RogerBW's Blog

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Since I started doing a film review podcast I hate slightly less of everything, but I hate generic film with nothing to say if anything more than before.)

12 Mighty Orphans: the basic template of sports story doesn't work for me, so I'm not in the target audience here. (And I've recently seen another film with Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen in it… are we still using actors from 42 years ago? Apparently we are.)

Moonfall (Teaser): this teaser has nothing but action, no dialogue at all, so meh. I would quite like to see a film of Jack McDevitt's Moonfall, but this clearly isn't it.

Red Notice (Teaser): whereas this teaser tells us exactly what we're getting, which is being expected to sympathise with a character who looks like Ryan Reynolds again.

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain: promising, though Cumberbatch really does seem to have just the one basic persona in him.

Belfast: urban sentimental Irishry rather than the more usual rural sort.

No One Gets Out Alive: not another Jim Morrison biopic, just generic creepy horror from purveyors of generic creepy horror.

The Guilty: nothing here to say I want to watch this rather than the Danish original. (Note that this has been on the shelf since a year before the pandemic.)

C'mon C'mon: …and the point is?

Don't Look Up (Teaser): ooh, we like our fast cuts. Har har a funny bit. Nothing here to pull me in.

Honey Girls: it's much easier to control the talent-contest narrative if all the characters are fictional. ("Build-A-Bear Entertainment"? Really?)

Encounter (Teaser): relationship drama in unofficial wartime? Maybe.

South of Heaven: whereas this just loads up too many of the clichés to appeal.

The Matrix Resurrections: Old Keanu can actually act, and he's got the history. But it's Carrie-Anne Moss who really impresses me here, to the minimal extent that we see her.

Needle in a Timestack (Teaser): maybe trying to hard to look like Inception but if it can be its own thing could be pretty solid.

I Carry You With Me (Extended Preview): with eleven minutes of trailer, you spend one of them on production company credits. Yeah, that's going to suck me in. Maybe there's something to this, but I feel let down by this preview that is all setup. At least I hope it is.

Nightmare Alley (Teaser): lots about the look and the style, nothing about character or plot. OK then.

The Humans: I hate these people already.

A Mouthful of Air: too much baby for me.

American Underdog (Teaser): inspirational sports story is inspirational.

Finch: the post-apocalypse has never been so cute.

Passing: does it have more to say than the one thing it says repeatedly in this trailer? You may not have heard, but apparently racism is bad.

The Tragedy of Macbeth: a teaser, if not labelled as such. Well, I've seen worse productions (such as that one at the National Theatre where they banged scaffolding to let you know when things were meant to be tense).

Spencer: still no interest in the subject.

Licorice Pizza: what is there here to appeal to anyone? Maybe I should just resign from humanity.

The Harder They Fall: still looks very pretty, but basically unengaging. It would be fair to say it's not aimed at me, but it's the cool nasty people who put me off more than their skins. Might watch this anyway, just for Zazie Beetz.

Encanto: great, we have non-white protagonists. But the rest still looks straight out of the same old Disney-o-tron.

The Souvenir - Part II: I haven't seen the first one, but these people are at least a little appealing, and it's not just Pretty White People Problems. (Aspiring Filmmaker Doing Semi-Autobiography is another matter.)

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn: just seems horrible.

Wolf: might have something to say, but the allegories seem heavy-handed even by Hollywood standards ("Species Identity Disorder") and the cast don't seem to have much oomph to them.