in the day; wasn't the money for Star Wars enough?

John Wick - Chapter 2: wasn't the entire point of the first film that it was a one-off for a one-off reason?

The Emoji Movie: "Hello, fellow aging white male movie producer. What do kids like these days? Emojis [sic] are cool, right? We can sell toys of those, can't we?"

How to Be a Latin Lover: it was looking terrible enough already, and then the kid came in. If I am forced into a cinema showing this, I will be tempted to remove my eyes with my Leatherman.

The Lost City of Z: cut-price Indiana Jones, yay.

Power Rangers: there are clearly people out there who say "I had no interest in any of the previous iterations of this franchise, but now that it's being made for the 217th time with pretty young actors I've never heard of, I'll rush out to see it". There must be, or this wouldn't exist.

Alien - Covenant: well, count me among the many who were profoundly unimpressed with Prometheus. This certainly looks much more like an Alien film, but is it too much like an Alien film, i.e. is it this franchise's version of The Force Awakens, set up to disappoint fans by just offering a slight shuffle of the same old cards?